civil disobedience

Tuesday 29 September 2009 10:55 EST
Mobilization for Health Care! http://www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org/blog/

Sit-in campaign underway. "Patients, not Profit, Medicare for All!"
Sixteen people were arrested this morning at 99 Park Ave in New York City for entering the lobby of the health insurance company Aetna and demanding that Aetna stop denying healthcare approved by doctors.

Latest update 9pm: Raid is over.  New article and video coming hopefully before we go to bed!  7 arrests on probable cause obstruction of legal process, according to the MPD. (older updates below)

Latest video from today's Minneapolis police eviction action at Rosemary Williams' house, 3138 Clinton Ave. S. More to follow - jail support has started up now after 7 were arrested in civil disobedience action.

Opposition to War & Occupation stands in solidarity with those taking direct action to shut down the Immigration & Customs Enforcement headquarters in Bloomington today. For far too long ICE has been allowed to conduct violent raids of homes and businesses in Minnesota, spontaneously detaining and deporting undocumented workers, and leaving their children without care. For far too long the pursuit of stability across borders has been criminalized and those already at risk in the system are forced to endure protracted imprisonment and state violence.

There's a signless pinkish building at the corner of American and Metro in Bloomington Minnesota.  Like US immigration policy, this building is hidden in plain sight--visible to immigrants and their allies but ignored by the rest of the nation. This is the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, anondescript place where deportees are held on the last night before they're driven to the airport and sent away.  Sometimes they leave behind families and children; sometimes they return to countries they last saw while still too young to remember.  One woman left her autistic and medically vulnerable son. 

"My father would never get to see me graduate high school," said Nick Espinosa, one of the activists who spoke at today's action in front of the ICE facility.  Espinosa's father came to the US at the age of 18.  Despite years of ordinary employment and participation in society, he was taken away by immigration agents in front of his family. ICE "sees immigration as a statistic," said Espinosa.  "Immigration has a human face."

"If people don't listen to these words then we must act," Espinosa continued.  He would later be arrested during a blockade of the facility.

MN Immigrant Rights Action Coalition | Related: Workday Minnesota Video | Photos from May 1 March for Immigrant Rights | Community Members Call for Protest at ICE HQ | Statement of Support from OWO Workday Minnesota: Supreme Court Bans Key Tool in Immigration Raids

Over two weeks after being told she had to leave her home on Clinton Avenue in Minneapolis, Rosemary Williams is still staying put - and the campaign to keep her there is getting ready to escalate.  Neighbors and activists still waiting for a potential forced eviction are calling for mass attendance at a noviolent civil disobedience training to take place Saturday at 2pm at the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign office in Sabathani Community Center.  Organizers announced that the training will be conducted transparently and that members of the press will be in attendance. Williams' fight, a flashpoint of the national foreclosure crisis, has drawn the attention of national media.

On Wednesday, tax day, Williams was among the speakers at a Minnesota Coaliton for a People's Bailout Rally at the State Capitol.  If you have more news about Rosemary's campaign or the foreclosure crisis in the Twin Cities, please publish a comment or article to TCIMC!  (The video here is from a March 30 press conference.)

Related: MPLS Woman Becomes Center of Foreclosure Debate | What Housing Crisis? | Opposition to War and Occupation Statement of Solidarity | Video: People's Resistance to Scheduled Minneapolis Home Eviction | Evict the Poor--Rescue the Banks? | Stopping Foreclosure: One Woman's Home (from TC Daily Planet) | TCIMC Video of March Hennepin County Sheriff's Sale Action | Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign