Protest at Immigrant Detention Center, then Fort Benning

Workers World is publishing the following announcement from the School of the Americas Watch on their upcoming protest action in Georgia.

On Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014, hundreds of human rights activists will converge in Georgia in the wake of President Obama’s announcement about his executive actions in regards to immigration. The activists will march 1.7 miles from Lumpkin, Ga., to the Stewart Detention Center, a private, for-profit, immigrant prison, where approximately 1,800 men await their deportation proceedings.

At a vigil in front of the prison, the activists will demand the release of the immigrants who are imprisoned at Stewart, an immediate end to mass deportations and the closure of the Stewart Detention Center. (tinyurl.com/kynk9ls)

“History is made by movements of people who organize themselves to struggle collectively for a better world,” said human rights activist and SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois. “To win social progress, we need people power in the streets. We will get what we are willing to fight for.”

Following the protest at the detention center, a caravan will drive to the main gates of Fort Benning, the military base that is home to the U.S. military training camp known as the School of the Americas — renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. (soaw.org/november)

The activists will call out the connection between U.S.-sponsored military repression in Latin America and forced migration.

SOA training is among the root causes of migration, that forces people to flee their countries in Latin America. Many immigrants to the United States are victims of U.S.-sponsored military training and atrocities in Latin America. In its fight to close the School of the Americas, SOA Watch continues to work towards a world that is free of suffering and violence.

SOA Watch considers deportation quotas, mandatory detention, for-profit immigration detention centers, the militarization of the border, the “War on Drugs” and the training of repressive forces at the SOA/WHINSEC, as all parts of the same racist system of violence and domination. A dismantling of these and other policies is needed for there ever to be true “comprehensive immigration reform.”