Attention! Immigration Hearing for Jose G. Herrera - Call for a Different Kind of Solidarity!

[José G. Herrera]

Dear Friends, 

Today, November 1, 9am-noon, Homeland Security has set a court date for Jose Herrera, a member of our collective. This stage of the attack against Jose is violence in a justice costume. But today is just one small part of an ongoing nightmare that is lived every day by millions of people. This message will not tell you Jose’s story and ask that you support him as an individual. Instead, Jose has asked that we challenge the ways the system classifies and divides people—which is perpetuated not only in these proceedings, but too often in our resistance to them.

Those threatened with deportation are forced to participate in a ridiculous farce, to go into courtrooms and speak the script instead of speaking their minds. There is no way to say things as they really are in the place called a courtroom, so we say them here:

1. Immigration laws are illegitimate. They use "citizenship" to create unequal and exploited people.

2. An immigration courtroom is not a place of justice. It is a spectacle set up to focus attention on people called non-citizens and to mask the inequalities and exploitation that citizenship creates.

3. Jose is one of the lucky few who has the resources to fight his deportation. But those who can fight are pitted against others. They are forced to defend themselves on the grounds that they are more worthy, that they are somehow exceptional, implying that all others are not.

4. In defending individuals, friends and advocates are forced to replicate the distinction of worthy and non-worthy. This is where solidarity can become complicity.

As friends and advocates outside the courtroom, we do not have to follow the script of worthy and unworthy. Our resistance must refuse the narrative of the few exceptional cases and must stand with all those labeled criminal, or illegal, or deportable. We are sending this message today because we are looking for another way to resist and another basis for solidarity. Join us!

No Name Collective

www.moratoriumondeportations.org

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José G. Herrera

(773) 632-9992