“I felt like I was a caged animal”

Dramatic Action in Downtown Los Angeles as Part of Daily Protests Demanding Trump/Pence Out Now!

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As immigrants are STILL being tortured in ICE jails and children are STILL separated from their parents, and traumatized for life...

As news comes out that these family separations were not some accidental byproduct of Trump’s immigration policy, but very DELIBERATELY ordered by Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice...

As multiple allegations come out from a Georgia ICE jail about medical procedures being done to women without consent, even removing their uteruses...

And ICE begins mass raids targeting sanctuary cities across the country...

Refuse Fascism in Los Angeles launched a powerful, 48-hour dramatic action on Friday and Saturday, October 9-10, against the Trump/Pence regime’s attacks on immigrants. They called out the parallels between what’s happening to immigrants—demonization, criminalization, concentration camps—and what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany, and sounded the alarm about the beginning stages of a racist genocide. They issued a wake-up call to people in this country to stop “getting used to” kids in cages and babies being pulled from their parents’ arms, letting yesterday’s outrage become today’s new normal—because that is exactly how the German people became complicit collaborators with Nazi atrocities.

Most importantly, they gave people a way to stop these atrocities, by joining the people’s movement, in the streets every day in LA and nationwide, to drive this this regime from power. They challenged people with the truth: Voting to defeat Trump is important. But voting is not enough. They are torturing immigrants NOW. They are appointing a fundamentalist Supreme Court judge NOW. They are recruiting an “army” of “poll watchers” to intimidate voters NOW. They are preparing NOW to hijack the election and unleash MAGA thugs, in and out of uniform, to enforce it. That’s why Refuse Fascism is mobilizing NOW, to overwhelm them with mass, nonviolent, sustained protest, demanding Trump/Pence OUT NOW.

At Pershing Square in downtown LA, volunteers stepped up to build cages to represent the ICE jails our immigrant brothers and sisters are held captive in. Others volunteered to spend an hour or two in the cages. At one point, two children got inside the cages. On the second day, new volunteers wore bloody pants inside the cages to represent the immigrant women in Georgia. This was a visually jarring and moving experience for the people who were part of it, and for people walking by.

Here are some sights and sounds from this dramatic protest, and some excerpts of statements from people who were part of it.

 

Below are excerpts from what some of the participants in this action said:

Rev. Frank Wulf, Pastor Echo Park United Methodist Church

The atrocities that are being committed against migrants and refugees are only some of the atrocities that are being committed by the Trump/Pence regime. We hear of many, many others, you know—the taking over of the courts, the failure to give adequate healthcare to American citizens, the attempts to take away what healthcare American citizens have. These are all atrocities that are being committed by this regime. So ultimately the goal is not just simply to draw attention, but ultimately the goal is to remove the Trump/Pence regime from power...

Well, everyone thinks that voting is going to be enough, and we have to vote. We have to get out there and we have to vote in order to get this regime out of power. But we know that voting is not enough, and so we really need to create a mass movement that is going to be saying Trump/Pence Out Now! Trump/Pence Out Now! Not on January 20th but now, because we don’t know what kind of new atrocities that can be committed between now and January 20th.

Charlie Castaneda, an activist who took part in the cage protest

What brought me out here is to bring attention and awareness to what’s going on with ICE and those detention centers, with ICE—all those immigrants that are locked up, including the little children that are in inhumane conditions and in cages liked locked animals. And unfortunately the media have lost touch with that, they stopped covering that story like it just never happened. People, now, today—they’re just walking around like nothing’s going on. And that’s not right! There’s madness, there’s evil, right here in front of our doorstep, and we want to make awareness of this. We want to the people to know that this is unacceptable.

...I felt like I was a caged animal, like I was an animal inside the zoo. And this is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to what the immigrants and the children are experiencing at this very moment in time. And just seeing people walk by, not even taking a look at what’s going on is just sad. Sad for what the world has come to, to the point where I had to literally stare at them, to look at what’s going on....

Don’t let fear take over you. Fear is the number one thing that’s keeping people from going out there and fighting. And what’s crazy is that the Trump/Pence regime is instilling that fear to you. Don’t let them get to you because once you’re no longer afraid they can never oppress you. So, the more people we come out here and unite, we can transfer our energy to these people so they can be as strong as us and come out and fight for the same reasons.

Aunt of Dijon Kizzee, Black man killed by LA Sheriff’s Department in August

I’m stepping into this today because systemic racism—it runs very deep. And it affects African American populations as well as Mexican Americans, Latino Americans, and branching out also to Pacific Islanders as well. This is something that we should pay attention to right now in this day and age. Trump and Pence being in office—it’s not a good thing for any of us for the simple fact he has been using tactics, unreasonable tactics to have individuals scared to come out and speak up for themselves, individuals who are immigrants scared to walk down streets because they’re going to be arrested and they’re going to get deported, if you don’t vote for Trump—all these type of things, your family, you won’t see them. So I’m really disgusted by things that I’m seeing, that I’m hearing, but I’m empowered and enlightened that people like me can come out and say: hey, this has to stop. The whole fascism regime has been going on for way to long.


Photo: RefuseFascism.org

What You Can Do NOW

Andy Zee, DISPATCH FROM THE RNL SHOW —
48 Hours of Dramatic Visualization in Downtown LA — Trump/Pence OUT NOW!


Photos: October 9 & 10, Los Angeles, California. Refuse Fascism launched a powerful dramatic action against the Trump/Pence regime’s attacks on immigrants.

 

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