Olympia Workers Resource: Action Alert: Support Hunger Strikers @ NW Detention Center

CALL TO ACTION!
Today, if you can make it, head to the NW Detention Center, 1623 E J St, Tacoma, WA, to show solidarity with the detainees and to prevent the GEO Group from violently force feeding and threatening the hunger strikers. There are people there at the fence starting at noon going till 4pm, and then at 5pm and a noise demo at 8pm. Carpool from Media Island, 816 Adams St. SE, at 5pm. https://www.facebook.com/ShutdownPrisons

Urgent Action Needed

Support Hunger Strikers at the Northwest Detention Center

Sign the petition NOW!

Friends,

Your urgent support is needed. You may have read the news reports about the hundreds of detainees on a hunger strike since Friday, at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.

We share this message from Maru Mora Villalpando of Latino Advocacy in Washington state:

"We have reports that more than 20 of the strikers were placed in isolation yesterday with no communications. ICE and GEO [the private prison company running the detention center] are pressuring immigrants to break the strike and harassing them verbally. We need more than 1000 signatures by tomorrow at 5PM. Please keep forwarding the petition and make sure all your contacts sign it as well.

The strikers need you!!!!!!!"

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Go here to sign the petition (hosted by #not1moredeportation) by 5 pm PDT on Tuesday, March 11.

About the situation:

On Friday, March 7th, 1200 people held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, one of the largest immigration prisons in the country, began a hunger strike and work stoppage. They are putting their bodies on the line to protest the on-going deportations overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the inhumane conditions at the for-profit detention center owned and operated by the GEO Corporation.

Inspired in part by the February 24 #Not1More deportation action at the detention center, the hunger strikers timed their action to begin on Friday. On Fridays, the people facing imminent deportation are separated and processed for deportation, weekly events that contribute to the nearly 2,000,000 deported during the Obama administration. The hunger strikers join a nation-wide movement of resistance against unprecedented levels of detention and deportation.

Apart from calling attention to the unrelenting deportations, the hunger strikers demands include:

Improved food quality
Improved treatment (including medical treatment)
Increased pay for work in the facility (the current pay is $1.00/day)
An end to exorbitant commissary prices
Fundamental fairness and justice

People in the detention center are risking their health by not eating and withstanding potential backlash for participating in the hunger strike. Sign the petition and share widely to support the hunger strikers and their demands. Not one more deportation!

To: Natalie Asher, Washington Field Office Director, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
CC: Daniel Ragsdale, Deputy Director, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
John M. Hurley, Senior Vice President, GEO Corrections and Detention

I support the hunger strikers at the Northwest Detention Center and their demands. I am alarmed and disturbed by the ongoing deportations and the conditions facing those held at the Northwest Detention Center awaiting deportation.

I urge you to initiate accountable negotiations with the hunger strikers and/or their chosen representatives. I urge you to take action to implement the demands immediately, and in good faith. I also want your guarantee that hunger strikers will not face retaliation.