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By: Mitch Gayns
This was originally published as video footage for Working Mass digital on Instagram.
LYNN – On March 21, hundreds took to the streets to defend their neighbors from ICE raids and deportations. Lynn organizers are among the most impacted– and they’ve looked to Minneapolis for inspiration on how to defend themselves.
“When you see it in the WhatsApp, you blow the whistle!” said the rally organizer.
Rally attendees all blew the whistles as if on cue.
After organizers launched the rally, immigrants directly impacted by ICE were the center of the Lynn demonstration. One woman, dressed for the brisk weather holding her speech, told the crowd “immigration kidnapped my brother in front of my children’s school.”
One community organizer, Ampara de Pad, told us in Spanish:
This is our city. We love it. And they say we only come to do wrong, that we come to destroy everything. But no. We come to improve ourselves.
From Minneapolis to the North Shore
Adam Kaszynski of the North Shore Labor Council, hands thrust in his pockets, spoke to the tactics that have drummed up militancy against ICE in Lynn. Techniques like whistles, he indicated, were inspired by Minneapolis.
What we learned from Minneapolis is that they had set up these verifier networks, mutual aid networks, organizing beforehand is the key to that, and having those networks already there, the phone trees already there, for if ICE is banging on our doors, we know we have enough people that we can make serious interventions to get them out of our community.
The role of labor to fight ICE is necessary, but underestimated. Labor unions – alongside tenant unions – are memberships capable of taking direct action strategically and effectively against ICE. For example, unions can shut down production, transit; labor can freeze cities.
When the North Shore Labor Council puts up LUCE flyers and materials, that means that labor isn’t just against ICE; they are actively building the network from below to defend communities beginning in vulnerable community members’ own workplaces, since many unions consist of immigrant workers and leaders themselves. Labor in doing so joins the long tradition of bargaining for the common good, which has included not only political causes but also has historically included the building of cooperative housing by unions, to fight the deadliness of rising rent. Now, labor forms also a bulwark advancing tactics from Minneapolis in Boston.
Over the din of whistles, community organizer Jessica Rivera argued:
People are scared, but we know it’s actually when we’re in together like this, when I can look at my neighbor and know who they are, that’s when we are safest, when we keep each other safe.
Mitch Gayns is a digital creator and campaign organizer based north of Boston.
Transcribed By: Travis Wayne is the managing editor of Working Mass.
The post Lynn, MA Organizes ICE Resistance appeared first on Working Mass.
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