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Vol. 78/No. 19      May 19, 2014

 
Seattle forum discusses
fight against deportations


Militant/Clay Dennison

SEATTLE — “We are in jail. They are getting ready to deport us. What else can they do to us?” José Moreno (speaking) said at an April 26 Militant Labor Forum here. “We might as well protest.” Moreno helped organize a hunger strike in March and April by 750 immigrant worker inmates protesting prison conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma and their threatened deportations. He has been released while his case is being appealed.

The panel included (from left) Maru Villalpando from Latino Advocacy, meeting chair John Naubert, and Edwin Fruit from the Socialist Workers Party.

Officials at the privately run prison tried to break the strikers’ spirits by putting more than 20 participants in solitary confinement.

Villalpando said that because of the public demonstrations and wide coverage of the protest action, prison authorities released the last two held in solitary into the general population April 25. She invited forum-goers to attend the next mobilization outside the detention center on May 10.

— MARY MARTIN
 
 
 
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