‘Juntos hacemos la liberación!’ Philly Marches on I.C.E.

The City of Brotherly and Sisterly lives up to it’s name!

Innocent Bystander

Philadelphia, PA — It was a long “Day of Action” with protests starting before dawn and ending near sunset. 

The NO ICE Philly, Noise Demonstration

The day’s protests began at the 8th and Cherry Street ICE Field Office which is responsible for Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia. NO ICE Philly had shown up for their regular Monday morning “Noise Demonstration” that starts around 6:30 a.m. and officially ends by 8 a.m.

There were about 50 people and they brought their noisemakers, drums, and of course a little bit of amplified sound. It could be heard at least two blocks away. 

These demonstrations started on January 5th of this year and have continued to this very week without fail. 

NO ICE Philly has as a goal, the following: “We want ICE, ICE agents, and others deputized to do their bidding, to stop kidnapping our neighbors.”

ICE Gets a Mid-Day Interfaith Action

As many as 500 participants showed up at 11 a.m., once again at the ICE Field Office and challenged ICE with a clear-eyed demonstration of moral muscularity. 

“Lehakshaiv!” Rabbi Linda Holtzman thundered from her mountaintop podium  “Listen! We will keep responding!” And they have been doing so here since this past October. 

The speakers then took a slightly Anarchist Christian turn and stressed that “We keep us safe” and cited the holy books of Psalms 85:10, Leviticus 19:33-34, and Matthew 25:35. All these passages instruct and command that strangers and migrants be treated well by welcoming, feeding, and caring for them. 

After this, the crowd reassembled, and marched from the ICE Field Office in a route that went by the African-American museum, stopped at the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center where up to 250 prison lockup spaces are reserved for arrested (im)migrants and the like, and returned back to where the march began. The ICE building had been surrounded. 

Along the way, participants wore red sashes to symbolize the blood spilled by (im)migrants due to ICE and their proxies, and to emphasize the precept of love. The crowd also held a 300-foot sash as well. 

“We must continue to push!” said one speaker. 

The crowd was asked to orderly disperse since 8th Street would be reopened, and to go to the President’s House (of George Washington) where the Avenging The Ancestors Coalition was holding a speak-out/press conference on the federal government’s unilateral removal of slavery exhibits just outside the Liberty Bell building at 6th and Market streets. 

NO ICE Philly Shutters Amtrak & Enterprise Rent-A-Car

A like turnout to the daybreak NO ICE Philly protest arrived for the 4 p.m. protest against Enterprise Rent-A-Car where it has an office located in the 30th Street train station building that houses Amtrak and the local regional rail commonly known by its acronym, SEPTA. 

This apparently generated a great deal of concern and fear. Amtrak and Philadelphia police came out in large numbers, and apparently, with at least a half-dozen K-9 Amtrak police units. All entrances to the Amtrak side of the building were secured and restricted to Amtrak ticket-holders. SEPTA posted a lone officer to control access to the hallway connecting the two train systems via a 7 foot high flexible fence. 

The building’s large lockdown started at Noon. 

And at that time. Enterprise Rent-A-Car closed for the day, hours ahead of schedule.

The threat of singing and chanting in English and in Spanish, and informing passers-by that the rental car company contracts with ICE to lease vehicles that disappear “migrant-looking” people might have been too much to bear in the face of this rather modest people power.

Based of a lot of public reaction of motor vehicle operators who honked their car horns, and passers-by who made raised fists along the corner of 30th and Market streets, this is a dirty little secret that Enterprise Rent-A-Car clearly wants to contain. 

As the demo drew to a close around 5 p.m. NO ICE Philly increasingly sang in Spanish, in harmony, and with proper pronunciation and accentuation. Like the mid-day Interfaith Action, love and interconnectedness reigned. 

“No estan solo, no estan sola, juntos hacemos la liberación” (You (all) are not alone, you (all) are not alone, together we make liberation).

And, “La libertad es mi unica bandera” (Freedon is my only flag), this was followed by, “No human being will ever be illegal.”