Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I just went to a protest & Tisha b'av service/vigil, outside the Boston ICE office. I wasn't sure I wanted to do this, but that doesn't matter. This is my work, in the times we live in.

Never again para nadie. (Never again, for anyone.)

I posted the above from my phone, while drinking tea in a Caffe Nero across the street from the Government Center T station. Adding:

The Boston ICE office is in the JFK Federal Building, in Government Center. Based on past experience, I left early enough to allow a margin for getting lost in Government Center, which I did. (It's a large open space surrounded by mostly unlabeled buildings.) When I got to the rally, adrian_turtle spotted me, so I stood with her and a few of her friends.

The event itself was lower-energy than I had expected, more quiet vigil and less noisy protest than I was expecting. I think louder would have been better, since we weren't just trying to be noticed by the government, or the media--part of the point was to let the prisoners inside know that there are people out here who support them and wish them well.

Background: last month, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court [which is the highest court in the state] ruled that Massachusetts police have no legal authority to hold people based on ICE civil detention orders. (It's not clear whether doing so would inherently be against the state constitution, on due process grounds, as distinct from them not being allowed to do it because there's no law saying they can.)

Governor Baker's response was to file a bill saying that they can do that. (His press release says it would "authorize but not require" the police to do so in certain cases; the proposed bill leaves the decision to individual police forces.)

The ACLU and a couple of other groups organized rallies against Baker's bill, and for the Safe Communities Act, which explicitly says they can't do that and has some other protections. cattitude and I heard about the one in Boston because we're signed up for ACLU text messages, and we decided this was important enough to make time for even while planning a move.

The rally drew a couple of hundred people; there were speeches, and chants, in Spanish as well as English. (There was one chant I hadn't heard before, which I translated for Cattitude: "Baker, escucha, estamos en la lucha," which in English is "Baker, listen, we are in the fight.")

Various organizers brought extra signs for people to hold: we both started with "ACLU freedom agenda" signs, and I replaced mine with an SEIU bilingual "here to stay" sign and then with an SEIU one reading "America united to protect immigrants and refugees." (It felt more appropriate, since I'm not an immigrant.)

The last speaker said we would end with a song from the Civil Rights movement. My first thought was "We Shall Overcome," and then she started singing "We Shall Not Be Moved." I joined in almost immediately, thinking "thank you Pete Seeger."

After the rally Cattitude and I took the T to Hynes Convention Center to have lunch at the Cornish Pasty Co., because it sounded good from sovay's recent post. The pasties were indeed good, though I was disappointed by the tea. Thence to Toscanini's, because I seem to have decided that I should stop for ice cream on my way home from rallies and protest marches.