Stop the Deportation of the Berkeley Family!
NO MORE RAIDS AND DEPORTATIONS!
Berkeley and Oakland are Sanctuary Communities!

Información en español

Rally and March — Sunday, May 18
1 pm Gather at Berkeley BART
(corner of Shattuck and Center)

• Stop ICE Harassment, Intimidation, Repression of Immigrant and Latina/o Communities, Families, Students and Youth
• Stop the ICE Patrols of Our Schools
• Build Student and Community Defense to Protect Immigrant Students and Families
• Make Schools Sanctuary Zones, and Make California a Sanctuary State
• Latina/o, Black, Asian, Arab, White, Immigrants, With and Without Papers, We Are All Californians
• Build the New Independent, Integrated Civil Rights Movement!

The recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the Bay Area are an attack on our communities and must be stopped. On Friday, May 2, the day after thousands of people marched through Oakland in support of immigrant rights, sixty-three Latina/o immigrants were detained from cities around the Bay, including San Francisco. The following Tuesday, ICE agents picked up a parent of an Oakland school student and entered the home of a Berkeley High School alumni and his family -- insulting, arresting, and detaining mothers and grandparents.

On Tuesday, May 6, ICE agents were also seen driving around schools in Berkeley, Oakland, and Richmond. There was a strong and swift response from our communities to protect one another and counter the ICE’s actions. In Oakland, students, teachers, community, union members, and city officials coordinated massive action to protect students and their families at Stonehurst Elementary School within hours after the reports of ICE sightings. In Berkeley, the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) responded to reports of ICE officers in Berkeley by sending out alerts to all parents in the district. BUSD administrators, teachers, staff, and students publicly declared that ICE would not be allowed to approach or take into custody a single immigrant student. Berkeley High was abuzz with activity.

The ICE’s attempt to make immigrant and Latina/o students feel scared, isolated, and vulnerable and to divide our schools and communities completely backfired. Our direct action prevented the ICE from picking up students or kidnapping their parents. Instead of demoralizing or dividing us, the ICE action united us, mobilized, and re-energized the new civil rights movement for immigrant rights and equality.

Because immigrant students and families and the vast majority of our community united and took action, ICE was forced to release the people they detained the very same day they were taken into custody and the ICE has not been seen at our schools again.

The ICE is trying to weaken the power of the vast and extremely powerful civil rights movement led by California's Latina/o youth and immigrant communities. Since 2006, when huge mass mobilizations defeated the passage of HR4437, the Bush administration has tried to garner support for the Republican Party by making it clear to right-wing and racist Americans that the best way to assure that the power of government will be used to defend white privilege is to keep the Republican Party in power.

The frequency and the scope of ICE raids and actions are in direct proportion to the strength of our movement. The racists in California and across the nation, including the racist Republican Party, have seen the use of ICE terror as an excellent way to repress and weaken the new immigrant rights movement. When we have stood together and rallied and marched in great numbers, the ICE has been forced to back off. Because this year's demonstrations on May 1 were smaller than last year's, ICE felt emboldened to come into our communities and conduct these raids. It is no coincidence that the one family in Berkeley they took into custody was a family known as activist leaders of the immigrant rights movement. Showing them in action that we are united and powerful is the best way to keep them out of our neighborhoods, away from our schools. Organizing the defense of every student and every family who might be the target of ICE harassment is the key to preventing any further deportations or detentions.

Berkeley and Oakland are two of the most progressive communities in the country, especially in our support for immigrant rights. Oakland has been declared a sanctuary city where local law enforcement and city government refuses to assist or cooperate with ICE. The overwhelming majority of the citizens of Berkeley and Oakland support and welcome immigrants. Immigrants are rightfully accepted as a positive and vital part of our community. For this, people from places elsewhere around the country look to what we do. By resisting the ICE raids in our community, we can inspire our brothers and sisters who are facing anti-immigrant persecution in places like Oklahoma and Mississippi to fight back. We have a tremendous responsibility before us and therefore, we cannot limit our actions to moral and symbolic stances. We must act on what we believe.

A Plan of Action to Win

  1. Wear and give out the Brown Armband—visibly wearing the brown armband is a way to show that everyone in the community is united and that in Berkeley and Oakland, we stand on the principal that an injury to one is an injury to all, we cannot be divided.
  2. Sign the pledge to take action to protect the right of every student and family to be safe and free from ICE harassment
  3. Become a part of the Emergency Response Network to provide escort to students to and from schools and to take other action to stop the raids and deportations
  4. Make the Berkeley and Oakland schools into sanctuary zones.
  5. Speak out at the BUSD School Board Meeting on Tuesday May 13 at 7 pm (1224 Martin Luther King Way) — demand the schools be declared sanctuary zones.
  6. Join the Oakland Teachers Rally on Wed. May 14 at 4 pm at City Hall, Frank Ogawa Plaza (14th St. and Broadway) to demand ICE stay out of our communities.

What We Can Learn From Frederick Douglass and the Abolitionist Movement

Our struggle is parallel to some of the fights that were made by progressive forces during the days of American slavery. Following the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, slave catchers were sent into communities in the North to kidnap black Americans—many of whom had never been slaves—to take them to plantations in the South. In response, black and white people stood together in the North and fought. In militant battles against the slave catchers, scores of northerners risked their lives to defy the Federal government's support for slavery and to protect runaway slaves.

History has spoken and now, California is to be the North in the struggle for immigrant rights and against the raids and deportations. We must serve notice to the ICE, the modern day slave catchers, that we will not allow them to have free reign on immigrants and Latina/o people in Berkeley, Oakland, or anywhere. An attack on one of us is an attack on us all and we consider these raids an assault on our whole community. It is time for us to defend it.