Doing more of a link dump today to catch up. While a lot of the focus in NJ this past week has been on Delaney Hall, thanks to Governor Sherrill’s naive or dishonest belief that the State Police wouldn’t escalate the violence against legal protest compared to ICE, we also cannot lose sight of the fact that it is US policy to deprive Cuba of food, medicine, and fuel to the point of mass murder.

We must remain steadfast in continuing to pay attention to both, and advocate for both, as these are not separate crises, but are deeply and permanently linked.

Reading

Cuba announces that its fuel reserves have been depleted as a direct result of the US blockade by Pablo Meriguet

This was reported by Vicente De la O Levy, Cuba’s minister of energy and mines, who warned at a press conference about the critical situation resulting from the sanctions and the economic, commercial, and energy blockade that the Trump administration has decided to intensify.

“Once again, we will discuss the situation of the national power system, which is so acute and critical. It is fundamentally due to the ironclad energy blockade we are living under. An energy blockade that follows a blockade we endured for many years, and which served to further exacerbate and strain the country’s economic and energy situation,” said De la O Levy.

In light of this situation, the minister of energy reported that fuel and diesel reserves have been exhausted, and that there is only a small amount of fuel left to keep certain critical social services, such as hospitals, operational.

Several weeks ago, the United Nations, through the Officer of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Edem Wosornu, declared that the situation in Cuba, driven by Washington, is a “humanitarian crisis” affecting the most vulnerable: “Without sufficient fuel and more funding, the most vulnerable people – children, the elderly, and pregnant women – will suffer the most,” said Wosornu.

For his part, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has been emphatic in stating that the cause of the severe energy crisis is “the genocidal energy blockade to which the U.S. subjects our country.”

Protest Is Not Supposed to Be Convenient by Declan

But protest is not supposed to be convenient. Protest, by its nature, must be disruptive. That does not mean violent. It does not mean reckless. It does not mean destroying property or threatening people. But it does mean interrupting the normal flow of power enough that the injustice being protested can no longer be ignored.

At Delaney Hall, standing by the gates and making it difficult for ICE to move people in and out of a facility accused of inhumane conditions is not some distortion of protest. That is protest. It is nonviolent obstruction aimed at forcing public attention onto what power wants hidden behind fences, uniforms, vans, and procedure.

If a protest is so carefully managed, fenced off, scheduled, and contained that it inconveniences no one and pressures no one, then it has been reduced to a symbolic gesture. Power is always willing to tolerate protest that does not inconvenience it or disrupt what it is doing.

This is where too many Democrats reveal a very comfortable hypocrisy. They support protest in theory. They celebrate protest in history. They quote Dr. King, honor John Lewis, praise the suffragists, and wrap themselves in the memory of the labor movement. But when protest appears in real time, angry, urgent, messy, inconvenient, and morally uncomfortable, they start talking about zones, curfews, public order, and acceptable forms of dissent.

They want protest to look like a weekend march with handmade signs, a permit, a police escort, and a scheduled ending time. They want people to express pain, but not create pressure. They want dissent, but only if it can be routed down the street, photographed, praised, and then ignored. That is not how protest has ever worked.

Protest Is Not Supposed to Be Convenient - by Declan

Mikie Sherrill and Ras Baraka say they support the right to protest, then they use state power, police lines, and curfews to make sure protest cannot actually disrupt ICE.

Inside the Clashes at Delaney Hall Detention Center in CrimethInc

The series of events leading up to the strike and culminating in a marathon of violence has been densely packed. Consequently, the fog of war has obscured key details, including the complex dynamics at play between protesters and mutual aid workers, between experienced anti-ICE activists and the local terrain, between the government of New Jersey and federal mercenaries. Here, a participant in mutual aid efforts at Delaney Hall over the preceding months—who was on the ground for much of this wave of protests—recounts how the clashes unfolded.

CrimethInc. : Inside the Clashes at Delaney Hall Detention Center : A Timeline from a Mutual Aid Volunteer

A participant in mutual aid efforts at Delaney Hall Detention Center recounts how the clashes with federal, state, and local authorities unfolded during the hunger strike.

Mikie Sherrill’s state police riot in Newark is a national disgrace by Will Bunch

So is the New Jersey governor at war with the rogue agency that sends masked goon squads into city streets to grab day laborers or Uber drivers and warehouses them in squalid gulags, and that murdered two citizens on the streets of Minneapolis when they tried to protest? Or is she partnering with them? How long can we remain in denial that 21st-century America is a police state with “resistance Democrats” as willing partners?

There’s the famous saying that when you’re a carpenter, every problem looks like a nail. I guess when a rising politician centers her brand on her time as a Navy helicopter pilot, every crisis starts to look like Iraq. What is happening right now in Newark is exactly why I have never trusted the so-called national security moms like Sherrill, or her partner in feckless centrism, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger — Democrats who ultimately support sending in the tanks, with a rainbow Pride flag on the side.

But what is especially outrageous about Sherrill’s conduct over the last few days is her completely unsubstantiated and outlandish claim that many of the Delaney Hall protesters — nurses, veterans, faith leaders, and other everyday Americans — are “outside agitators,” which thus necessitated the over-the-top police response.

It’s bad enough that the only evidence offered by Sherrill is that four of six people arrested at Friday’s protest are from New York — a state so closely linked to New Jersey that two of its pro football teams play there — while one (the abovementioned Austin) is from Pennsylvania. The inhumane treatment of detainees — the majority of whom have committed no crime — is a national nightmare that ought to be drawing protesters from all 50 states.

Mikie Sherrill’s state police riot in Newark is a national disgrace | Opinion

New Jersey state troopers meant to protect Newark protesters from ICE are violently shredding the First Amendment instead.

After Police Descend On Delaney Hall Protesters, Volunteers Keep Working To Help Detainees And Family by Matt Shuham

Contrary to Trump administration propaganda about immigration detainees, the vast majority of people at Delaney Hall have no criminal convictions, and a large majority have no criminal history whatsoever, the researcher Austin Kocher found based on a review of detention data. Kocher added that the vast majority of detainees are classified by ICE itself under its lowest security level. What’s more, the vast majority of detainees do not have a final deportation order, but rather are being detained while their immigration proceedings are ongoing — a process that past administrations would have typically allowed them to pursue outside of custody.

Mutual aid has been a significant part of local pushback to what’s happening inside Delaney Hall. Since last year, volunteers have run an aid tent, providing food, children’s toys and clothes that meet Delaney Hall’s dress code to detainees’ visiting families. They’ve also helped released detainees contact family and arrange to be picked up in the remote industrial area.

But on Monday, volunteers found the aid tent had been ransacked, and it appeared to have been searched by the FBI and ICE.

Volunteers At Delaney Hall Keep Working To Help Detainees And Family Amid Hunger Strike | HuffPost Latest News

“We’re seeking a humane response to something that is as close to evil as I’ve ever seen,” one volunteer told HuffPost.

The Sacrifice Zone by Aymann Ismail

Last Friday, Pillay said, advocates held a rally outside the hospitality tent. It was led in part by Gabriela Soto, who is four months pregnant and whose husband was detained inside. That morning, calls started coming from inside Delaney Hall. According to Pillay, the detainees learned what was happening outside and responded in kind. “The men and the women decided, in solidarity with what was happening outside, to engage in a hunger and a labor strike,” she said. Advocates then began a 24-hour vigil.

Then, Pillay said, came retaliation. The flash point was Soto’s husband, Martin Alonso Soto Hernandez. Pillay said ICE told Soto that he would be released. “When the van came out, advocates on the ground—somebody saw him in the van because he was banging,” Pillay said. Then they realized ICE was trying to move him out of the facility and into another one. She believes that Soto was targeted to get to his wife for organizing the demonstration outside. “He was not the leader in the hunger and the labor strike. He was merely a participant in it in support of what was going on. They lied,” she said.

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… If you know Newark, you know there are unique layers of environmental hell to this particular area: Doremus Avenue is part of the landscape that local environmental-justice organizers have long described as the Ironbound’s “sacrifice zone.” Delaney Hall is nestled in a 1-mile stretch of Doremus Avenue with a natural gas plant, an open-air sewage treatment plant, an animal-fat rendering plant that spews putrid smells, chemical storage containers, constant airplane traffic, and one of the most contaminated waterways in America. It’s also in close proximity to several condemned Superfund sites deemed too toxic to recover.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that as I stood outside the facility. Doremus Avenue has long been treated as a place for things that, with enough long-term exposure, can kill you. People being held here—especially here—made me recoil. The people who were outside voluntarily were doing it for them.

Trump is mocking what's happening in New Jersey. I saw it for myself.

In Newark, we call it the "sacrifice zone."

Protesters Confront ICE in Support of Hunger and Labor Strike at Delaney Hall by Samuel Karlin and Emma Lee

As activists in the state lead a renewed confrontation with ICE, we must remember that our combative protests and collective power have won past concessions, while the Democrats and their appeals to trust in the institutions of bourgeois democracy have demobilized our movements, paving the way for setbacks. As Trump continues ICE’s attacks, we need to unite across state lines to demand the release of all those detained in these inhumane facilities.

And beyond the defense of our communities against ICE, it’s time to go on the offensive against a system of discrimination which normalizes this violence. The immigrant rights movement can use our power to fight for full citizenship and rights for all immigrants living in the United States.

Many Delaney Hall protesters charged with felony rioting. NJ.’s public defender calls it ‘overreach’ by Kevin Shea

Public defenders assisting protesters arrested at Delaney Hall on Sunday night are noticing a trend: boilerplate language and a felony rioting charge.

That’s an issue of concern for New Jersey Public Defender Jennifer Sellitti.

“Based on what we’re seeing so far, I think it is a big reach to charge people with felonies for the kind of conduct we were seeing from protesters on the ground,” she said Wednesday.

Disorderly person’s offenses would be much more appropriate under the circumstances, she said.

Video and eyewitness accounts show police advancing on protesters after the 9 p.m. curfew kicked in on Sunday for the half-mile around the ICE immigration jail on Doremus Avenue.

Newark police processed 61 arrests for people detained by a variety of police officers Sunday night on the first night of a city-issued 9 p.m. curfew.

Sellitti acknowledged that a few isolated cases involve serious allegations at Delaney Hall, which will be handled by federal authorities.

“But I’m talking about people who were arrested for breaking curfew and then charged with a felony. A felony charge to me seems very excessive,” Sellitti said.

Police want to decide which journalists can cover the Delaney Hall protests. That’s not their job by Adam Rose

New Jersey state police quickly released most of the press and ordered them about 100ft away. They posed no risk of obstruction from that distance, yet Newark police stepped in and ordered them even further down the road. Journalists objected, realizing they would again be denied sight and sound access.

Moments before, protesters had chanted “press don’t leave,” hoping someone would bear witness to their arrests.

An officer grabbed his radio to report that press wouldn’t go any further.

A voice crackled back over his speaker: “If they refuse to move, push them back yourselves.”

Back in the kettle, at least three journalists were stranded. Each would spend a full day in custody while lawyers were denied access to see them.

One of the arrested journalists was injured and taken to a hospital. There, he saw two arrested protesters being treated. Without press cameras rolling, it wasn’t immediately clear how or if they were hurt while being detained.

Before being handcuffed, the other remaining journalist had worn a blue vest emblazoned with the word “press”. An ID from his company dangled around his neck. Like the injured journalist, he was a member of the National Press Photographers Association. Officers on the scene told him that his credentials were not verified.

Hours earlier, I’d asked the New Jersey governor’s office what “verified” meant. A day later, I asked the Newark mayor’s office. Neither answered.

…

Of course, officers do need a way to distinguish press from protesters. As a better alternative, courts increasingly have ruled that law enforcement should look for “indicia” of who is press. This might be a police- or employer-issued ID, but it can also include business cards, letters of assignment, distinctive clothing with “press” labels, or professional-looking equipment.

Officials sometimes complain that this makes it harder to be sure who’s a journalist. But the first amendment wasn’t intended to make an officer’s job easier. And their credibility erodes each time an officer is caught swinging a baton at a camera.

The indicia approach affirms that journalists are not special because a central authority says so. The point of press rights isn’t simply to protect a chosen class of people. It’s to protect the act of informing the public.

Police want to decide which journalists can cover the Delaney Hall protests. That’s not their job | Adam Rose | The Guardian

In one week, the US Press Freedom Tracker documented 30 assaults by officers on journalists near the facility

Op-Ed: Delaney Hall Is Not Above Law and Legal Argument To Shut It Down by Tim Alexander

The first and most immediate option is the criminal process. A privately operated detention facility is not a constitutional dead zone. …

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The second option is prosecution. If a lawful search uncovers evidence of assaultive conduct, reckless endangerment, falsified records, obstruction, or other criminal violations, prosecutors should file the appropriate charges and litigate them in open court. …

The third option is sustained regulatory and political pressure. A search warrant is not a substitute for oversight. It is a tool for securing evidence. …

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That matters because we should stop treating Delaney Hall as though the only options are passive outrage or endless deference. The law offers a spectrum of responses. At the front end, prosecutors can investigate and, if warranted, conduct searches. In the middle, the State can prosecute provable crimes and compel disclosure of what happened behind the walls.

At the back end, if policymakers conclude that this facility should never again be used to warehouse vulnerable people under abusive conditions, the City has a lawful path to reclaim the land for a public use.