By Lev D. Zilbermints
NEWARK – Dedication to justice meant everything to the people who rallied at 1 Gateway Center, opposite Penn Station on March 6.
Despite the bitter cold that made ink freeze in reporters’ pens, about 25 – 40 people from at least ten different organizations held a public rally opposite Penn Station. As banners flapped in the cold wind, speakers read a list of goals. Chief of these demands was the liberation of all 14,000 immigrant detainees currently held without charge or trial in Essex, Bergen and Hudson County jails and across the United States.
Madelyn Hoffman, Communications Director of the Green Party, and 2018 candidate for U.S. Senate, gave a six-minute speech at the protest.
“Free them (immigrants and detainees) all! President Biden, Senators Booker and Menendez, Governor Murphy, stop talking, let’s do something! We demand that refugees be treated like human beings!” Hoffman said in her address to the crowd.
According to a flyer distributed at the protest, “Biden and Murphy must free the immigrants immediately with emergency orders NOW. Booker and Menendez must introduce legislation, which Democrats can pass immediately, to end all detentions and deportations and to guarantee EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL THAT LIVE HERE, regardless of place of birth. Every day they delay deepens the injustices and helps the virus. Detainees must be tested for COVID and vaccinated upon release.”
“Local Talk” interviewed two key protesters, Eric Lerner of Essex County, and Cari of Bergen County, via email.
Eric Lerner said, “Immigrants that were detained after serving their sentences for crimes have completed their sentences, so need to be released, just as citizens, just as citizens who completed sentences are released.”
Cari responded that she agreed with Lerner’s position regarding criminals. Furthermore, wrote Cari, “jails in the US keep people enslaved for profits, especially after the 13th Amendment was passed. The mission statements of these county jails to rehabilitate people and keep the community safe are lies. Jails are all about profits.
“If jails are closed in larger counties in NJ and CA then the US would have nowhere to put citizen inmates and detainees. The government would be forced to stop incarcerating innocent people and/or those with frivolous charges for profits. The US has the highest rates of incarceration in the world.”
According to a flyer distributed by the protesters, “14,000 immigrants remain detained without charge or trial in Essex, Bergen and Hudson County Jails and across the United States.
Brick City Mutual Aid distributed food, literature, water and pins at the protest. In a statement released to the media, Brick City Mutual Aid pledged to support striking workers who live or work in the Newark area.
The statement read in part, “In solidarity with workers during this extraordinarily difficult time, Brick City Mutual Aid commit us to provide grocery support and other material needs to striking workers living in the Newark area…Brick City Mutual Aid has delivered thousands of dollars in groceries to over 150 homes.
“In keeping with our principles, we extend this offer to all rank and file, striking union workers except Police, ICE and Corrections Officers. We work to support our community from the harms of capitalism, oppression, and the prison industrial complex, and to that end will not materially support those who serve in the interwoven systems of these harms.”
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