Southern California Protests:
"We Say No More—Let Our Children Go!"
June 30, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a Reader:
On Thursday and Friday, June 26 and 27, the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, along with Hermandad Mexicana Transnacional, Vamos Unidos, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, and the LA Revolution Club, had two "We Say No More—Let Our Children Go" emergency protests to stop the incarceration, deportation, and inhumane treatment of thousands of children from Central America by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Thursday's protest occurred at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Los Angeles, and Friday's at the Ventura Naval Base in Port Hueneme, CA, where hundreds of Central American children are in military prison camp conditions after being flown there from Texas by U.S. authorities. Our demands included: All the youths and children who make it to the U.S. must be treated humanely and compassionately. Whenever possible, they must be reunited with family members as soon as possible. These children must be given all necessary medical treatment and put in a caring, loving environment. They must be provided with education, and they must never be deported.
On numerous news interviews we have been exposing why these children and others are fleeing Central America—where they have been trapped in conditions that offer no future, no prospect of a decent life—and the historical and present-day role of U.S. imperialism in creating and enforcing these horrific conditions of violence and exploitation in these countries. Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, where the great majority of this recent mass migration of refugee children are from, are among the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
The Thursday, June 26 event featured a lively march from MDC to Union Station—the main railway station in Los Angeles, California and the largest railroad passenger terminal in the western United States—and a "lightning rally and march" through Union Station, where hundreds of travelers heard chants of “Dejalos niños libres” and “They're Rounding Up Our Youth, Let Our Children Go, They're Criminalizing Our Youth, Let Our Children Go!" From there the march proceeded to Plaza Olvera, an open market which attracts people from around the world, including immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The call for the October 2014 Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration was handed out, and Revolution newspaper got into the hands of travelers at Union Station and people visiting Plaza Olvera.
Then on Friday, June 27, Stop Mass Incarceration Network and Hermandad Mexicana Transnacional traveled to Ventura Naval Base where up to 575 child refugees from Central America are now in detention. Ventura Naval Base is one of three military bases in California, Oklahoma, and Texas incarcerating these refugee children. Protesters chanted “Let Our Children Go!” as they marched up closer to the gates of the base—where they were met by military police who threatened them with arrests if they stepped over the “blue line.” Up to now, very few reporters and photographers have been allowed to report and inspect these children's conditions of confinement at the Ventura Naval Base or at many of the other locations in the Southwest U.S. where these children are incarcerated.
A June 18 LA Times article revealed overcrowded, unsanitary conditions seen at the detention centers: "...Facing growing controversy over reports of crowded and unsanitary conditions, Border Patrol officials on Wednesday provided the first limited public access to the two facilities, allowing reporters on brief, controlled tours for glimpses of children and a few mothers detained there at the end of their often long journeys from places as far away as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador." Reporting on detention centers in Nogales, Arizona and Brownsville, Texas, the LA Times said neither they nor other news agencies were allowed to interview youths or adults held at the stations, nor could they talk to Border Patrol or Federal Emergency Management Agency staffers. A single photographer-videographer was allowed to share images captured at each station. "Immigrant youths covered the dirty concrete floors of the Border Patrol holding cells here, sprawled shoulder to shoulder and draped in grubby Red Cross blankets, enveloped in a haze of sweat and body odor...," the LA Times wrote. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which filed a complaint two weeks ago with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, called conditions at the detention stations “inhumane and inadequate.”
A number of Spanish-language TV news stations, Fox 11 LA News, and Pacifica KPFK radio news reported on the Stop Mass Incarceration Network-initiated Ventura Naval Base protest.
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