Tear Down These Walls
Fridays in Trumpland: 6.13.2025
Last night, at the Delaney Detention Center– a private detention center run on behalf of ICE in Newark, NJ– detainees revolted. Our government has been starving detainees in the facility– denying them food and water in unsanitary conditions with rampant overcrowding– and conditions are dire.
This is the same facility where Ras Baraka was arrested in a set-up by ICE a few weeks ago while carrying out his oversight duties as the mayor of Newark. It is the same facility where Rep. LaMonica McIver tried to observe conditions inside, for which the DOJ has now charged her with two felonies and a misdemeanor.
As protestors gathered outside Delaney last night, blocking ICE vans and then being assaulted, tear gassed and pepper sprayed in the face, those inside did something fairly revolutionary:
They tore down an exterior wall to the detention center.
At least four of them escaped.
This, on the heels of a US Senator being shoved to the ground and handcuffed by ICE for daring to try to ask Kristi Noem a question about her intent to depose duly elected officials in California who oppose ICE.
This, on the heels of the now-ruled-illegal-by-a-judge deployment of the California National Guard to police American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights in Los Angeles, followed by US Marines.
This, on the heels of cratering poll numbers for Trump’s immigration policies showing that two-thirds of Americans oppose much of what he is doing.
This, as people rise on the streets everywhere, as more than 2000 No Kings protests are planned for tomorrow, as folks who have never raised their voices in opposition before step forward to protect their friends, their neighbors, themselves.
It is a revolutionary moment in America, filled with so much promise, in the face of so much hatred and violence. Imagine what could be if all those detained were freed, if we the people denied this fringe, white supremacist minority the ability to execute on their despicable, death-bound plans.
Imagine what it would take to tear down the walls of every single ICE detention facility in America, and to free every single person inside.
It’s time to dream big.
The great lesbian poet and activist Audre Lorde once said: “Despair is a tool of our enemies.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about that quote this week, and about how we cannot afford despair in this era— how a better future is calling us on, demanding our attention, shouting that we must move toward it, and now.
All hands and all voices are needed. You do not have to be in the streets if you are not able to do so. You can volunteer, donate, support people locally where you live. You can receive help and be in community. You can engage in stealth activism, as much as direct action and public protest.
But we cannot afford despair. We cannot afford to waste the moment.
Anything is possible now, including the end of this regime. We may not know how we will get there, but we have to keep pushing forward toward it.
There is this thing about collective momentum. One person stands up in Los Angeles, then five, then fifty. People are trampled and tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets, and then there are two hundred more beside them the next day.
Meanwhile, people rise in Detroit and Las Vegas and Minneapolis and Chicago and New York. Meanwhile, folks in small towns push back against ICE, demand local police stop collaborating, and win. Meanwhile, 2000 protests rise from organic roots on one day to say NO MORE.
Together, we start to understand that we are powerful. We watch as our neighbors stand up, our friends stand up, our loved ones under threat stand up and refuse, full stop, to capitulate to the rampant abuse of power.
You feel it too, right? This realization that all hope is not lost, that despair will not be a tool we willingly give to our enemies, that NOW is the moment when our collective refusal starts to strike fear in the hearts of those who seek to harm us all.
Here, right now, is a turning point. This moment. The one we are all standing in right now.
What happens if we start to tear down the walls, and free the people, and let in the light?
Give yourself a moment to imagine what it would be like to free yourself and all those who are in shackles to this nation from our oppressors and our tyrants.
Stay in the streets. Keep fighting back. Remember why we’re here, doing this work, and to what end.
Yes, history has its eyes on us.
But that better future, where all of us are free?
It’s screaming our names, right now, with the words “come and find me” right behind.
Coming up on Monday, June 16th at 1 pm ET, for those who are interested in learning more about Stealth Activism, we are offering a free webinar. A recording will be made available to all who register.
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I can’t stop crying with joy reading this. The hope; the truth; the courage; the lines drawn and stance taken.
We WILL prevail. Those serving this administration will be symbols of treason, cowardice, and soulless for centuries. Their progeny will change their names in shame. And I will die knowing I did my small part to make a democratic society encompassing all members rooted in love, compassion, and conscience - with justice for ALL.
Magnificent.