SHUT DOWN ICE!!!

I.
IT HAS BEGUN. Last week we saw government officials blow open people's doors in the middle of the night to kidnap so called "gang members." They came for us.
Each night we wait in panic, waiting to see who next of our friends and family will be disappeared. But today is something else.
Today, a day when we celebrate the dead and disappeared-- a day when we don masks to make the real monsters tremble in their empty coffers-- it begins.

Some say it began 516 years ago with the arrival of European colonizers-- but how do we trace the beginning of domination? First we will try to offer you, in the language of numbers,
what they will call "evident." We are told we must begin with what is evident:
ICE disappeared 4,956 people in the past 11 months, from Oct 1, 2007 to Aug 31, 2008.
Last week over 20 ICE disappearances were carried out in the Bay.

How do we explain to our neighbors that what is evident for us began so many years ago? How do we explain that so many of our grievances stem from the way
wealth is organized, exchanged, and stolen? The North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 brought many of us here, into this country, following the wealth
as the working conditions in our own countries were degraded, as our farm lands were stolen. The rich in our countries lined their pockets while we found that our best option
was to leave behind our communities, loved ones. That, we suppose, is our first disappearance.
For us, it began there, in our leaving.

Our Dear San Francisco,
All Hollow’s Eve, 2008.
II.
AND HERE, IN THE US, WE DISAPPEAR. Our schools disappear us from their histories so our young people fight each semester to recognize themselves in the books they study.
We are disappeared into the dark corners of streets— for a breath of cold SF air, or to catch up with the block, the cops maddoggin us. Restaurants disappear us into the back
rooms of kitchens. We walk babies of the wealthy; our own motherhood disappeared behind a 1200-dollar stroller. We clean their homes. We are disappeared in the hour between
check in and check out, folding new bed sheets, replenishing the toilet paper for businessmen. We are disappeared into the gulf’s economic disasters. We are disappeared into labor
camps under firearms. We are disappeared in the brush behind manicured lawns. We are disappeared inside of sewing lairs and strung between trunks of new fall fashion. We disappear
in the drowned out steam of spas and massaged into other people’s pleasure. We are disappeared behind filter masks to hide our gagging from the feet we touch and clean every day.
We are disappeared into homeless and women’s shelters, SRO’s, public housing high rises. We are disappeared into their marriages. We are disappeared into their ballot boxes.
And finally, we are disappeared in the middle of the night, shoved into black vans, brought to the labyrinth of cells in the ICE building downtown. We are disappeared to Guantanamo,
into the industry of terror, or we are disappeared into the city, state, or federal prison industry so they can turn millions of dollars each year—so they can disperse our communities.
But today is something else.
III.
FOR US, We who laugh in the face of this absurd situation, We who are not so much in awe of the enormity of oppression as we are freedom fighters, mothers, rebel workers,
rebel students-- those of us who with our feet walk today towards their terrible theaters of power and dominance, with our arms push back harder, and with our hands build new worlds--
Today, we do not only denounce at our late night kitchen tables, we do not speak quietly, wounded, overwhelmed by the federal police.
Today we do not vanish into this terrible era of disappearances, today we become more than our enemies, more than their workforce, more than their electoral base--
today we become more than our own private traumas, today we learn to trust one another more than we trust the politicians, the bosses and their police--
we take a confident step towards a world where we meet our own needs with dignity, where we make justice real, malleable, palatable.
Last week, they came for us and today we come for them.
TODAY, IN SAN FRANCISCO, WE SHUTDOWN I.C.E. to help create a culture that will shut down every last one of their sick institutions, finally, and for good.
It is always beginning.
It was our backs you saw on the cover of the Examiner being hauled away by ICE agents,

countless numbers of your "criminal" kin in San Francisco,
Russel Khan
inez sunwoo
days in april collective