Concentration camps are big business. Minneapolis has no shortage of corporations profiting off human suffering and misery, as immigrants are targeted at the border and throughout the country.
Locally, TCDSA members have helped launch a campaign against Thrivent, a local “ethical” investment bank that invests in Core Civic and GEO Group, the two main companies operating concentration camps on the U.S. border. We initiated a public memorial for children killed in the camps, held on the front steps of Thrivent’s headquarters on August 8, and more recently held a “mic check” action in the Thrivent cafeteria during employees’ lunch rush.
Now please join us and other immigrant rights groups as we step up this campaign and fight to #ClosetheCamps with a Tour of Corporate Shame around downtown Minneapolis. We will be stopping at a series of companies making millions off of violent repression of immigrants.
Meet Friday, October 25 at 3 PM at S 4th Ave and S 5th St, and spread around the Facebook event to your friends. Other sponsors include MIRAC, Navigate, Never Again, Minnesota Educators Against ICE, Standing Up for Racial Justice, and Unidos MN; we are also working with a group of Christian pastors.
This event is part of a national weekend of action that DSA’s national immigrant rights working group is organizing in coalition with the Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps, The Red Nation (an indigenous socialist group), and other organizations. DSA is using this weekend of action to develop a more participatory national working group for immigrant rights, with the goal of radically expanding our contribution to the movement to close the concentration camps.
The national weekend is centered around Indigenous People’s Day, chosen to highlight the hypocrisy of immigration enforcement in a country founded through settler colonialism, carried out against descendants of people who were here first. Many of the migrants held in the concentration camps are indigenous, and face special oppression as, for example, they are denied access to translators who speak their languages.
In connection with this weekend, TCDSA members are also promoting an Indigenous-led action against Line 3 in Clearbrook on Monday, October 14, led by the organization Ginew.
– Elizabeth W.F.