Despite State’s Attempts To Stamp Out Opposition, Our Movements Persevere

 Austin C. McCoy, Truthout

Echoes of anti-slavery and civil rights struggles reverberate through the current uprising against ICE.

It is difficult to find inspiration on this Juneteenth. We are still living in difficult times. In the last year, hundreds of thousands of African Americans have lost jobs. Some state legislatures in the South — Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi — have sought to dilute Black political power after the Supreme Court issued its Louisiana v. Callais decision. Meanwhile, this new administration has enacted a white nationalist immigration policy — effectively closing the Southern border; throwing undocumented people into prisons and camps; deporting thousands, including children; and unleashing the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) onto blue cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis. However, there is hope to be found even in the bleakest of times, as our strong movements continue to challenge growing authoritarianism.

International Solidarity and Emancipation

When thinking about the relevance of Juneteenth, I remembered W.E.B. Du Bois’s reference of English workers who boycotted Southern cotton in solidarity with Black enslaved workers during the Civil War in his influential study, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. During the conflict, President Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. forces imposed a blockade preventing the flow of Southern cotton to be manufactured in English mills.

While textile producers in Liverpool advocated for the British government to disrupt the blockade, some English mill workers decided to throw their support behind Black enslaved workers and Lincoln. In 1862, hundreds of textile workers gathered at the Manchester Free Trade Hall and voted to adopt a resolution continuing their boycott in support of the Union’s war against the Confederacy and for racial justice in the U.S. “Justice demands for the black, no less than for the white, the protection of law,” the workers announced in a public letter addressed to Lincoln.

And they did so at great sacrifice. Without cotton to process, the laborers risked impoverishment. However, the English workers saw themselves as connected to the cause of enslaved Black people and the Union in the fight against exploitation. “Since we have discerned, however, that the victory of the Free North in the war which has so sorely distressed us, as well as afflicted you, will strike off the fetters of the slave, you have attracted our warm and earnest sympathy,” they wrote.

Solidarity Today

While we live in a more reactionary moment, we are also witnessing powerful collective actions and expressions of solidarity. What is demonstrated in the current opposition to this administration’s mass deportation strategy and its support for anti-Black policies is the willingness of more people to not just engage in important mass protests like “No Kings,” but also to engage in ongoing collective self-defense. Many participants in political struggle demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice for the greater purpose of defending and protecting vulnerable people.

The response to the SCOTUS Louisiana v. Callais decision has stirred echoes of the overturning of Black political power at the end of Reconstruction and 20^th-century civil rights protests in the south. Demonstrators gathered in the Tennessee Statehouse in a show of solidarity with Black voters to voice their opposition to Republicans passing legislation to create a map that split Black Americans living in Memphis into separate congressional districts. More than a week later, thousands of Alabamans gathered in two old civil rights battlegrounds — Montgomery and Selma — to protest Republican state legislators there redrawing the congressional map to eliminate one Democratic seat.

In response to the Trump administration sending CBP and ICE into cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, many have stood firm in opposition, placing themselves between their neighbors and the state. Minnesotans seemed to have built upon the networks established amid the Summer 2020 global uprisings. But rather than just marching in the streets, the opposition adopted community defense tactics to prevent federal authorities from snatching undocumented (and those presumed to be undocumented) people from their workplaces and neighborhoods — cop watching, blowing whistles to alert the community of CBP or ICE action, and physically obstructing the kidnappings.

The editors at Hammer and Hope have noted how the Minneapolis protests demonstrated an important, yet underrated, ingredient of organizing movements and building solidarity — creating a low barrier to entry. “Previous waves of protest over the years sometimes felt like marches to nowhere with no clear entry point for activism,” Hammer and Hope stated in a recent issue. “Minneapolis has modeled a movement that anyone — everyone — can join.” Neighborly solidarity and a willingness to protect fellow members of their communities, many of whom are non-white, seem to be the only requirement for participation. Interested people could then learn the tactics and strategies of community defense, seemingly without judgment.

Like the collective acts of nonviolent resistance in the Alabama cities of Birmingham and Selma during the 1960s, Minnesotans’ willingness to put their bodies on the line provoked state violence. We all watched in horror as officers shot and killed activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Recalling the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner and Rev. James Reeb following the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, this violence only galvanized more opposition to ICE and Donald Trump’s immigration policy in and outside of the Twin Cities. And while Trump’s defeat at the “Battle of Minneapolis” did not halt all deportations, it emboldened some Democratic policymakers to oppose ICE funding, resuscitated calls to abolish ICE, and forced the Trump administration to unceremoniously reassign Gregory Bovino and fire Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

This collective resistance to the white supremacist authoritarian immigration regime continues at the GEO Group-run Delaney Hall immigration jail in Newark, New Jersey. On May 22, hundreds of detainees stopped eating and working, going on a hunger and labor strike in response to the poor living conditions within the facility.

Subsequently, demonstrators began to gather outside of the facility in solidarity with those trapped inside. They have held vigils and, like Minnesotans, have tried to use their bodies to disrupt “business as usual” outside of the facility. They have tried to use whatever items they could get their hands on to create barricades to obstruct ICE vehicles. In response, ICE agents (and later police) responded violently to the protests. Writing for The Nation, researcher Amanda Moore recounted how ICE agents tased, pepper-sprayed, and beat protesters at Delaney Hall. And, according to a recent Truthout report, ICE and police have assaulted journalists more than three dozen times.

The protests that have arisen over the past year demonstrate how difficult it is for this authoritarian state to stamp out collective opposition. Activists who are stepping up to defend their neighbors against CBP and ICE and to help protect Black electoral power in Tennessee and Alabama are drawing from a long tradition of fighting for each other. These demonstrations of solidarity remind us of Robin Kelley’s observation that “freedom dreams are born of fascist nightmares, or better yet, born against fascist nightmares.”

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