by Freeda Cathcart
Spokane, Washington – Around 140 protesters gathered Saturday afternoon in B.A. Clark Park to protest the proliferation of ICE warehouse concentration camps and plans. A local coalition promoted the event that included Say It Saturdays, Stand Up Spokane, Spoke Indivisible, Spokane Handmaidens, Spokane Visibility Brigade, Spokane Ice Out and The Postcard People. There was a food drive to benefit Spokane 2nd Harvest.
The Communities Not Cages protest was part of a movement that included hundreds of protests across the country on April 25. The national partners included the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen, Move On and Indivisible.
Wendy DeLuca regularly attends the Saturday afternoon protests from 2:00-4:00 at B.A. Clark. She hadn’t been involved politically until she saw how ICE in Los Angeles was kidnapping people.
She works with many Latina girls who have undocumented family members and who would be affected if birth right citizenship is struck down by the Supreme Court. The Latina community was being terrorized by ICE’s actions. She responded by protesting to protect her neighbors and community.
Deluca explained that some weeks the protests have a focus on one issue. This Saturday it was joining the Communities Not Cages protests to bring attention to the horrendous plans to convert or build more warehouse concentration camps to hold immigrants without due process in a for-profit prison system.
The Detention Watch Network has a petition for Congress that people can sign that includes the following information and request:
“The Trump administration is dangerously moving full steam ahead with unprecedented plans to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) immigration detention system including using Guantanamo Bay and other military sites, reinstating family detention, signing new detention contracts. The passage of the MAGA Megabill supercharges Trump’s agenda, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the country. The bill provides $150 billion to target, detain, and deport as many people as possible – including $45 billion earmarked for ICE detention to tear apart families over the next four years. Shockingly, ICE’s budget now exceeds the budgets of many militaries around the world.
ICE detention is a cornerstone of Trump’s attacks on immigrant communities and political opposition, and I urge you to do everything in your power to block this administration by:
–Cutting funds to ICE & CBP through the reconciliation, regular appropriations or any other budget process
–Opposing detention expansion in your district/state
–Engaging in meaningful oversight to expose the cruelty of ICE detention and Trump’s agenda…
As your constituent, I am deeply concerned and I am counting on you to reject the use of taxpayer dollars to persecute immigrants and political activists, particularly as so many of us struggle alongside them to meet our basic needs. We need better education, affordable healthcare, and secure housing—not more family separation, immigration jails, and border walls.”
There appear to be valid concerns that the current administration is implementing a taxpayer-funded money laundering operation to hold human beings (including U.S. citizens) to make rich people richer. Many people have IRAs, 401Ks and pensions that have shares managed by Vanguard and BlackRock. The people probably don’t know that they are profiting off the suffering and deaths of people and children in the concentration camps.
The protests at the park are usually peaceful without incident and the protesters have a good relationship with the local police. Occasionally vehicles would “roll coal” but recently there have been more positive honks and less rolling coal. There was one large truck driving past the protest that rolled coal and a large plume of black smoke came out of the exhaust.
Rolling coal is against the federal Clean Air Act and a felony that needs to be enforced. Rolling coal releases significantly elevated emissions of NOx, PM, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons. These pollutants contribute to a variety of public health problems, such as premature death in people with heart or lung disease, heart attacks, irregular heartbeat, aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, and respiratory symptoms such as irritation of the airways, coughing, or difficulty breathing.
At Saturday’s protest there was a man riding a bicycle pulling a trailer with MAGA flags flying on poles. He was riding up and down the sidewalk yelling at the protesters. One of his flags got tangled in the branches of a tree. When protesters tried to tell him where his flag was, he called the police and told them the protesters were stealing his stuff and surrounding him. When the protesters saw that he was scared they backed away from him and pointed to his flag that was hung up in the tree. He went and retrieved his flag and then went back to riding around like before.
The police are investigating the soft air pellet shooting from a car that hit some of the Handmaidens at the protest. Fortunately none of them were seriously injured. This escalation of violence happened on the same day as the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Wendy DeLuca talked about the new friends she had found protesting and about the community they were building to help their neighbors. The movement is growing. It started with a few dozen people. There were a thousand people who attended No Kings One, 14,000 attended No Kings Two and 19,000 attended No Kings Three.
The building energy and determination was similar to SWVA. People are expressing their disgust with the current corruption and responding by getting involved to hold Congress accountable and to help their communities.
