The Never Again Movement Mexican Immigration
ON JUNE 30TH, a group of around 200 protesters—most of them Jewish—blockaded an Water ice detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In the week that followed, similar protests sprung upward in cities around the country, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, decrying the unsanitary and deadly conditions in the detention centers along the Us–Mexico border. The protests were rooted in the language of Holocaust memory—protesters carried signs with messages like "Never again means at present," and "Never Again Para Nadie" ("never again for anyone"). To date, the decentralized endeavour, organizing under the banner of Never Once more Action, has held affiliated protests in Los Angeles, New York, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, with upcoming events planned for Grand Rapids, New Hampshire, Atlanta, and on the National Mall. Hundreds of participants showed up at many of these rallies—Boston lonely drew over a thousand—and in at least five separate actions, dozens were arrested for civil disobedience.
The protests were set off, in part, by what some organizers call the "weaponizing of Jewish trauma" afterwards politicians and Jewish organizations such as the Republican Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and even the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum condemned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for referring to the Water ice facilities as "concentration camps." In response, organizers on the Jewish left felt the need to express support for ICE detainees, and began to brainstorm possible deportment. To hear the organizers tell information technology, the initial rallying cry came from a simple Facebook condition.
"One person, Serena [Adlerstein], who is a volunteer organizer with [immigrant-rights group] Cosecha and is Jewish, posted a condition on Facebook basically saying, 'Hey, Jews, what are we going to exercise about the concentration camps at the edge,'" says activist Alyssa Rubin. Rubin, 1 of the organizers of the kickoff Never Again action in New Bailiwick of jersey, had experience organizing with immigrant rights groups and activists on the Jewish left, but nevertheless seemed surprised by the strength of the initial response: "Nosotros decided to post a Google form and 650 people signed it. We realized, 'Wow, in that location'south a lot of energy here.'" This led to the creation of a Facebook outcome heralding a "Jews Against Water ice Week of Action." The page reads: "As Jews, we've been taught to never permit annihilation like the Holocaust happen again."
Social media has been crucial to galvanizing and orchestrating this decentralized try. For many of the activists involved in the actions that followed the rally in New Bailiwick of jersey, those kickoff few posts were a lightning rod, setting off a wave of local organizing. "I saw a lot of unlike friends posting near wanting to exercise an action around the crisis, non only at the border, but everywhere, in our communities," says Rebecca Oliver, an activist involved in Monday's Chicago rally. "I got pulled in pretty quickly."
Simply equally Michaela Caplan, a Boston-based activist who was involved in both the New Bailiwick of jersey and Boston actions, points out, the success of the initial call to activeness is indebted to preexisting networks of Jewish and immigrant activists. "We're organized already, because of other movements that nosotros're involved with," she says.
Rubin notes that a formal connection between activists on the Jewish left and immigrant rights activists existed long earlier Adlerstein's Facebook post: Many of the activists initially met through Momentum, a move incubator and training establish, which provided back up to Cosecha likewise every bit the anti-occupation group IfNotNow. "The movements were founded effectually the same time, and nosotros often talk nigh Cosecha as being our sister movement," she says. "Even when we're not working on the same issues, we often back up each other in material, tangible ways."
The outset communications between local organizers happened over conference calls, with organizers sharing resources including suggested talking points and potential press release formats—what Elliya Cutler, one organizer of the Bay Area action, called a "centralized toolkit." But despite common messaging and the resonant framing of "never again," organizers are loathe to ascertain themselves organizationally. "'Never again' was never supposed to be a national movement," Caplan says, "as much equally something that resonates deep within Jewish collective consciousness."
Many of the organizers come from a groundwork of decentralized organizing, says Sophie Ellman-Golan, a New York-based activist who was involved in organizing the Elizabeth activeness. "We're not an organization," she corrects me when I utilize the term to describe the "Never Again" actions during our phone call. "We don't really know what nosotros are, but we're not an system." Ellman-Golan herself is versed in decentralized organizing from her interest in groups like the Women's March, and she and others have used momentum-building tactics like mass recruitment calls that they learned through organizing with similarly distributed movements.
Organizers told me that the decentralized nature of the move is essential to demonstrating that Water ice, and the draconian immigration policy it enforces, is present throughout the country, non simply on the US–United mexican states edge. The distributed actions also allow for flexibility within local organizing; multiple organizers emphasized that the ability to focus on regional demands strengthens their message.
In Rhode Isle, for example, the Never Once again action targeted a local, privately run detention eye, the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, which had recently renewed its contract with Ice and is currently belongings over 100 Water ice detainees in its custody. New York Jewish activists joined with the local chapter of Mijente, a Latinx and Chicanx organizing grouping, to protestation in forepart of the local offices of the surveillance company Palantir, which has contracts with Water ice. At the Bay Area activeness, rather than protest at a detention center (the nearest one, co-ordinate to ICE's online materials, is 120 miles east of San Francisco in Yuba Urban center), local organizers decided to protest at the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, after she and other House Democrats approved a $four.five billion emergency funding package for the border crunch, effectively providing additional funding for ICE. Chicago'due south activeness targeted Mayor Lori Lightfoot, asking her to declare Chicago a "welcoming city" for immigrants, also as Illinois Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, who voted in favor of the emergency spending bill.
"There's been a lot of resource sharing across the different actions, just I recall information technology was mainly folks that were trying to build from the footing upward in Chicago and make certain the action was going to be relevant to Jewish and immigrant communities hither," says Oliver.
Despite the varied goals of the organizers, they were largely united in their desire to back up local immigrant-led movements in their region. "We asked the immigrant leaders in Cosecha, 'What can we practice in this moment of energy within the Jewish customs to take action? What practice you want us to practise?'" says Rubin. Asked why her group chose Elizabeth as their start action location, Ellman-Golan notes that a local Cosecha chapter in Elizabeth has been holding deportment at that facility for a long fourth dimension.
Natalie Lerner, a co-organizer of the Rhode Island activeness, had previously worked with AMOR, a coalition of grassroots immigrant rights organizations beyond the land, and saw an opportunity to strengthen their bulletin. "We really wanted to build on the work AMOR has already been doing," she says, "and recognize that this group of Jewish-led folks who protested on Tuesday is not the commencement group of people that was going to have a protest in this space."
Though many activists are planning to participate in upcoming Jewish-led protests, such equally T'ruah's annual movement of immigrant solidarity on Tisha B'Av or Jews For Racial and Economic Justice's (JFREJ) #JewsAgainstICE campaign, the Never Over again movement has no plans to centralize, according to Ellman-Golan.
Instead, she and others emphasize that these rallies should exist a catalyst to support local immigrant-led actions. Multiple Jewish organizers note that their privilege puts them in a position to reinvigorate a national conversation on these bug. "Given our unique position as Jews, where our trauma is for whatever reason more legible than other groups' trauma, we volition keep using our position to uplift the voices of immigrant leaders," says Caplan.
She and others recognize that for many, organized religion-based organizing motivates groups that might non otherwise take activity. Cutler feels that religion-based organizing is successful considering of the manner shared values and a shared narrative can unite across analogousness groups. "There are queer Jews in my customs, and there are trans Jews, and there are immigrant Jews, and beginning-generation Jews, and poor Jews, and disabled Jews, and there are Latina Jews and Blackness Jews, and adopted Jews, and mixed-race Jews," she says. "How tin can you wait me to not show upwards for my very own customs?"
Arielle Gordon is a writer based in New York. Her work focuses on cultural criticism and the intersection betwixt popular culture and social justice.
Source: https://jewishcurrents.org/making-never-again-more-than-a-slogan
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