Tag Archives: Hunger Strike

News

After Nine Days Drawing Attention to Sexual Assaults, Casa Latina Hunger Strike Ends

by Hannah Krieg

Within the first six days of a hunger strike outside of Casa Latina, one participant was hospitalized twice. Firm in her stance that Casa Latina had not done enough for the workers who had levied sexual assault allegations against another employee, the hunger striker refused food, even in the hospital. 

For over a week, a handful of protestors camped outside of Casa Latina — an organization dedicated to promoting employment and education in the Latino community — vowing not to leave and not to eat until their demands were met. On Sunday, June 13, with stomachs empty from a tense nine days that shut down the day worker center due to alleged intimidation from the protestors, the strikers and Casa Latina’s leadership came to an agreement.

“I’ve started eating again slowly,” said Ana Torres, who nearly threw up when she broke her fast with a banana after the meeting with Casa Latina that Sunday. “Too much pain in the stomach. Nothing good.” 

Continue reading After Nine Days Drawing Attention to Sexual Assaults, Casa Latina Hunger Strike Ends →
Features

In Tacoma, an ICE Detainee’s Hunger Strike Tops 100 Days

by Paula Cornell

(This article was originally printed by Real Change News and has been reprinted with permission.)

Advocates say that on March 1, Victor Fonseca, a detainee at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Northwest Processing Center — formerly known as the Northwest Detention Center but rebranded — reached his 100th day of a hunger strike in protest of COVID-19 policies. 

Fonseca, 39, who has been in the United States for 20 years and hails from Venezuela, was picked up by ICE for a crime committed two years ago in Salt Lake City. Suffering from arthritis and on medication that lowers his immune system, Fonseca began a hunger strike in protest of the poor protection for the medically vulnerable in the face of the pandemic. 

Continue reading In Tacoma, an ICE Detainee’s Hunger Strike Tops 100 Days →
Voices

OPINION: What’s it like to be striking for your life in a pandemic? (Seguridad y Salud)

by Johnny Mao and Johnny Fikru


Farmworkers are striking for their families and for everyone in Washington State. Without receiving the necessary protections for COVID-19, they pose a danger to the ones they love — and that is simply unjust. 

Four-hundred and fifty farmworkers at six different fruit packaging plants have decided to protect their lives and health with the only option they have left: strikes, pickets and hunger strikes. They are demanding protections from COVID-19, hazard pay, and an end to retaliation from management. This is all taking place in the county with the highest rate of COVID-19 cases spiking on the West Coast.

Continue reading OPINION: What’s it like to be striking for your life in a pandemic? (Seguridad y Salud) →
News

Protestors Unite Following City Attorney’s Threat to Aggressively Prosecute ‘Reckless’ Protesters

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by DJ Martinez

In an Op-Ed for the Seattle Times August 29, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes wrote that he would no longer be “turning a blind eye” to protesters who invoke their First Amendment rights by using non-violent protest tactics that block city traffic, in reaction to recent protests earlier this year held by activists from multiple movements.

Continue reading Protestors Unite Following City Attorney’s Threat to Aggressively Prosecute ‘Reckless’ Protesters →

Politics

Civic Salvos: Washington State Hunger Strike Goes National

by Miriam Xiomara Padilla and Su Docekal
Seattle, WA

An unprecedented hunger strike by 750 of the 1,200 detainees in Tacoma’s Northwest Detention Center started during breakfast on March 7. The strikers’ demands for an end to deportations and inhumane conditions in the privately-owned prison has made national headlines and drawn broad community support. On March 17 the strike spread to the Joe Corley Detention Center in Conroe, Texas. Both jails are run by the GEO Group, Inc., this country’s second largest for-profit prison corporation.

protestersThe Tacoma hunger strike was inspired by a dozen undocumented Washington State residents and supporters who locked themselves together at the entrance of the detention center on Feb. 24. The #Not1More activists sat down in front of a bus to block it from transporting detainees to the airport to be deported, a strategy modeled on similar recent actions by undocumented protesters in Chicago, Phoenix and Atlanta.

Daily demonstrations have been held at the Tacoma facility since the strike began and on Tuesday, March 11 over 200 people rallied in solidarity with the hunger strikers and their families. They chanted and made lots of noise to let those inside know that they had support outside.

AT A MARCH 19 PRESS CONFERENCE in front of the Tacoma detention center, Maru Mora Villalpando of #Not1More began by saying, “Obama can stop the deportations, but he has chosen not to.” She introduced several family members of the hunger strikers, who explained that their husbands andt were taking this action to expose the abuses in the detention center and to stop the deportations.

One of the strike leaders, Jose Moreno, who had just been released, spoke on behalf of those inside, saying that mistreatment by officials, as well as poor food and medical care are among the abuses the strikers are protesting.

Sandy Restrepo, an attorney with La Colectiva Legal del Pueblo, has been visiting the strikers regularly and reported that 13 detainees remain on hunger strike. Ramon Mendoza Pascual and Jesus Gaspar Navarro are in medical isolation, while the remaining 11 are in general population.

THE GEO GROUP, which reaps enormous profits from its prisons and detention centers, has a long history of unjust treatment. In 2008 at its Reeves County Detention Center in Texas, Jesus Manuel Galindo died at 32 after suffering an epileptic seizure in solitary confinement. Galindo was thrown into “the hole” after he complained about his medical care.

The GEO Group is also politically active in promoting laws that will keep its for-profit prisons full. The corporation took part in the task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which pushed bills for “truth-in-sentencing” that reduce paroles and “three strikes” legislation that increases life sentences.

ACROSS THE COUNTRY undocumented immigrants, especially women, youth and detainees, are putting their bodies on the line to demand an end to endless deportations. It is a dramatic change from the go-slow “comprehensive immigration reform” (CIR) strategy promoted by immigration reform organizations closely tied to the Democratic Party.

The Dignity Campaign, which is endorsed by dozens of grassroots organizations, including the Freedom Socialist Party, called the CIR strategy a “deal with the devil” in a March 2014 statement:

“The CIR trade-off — giving up immigrants’ civil and labor rights to get legalization — has always been an unworkable strategy for immigration reform. The CIR bills serve the interests of employers. Whether they’re looking for farm workers, construction workers or high tech workers, the corporate objective is to ensure that wages go down as workers compete for insecure jobs.

While CIR languished in Congress, community and labor activists, mostly young, have refused to wait or compromise, and instead have organized on the ground to win rights and equality.”

The hunger strikers in Washington and Texas provide stirring leadership for this new wave of militant activism. At the March 19 press conference, strikers Pascual and Navarro sent encouraging taped messages to the hunger strikers in Conroe, Texas. “We’re not doing anything wrong, we’re demanding our rights. You should keep going forward, and not yield,” said Navarro, followed by Pascual who added, “Don’t be afraid, we must keep going, so that we are heard and so that we can be free.”

How you can help

SIGN the online petition to support the hunger strikers at the Northwest Detention Center.
SEND donations to La Colectiva Legal del Pueblo so that they can help detainees and their families communicate with each other. Mail checks to 645 SW 153rd Street, Suite C3 Burien, WA 98166. Email: info@colectivalegal.org.
PARTICIPATE in the National Day of Action against deportations being planned across the country for April 5th. There will be a rally at the Tacoma detention center that day from noon to 5:00pm. Anyone interested in carpooling from Seattle, please contact the Freedom Socialist Party at FSPseattle@mindspring.com. Learn more about the national campaign at notonemoredeportation.com.
JOIN the #Not1More protests in front of the Northwest Detention Center that take place every day from noon to 5:00pm leading up to the April 5 rally.

Late breaking news: On Monday, March 24th 70 detainees in Tacoma rejoined the hunger strike.

Miriam Xiomara Padilla is a high school student and a leader in the Campaign to Free Nestora Salgado in Seattle. Su Docekal is an immigrant rights activist and Organizer for the Seattle branch of the Freedom Socialist Party.