Statement on the organizing within and outside of Delaney Hall
Statement on the Organizing within and outside of Delaney Hall
Media Contact: immigrantjustice@socialists.nyc, press@socialists.nyc
Organizing within Delaney Hall
On May 22, over 300 brave people—many of them New Yorkers—detained at for-profit immigrant detention facility, Delaney Hall, launched a hunger and labor strike to protest the tortuous conditions they are experiencing. In the detainees’ regular letters to our movement, they convey their encouragement of the supportive protestors outside of the facility, who they can hear and, in some cases, see through the facility windows.
The heroic strikers tell us in their most recent letter about retaliation to their hunger and labor strike from GEO Group, the for-profit operator that profits off the misery of immigrant detention. The detained strikers have reported inhumane treatment, including physical beatings, attempted expedited transfer and removal of organizers, and increased mistreatment including the retraction of basic hygienic products such as toilet paper. They ask us to take the time to continue to show up in solidarity outside of Delaney Hall, and to support them and their families monetarily, and share their demands.
In the history of hunger strikes, those detained at Delaney Hall land firmly within a legacy of revolutionary action and struggle. The 300+ people putting their bodies on the line at Delaney are doing so in a continuation of powerful solidarity with comrades known and unknown, past, present, and future. The act of refusing to eat subverts the carceral system’s power dynamics, and is a recognition that the conditions of imprisonment are an attack on detained people’s very humanity. Hunger strikes of those behind bars are a time-honored tradition woven throughout liberation struggles within and in support of Palestine, Ireland, South Africa, and beyond. They are also found within the annals of American history: Attica Prison, the Civil Rights Movement, Guantanamo, to name but a few. Whether through the denial of due process, of sufficient medical care, of nutritious meals and sanitary conditions, these failings and injustices have fostered and indeed forced solidarity among people whose paths should never have crossed in detention—and whose insistence on their humanity will help pave a path toward abolition for all.
Organizing outside of Delaney Hall
Media representations of the protests outside of Delaney Hall often mischaracterize this group of organizations and neighbors who have come together to support the strikers from New Jersey, New York, and beyond. NJ state police brought in to protect ICE have responded violently to protestors. They have trapped protestors in tight spaces with barricades and riot shields (a tactic known as “kettling”), trampled them with horses, removed their protective gear to spray them with tear gas and pepper spray, pushed them into the path of oncoming trucks, slammed them into each other and the ground, and beaten them with batons—specifically aggressively targeting smaller and more femme comrades for physical assault. Numerous right-wing media outlets have also joined to attempt to dox protestors, and government drones hover over the scene, surveilling protestors. Protestors have been blamed for wearing protective gear—helmets to protect themselves from batons, goggles for the pepper spray, face coverings to protect themselves from right wing doxxing—but we know they are doing this in response to the escalating threats they face.
To uplift the detained strikers’ stories and continue to keep all eyes on Delaney, we are hosting a hybrid political education event, The Call for Justice at Delaney Hall: Historical Context and Current Landscape, in Brooklyn Heights this Sunday, June 7 at 2pm. Join us in a discussion on the strikers’ demands, the inhumane treatment they have suffered at Delaney, history of this facility and other private prisons, and what our role is in this next chapter of a continuing struggle for freedom for all.
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