Refugees

342 | We Understand Each Other- Resistance at the Northwest Detention Center

We start this week’s episode with our monthly round up of prison protests and disturbances, compiled by Perilous Chronicle. After that, we share an Interview with Maru Mora Villalpando of La Resistencia, a project that organizes against the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. Once again, prisoners within the detention center have gone on hunger…

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214 | Eye of the Storm- Hunger Strikers in Louisiana’s ICE Detention

ICE detainees are a week into a hunger strike at Pine Prairie, Louisiana.  This week, we broadcast audio of a call between an anonymous Pine Prairie ICE detainee, and a member of Perilous Chronicle. More information on the struggle there can be found at perilouschronicle.com. The strike at Pine Prairie is not an isolated incident, but…

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148 | Migrant Bodies, Uncaring Medicine: The Lethal Politics of Detention

On May 20th, Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez became the fifth child to die in border patrol custody since December. He was 16, and had been held for a week in a border patrol outpost that lacked proper provisioning. He had fled Guatemala, currently wracked with drought and violence, and reached the U.S. on May 13-…

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124 | Otay Mesa Detention Resistance

A new movement of refugees fleeing violence and starvation in Central America began to reach Tijuana last month, in the hopes of applying for asylum in the United States.  Comprised of multiple, self-organized caravans, the refugees passed through incredible hardship and risk before thousands were temporarily settled in the Benito Juarez shelter – a sports…

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103 | Anti-Detention Occupations from Australia to America, Part Two

Last week, Aren Aizura guided us through the history of colonialism in Australia, including racist measures to control non-white immigration, and later, in the 1980s, the implementation of mandatory detention for refugees. He focused on his experiences in an occupation outside the remote Woomera Detention Center, and the way that supporters on the outside grew…

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102 | Anti-Detention Occupations from Australia to America

In light of the ongoing struggles across the country against deportations, family separations, and ICE detention centers, we are sharing an interview we did last year about struggles in Australia against refugee prison camps. In 2002, imprisoned refugees inside Australia’s remote Woomera immigration prison coordinated protests with 2500 supporters who had pitched a No Borders…

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101 | Anti-Detention Occupations from Australia to America

In light of the ongoing struggles across the country against deportations, family separations, and ICE detention centers, we are sharing an interview we did last year about struggles in Australia against refugee prison camps. In 2002, imprisoned refugees inside Australia’s remote Woomera immigration prison coordinated protests with 2500 supporters who had pitched a No Borders…

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73 | Rightlessness

This week we speak with Naomi Paik about her 2016 book, Rightlessness. Her work addresses the most pressing contemporary issues, drawing together the brutal state of exception imposed on Haitian and Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo with the historical experience of Japanese internment camps and the current anti-immigrant drive. She focuses on the spaces – whether…

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33 | Woomera: Escaping From an Immigrant Detention Center, Part Three

This week concludes our series on the mass escape from the Woomera immigrant detention center in 2002. Aren Aizura, who helped organize the solidarity camp outside the prison over Easter weekend of that year, tells us more about the aftermath: follow-up organizing with captive refugees, and the Australian government’s push to move the prisons to…

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32 | Woomera: Escaping From an Immigrant Detention Center, Part Two

In the second episode of our series on the mass escape from the Woomera refugee detention center in Australia, Aren Aizura parses out the stakes of the protest camp, its participants, and the escalation to the breakout. From there, Aren moves to the escape itself, the emotional meeting between refugees and outside supporters, and the…

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