Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Prayer circle at a secret prison

You ever wonder what a secret prison looks like in suburban America? There is one in Brooklyn Heights Ohio, bordering interstate 480. There is no signage. The windows are uniform, and black from the outside. It is landscaped and maintained, and there are boulders by the entrance. Part of the parking lot is open, and part is enclosed in a high and strong fence (perhaps it would make it good for Trump's border wall.
 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center
 925 Keynote Circle, Brooklyn Heights, Ohio
Brooklyn Heights policeman talking with Homeland Security policeman.
                         Tuesday June 26, 2018                      
                                                                 

Friends of HOLA [click] had a prayer circle outside the secret prison. Some three hundred people came. WEWS TV-5, and WJW TV-8 recorded some of the event.
Most everyone had a sign. A series of speakers, both clerical and lay spoke. There were many quotations of Scripture, especially from the Books of Moses:

Exodus 22:21; 23:9;
[21] Thou shalt not molest a stranger, nor afflict him: for yourselves also were strangers in the land of Egypt. [22] You shall not hurt a widow or an orphan. [23] If you hurt them they will cry out to me, and I will hear their cry
9] Thou shalt not molest a stranger, for you know the hearts of strangers: for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt. 

Leviticus 19:33-34; 
[33] If a stranger dwell in your land, and abide among you, do not upbraid him: [34] But let him be among you as one of the same country: and you shall love him as yourselves: for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. 

Deuteronomy 10:19;
[19] And do you therefore love strangers, because you also were strangers in the land of Egypt.


Three female rabbis, a UCC minister, a Catholic priest, and a Buddhist teacher spoke. The latter quoted from Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night...Rage, rage against the dying of the light". Yes, rage against the injustice being done. He pointed out that samurai were Buddhists and they did not back down. Some of the people had been there a week earlier when over 200 agricultural and food processing workers were interned here after two large ICE raids. People read poems, and the experience of immigrants that were forced to flee their old countries. One woman spoke of coming here at night to organise others to bring food and water; the police of the prison were surprised, and did not know how to handle that.
The last speaker was Veronica Dahlberg of Hola. She had been there several times when other people were arrested, and sent off to other prisons, or readied for deportation.

The event ended with a verse of Amazing Grace, and then We Shall Overcome.

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