Everywhere, Americans of Latino heritage are scared: afraid to leave home to go shopping, to visit a park, to take their kids to class or even go to work, knowing that they could be kidnapped off the streets at any moment by masked agents in unmarked vehicles who claim to be La Migra. Yet even as ICE raids schools, churches and businesses across the country, rounding up and arresting their daily quota of immigrants for detention in Alligator Alcatraz and other miserable prisons like the one here in Torrance County, New Mexico, we who support human rights and have a different vision for America can resist.
Signs of Solidarity is a national campaign encouraging businesses, construction sites and restaurants to post signs declaring that ICE is not welcome on the premises, and is prohibited from entering spaces designated as private or employees only. Indivisible Santa Fe supports the Signs of Solidarity campaign – and we are going a step further!
This September 1st at 10 am at the Roundhouse, Indivisible Santa Fe is holding a Labor Day Rally for Collective Action. In addition to some terrific speakers, we will be doing some concrete organizing, with a focus on segments of the workforce particularly under threat from the current authoritarian President and his Cabinet– immigrant workers, workers of color, and Spanish-speaking workers. These groups are being harassed and detained during ICE raids at their workplaces. Using any workplace as a venue for authoritarian, racist, and xenophobic government action ill serves labor, employers, and consumers. At the Rally we will be distributing "No ICE" packets for people to take to area businesses. Each packet will have a sign informing ICE and the public of the business's policy of not permitting ICE in private areas and a handout with more information about the rights and responsibilities of business owners and managers when ICE shows up.
Indivisible Santa Fe needs your help with this campaign. We are asking you (and hundreds of others like you) to attend the Rally for Collective Action this Labor Day on the East Concourse of the New Mexico State Capitol (the Roundhouse), from 10 am to 11: 30 am. You can pick up a packet of materials and learn more about approaching a business – the gym where you work out, the pharmacy where you get your prescriptions filled, the tavern you frequent after work or the church you attend on Sunday morning – to ask the owner or manager to post a sign asserting the business's privacy rights against ICE and other law enforcement.
The signs of better times are coming.
