MASS RESISTANCE TO MASS INCARCERATION IS GROWING! Please join your voice and stand together against he horrors of family separation, racist policing and imprisonment, and criminalization of immigrants this Sunday August 12th (11am-Noon) and demand WCDF and demand “Let Our People Go!” Please read details on parking and location below.
Sheriff Livingston announced an end to WCDF contract with ICE, in part due to growing protests. Immigrant detainees are in peril of being sent to private prisons in other states, and the sheriff will likely fill the ICE budget hole by increasing the general population at WCDF. Never forget, most of the people incarcerated there are interned only because they cannot post bail.
Livingston also blocked off the entire jail property and declared no protests are allowed and threatened anyone who steps on the property without “official business” will be arrested. This is a clear violation of first amendment rights. We won’t allow the Sheriff’s blatant disregard of free speech stop us from protesting the immorality of mass incarceration and inhumane treatment of general population and immigrant detainees.
Stand with our monthly multi-face action to demand that immigrant detainees be released, not transferred, hear about community bail funds and demand an end to the racist poverty imprisonment policies. We will gather and protest across the street (read on for details).
Across the country, the situation is dire. Kidnapped migrant children are being interned alone, the regime is rapidly building internment camps—some on toxic sites—where they plan indefinite internment of immigrant families. We have to end the normalization of millions of people separated from their families in the course of racist mass incarceration policies throughout the US.
This Sunday, August 12th from 11am-Noon across the street from WCDF at 1111 Giant Highway Richmond we will:
• HEAR Samba band Sistah Boom
• Patricia Contreras Flores, healer and writer, from ACUDIR Alameda County United in Defense of Immigrant Rights who will share an indigenous perspective with prayer, updates from dispatching the ACILEP hotline and song
• GET UPDATES from families whose loved ones are imprisoned at WCDF
• WRITE letters to individuals detained by ICE
• CREATE at the children’s art table
• SHOUT & MAKE NOISE so people inside can hear they are not forgotten
MUST READ: Parking & Location Info
1. There is no longer access to parking or entry at WCDF (Google Map is HERE). There are two choices for parking: the first is anywhere possible on the sides of Great Highway, and the second is to pay $3 at the Point Pinole parking lot that is located immediately south of WCDF.
2. The only bathrooms for public to use are located in the Point Pinole parking lot. We can no longer use the jail bathrooms.
3. We will have signs and volunteers indicating the flattest place to enter the field area to guide people to the field next to the large eucalyptus trees across from WCDF.
4. Some of the scrubby plants in the field are prickly. But it is not paved and therefore not easily accessible. We suggest closed shoes and longer pants to avoid prickly plants.
5. The sheriff’s “no entry” policy is unfair, we think illegal, and especially challenging to people with limited mobility. Last Saturday, a small group of people in wheelchairs and in camping chairs clustered with signs by the entrance barricaded by patrol cars, people with mobility challenges may choose this option again and there will be helpers to offer support for folks with mobility challenges reach the prostest on the field.
LET OUR PEOPLE GO protests are held on the 2nd Sunday of every month at 11am, to oppose the immorality of mass incarceration and deportations with activist debriefs, music, art, stories, poetry, interactive small groups and more. We demonstrate at West County Detention Facility in Richmond, which holds both county jail and Bay Area ICE detainees. We stand/sit outside the front entrance, adjacent to both public parking and the visitors’ waiting room, which has public bathrooms, making this an accessible action.
Let Our People Go was initiated by members of Kehilla Community Synagogue’s Immigration Committee, modeled in part on the 1st Saturday vigils held by our partners at Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity. A grassroots effort, Let Our People Go protests are organized ongoing by a few volunteers from Kehilla’s Immigration Committee, Congregation Beth El and Solidarity Sundays. The participation of a multitude of organizations, artists and regular attendees creates a powerful community circle to send a sustained message of resistance. **If your school, network, affinity group or congregation is interested in getting involved, contact us at letourpeoplego@kehillasynagogue.org.**
This one-hour Sunday morning protest is one way that Bay Area residents—especially those who currently enjoy the privileges of citizenship—can shine a spotlight on this immoral site of internment right in the East Bay. It’s our responsibility to fight the right wing’s racist, xenophobic, anti-Muslim, ableist, transphobic, homophobic, misogynist ramp up of authoritarian policing, incarceration, and deportation practices—if not now, when?
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