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checkpoints in Washington State By Stop the Checkpoints Committee Port Angeles, Washington Incensed at Border Patrol roadblocks that stop every car and check drivers' nationalities, over 200 demonstrators took to the streets on Sept. 20 in Port Angeles, Washington. It was the third and largest protest yet by residents on the Olympic Peninsula, a rural area of rain forests and waterways in the northwest corner of the state. Access is primarily by ferry boat or by Highway 101, which loops around the peninsula. The Sept. 20 demonstration was sparked by a protest three weeks earlier by the classmates of two teenagers who were detained on Aug. 20. Both were swiftly deported to Mexico, despite the fact that both young men grew up in Forks, a small coastal town. One of them, Edgar Ayala, 18, had just graduated with honors from the local high school. Protest organizer Tanya Ward, a tribal member from the Hoh reservation near Forks, said, "Just as Native Americans were pushed aside and shoved onto reservations, they want to do the same thing to immigrants. Who gives them the right?" Protest escalates. Meanwhile, longtime Port Angeles resident Lois Danks, who heads up the local chapter of Radical Women, put out a call for a Sept. 6 community meeting to plan actions against the checkpoints. Galvanized by word of the student protest in Forks, residents converged from five cities and towns across the Peninsula. They were family members of deported immigrant workers, Native American tribal members, small business owners, students, teachers, feminists, and civil liberties and peace activists. There were people who had never protested before combined with seasoned organizers from the Socialist, Green, Freedom Socialist and Democratic parties. Then and there the group decided to form a committee and named it "Stop the Checkpoints." The new committee chose to kick off their campaign with a Sept. 20 march and rally in Port Angeles, the largest city on the Peninsula, because the Border Patrol is headquartered there. Committee members blanketed the region with a flyer featuring the Statue of Liberty, with the slogans “Defend Civil Liberties”; “No Racial Profiling, Raids & Detentions”; “Defend Immigrant Workers and their Families”; “No Police State on the Olympic Peninsula!” The flyer struck a chord with residents outraged at being stopped and interrogated on their way to school, work and the grocery store. Feelings were already running high in reaction to frequent security spot-checks at the ferry docks. In June ferry worker John Norby, backed by his union, blew the whistle and refused to cooperate when an undercover Border Patrol agent attempted to recruit him to spy on passengers. By August, increased funding for the Border Patrol resulted in 45 permanently stationed agents in this sparsely populated, economically depressed area. In the last month, the Patrol, assisted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and local police, have repeatedly set up unannounced checkpoints at several locations along Highway 101. Twenty-five people were detained -- 10 for minor drug offenses and 14 for not carrying proper immigration papers. News of the upcoming Sept. 20 action quickly spread as the local press and Spanish language TV picked up the story and an article by People's Weekly World journalist Tim Wheeler was circulated widely. Speaking out for immigrants and civil liberties. People car-pooled to the Sept. 20 march and rally from throughout the peninsula, and some from as far away as Seattle and Victoria, British Columbia. A contingent of Hoh tribal youth led the diverse group of marchers, which included everyone from babies in strollers to retirees, and residents of all colors, foreign and native-born alike. Addressing a spirited crowd, Stop the Checkpoints coordinator Danks called on the government to "Stop this drive to criminalize people and whip up fear! Stop trying to equate immigrants with terrorists and drug smugglers. The Olympic Peninsula is not about to be a pilot project for a police state." Speaker Beatriz Giraldo, originally from Colombia, said all the Homeland Security money that funds stepped-up harassment by Border Patrol and other immigration agents should be used to help victims of domestic violence and other abuses. Peace activist Diana Somerville read a statement by a Mexican friend who was too terrified to appear in public. The statement described how parents who are detained "can't even make a phone call to their children or get an attorney, and are deported very fast, without due process." Long time resident and daycare teacher Manuela Velasquez described children wetting themselves and throwing up at school for fear of losing their parents, and families having to sneak to the store at night to get groceries. Twenty-one-year-old Alex Olson-Bick who helped found the new group, told of a Costa Rican friend who, although legally in the country, was detained and interrogated for hours. When finally released, immigration agents threatened it would happen "over and over again." Christina López, Seattle Radical Women Organizer, charged the government with escalating anti-immigrant roundups in order to pave the way for guest worker programs, which she warned, "turn workers into indentured servants, with no right to organize unions or fight for better working conditions." Susan Dorazio of the Socialist Party Women's Commission reminded everyone at the rally "the human spirit and desire for freedom and justice remain strong in our communities. Another world is possible!" Grassroots rising. In the days following the rally, numerous offers of help, legal advice and fundraising ideas poured into the Stop the Checkpoints Committee, which is currently planning follow-up actions. Committee members can be reached at info@stopthecheckpoints.com or 360-452-7534. As Iranian-born Layla Iranshad, a teacher from Forks, summed it up, "Undocumented Latinos are not alone in challenging these checkpoints. U.S. citizens realize that arbitrary Border Patrol checkpoints are bringing this country one step closer to a complete police state." Photos by Melina Rivera.  Stop the Checkpoint rally Sept. 20, 2008 at Federal building in Port Angeles, WA.  Sept. 20, 2008 rally in Port Angeles, WA. Alex Olson-Bick (left), helped start the Stop the Checkpoints Committee. (Right) A classmate of 18-year-old honor student Edgar Ayala who was stopped at a checkpoint on Aug. 20 and deported to Mexico.  Stop the Checkpoint march Sept. 20, 2008 in Port Angeles, WA.  Protest organizers Lois Danks, Stop the Checkpoints coordinator (left), and Tanya Ward, Hoh tribal member, in Port Angeles, WA. |
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