In January, the Social Justice Action Team invited Jared and Laurie Berezin, founders of the Bearing Witness vigil at the ICE office in Burlington, to reflect on what they’ve learned over the past year. The ISG would like to share some of their thoughts on the importance and centrality of safeguarding the civil liberties of immigrants. This comes from Bearing Witness @ ICE (Substack):

If our government is going all in on ICE, we must go all in with our opposition. We must go all in with voicing our support for immigrants and their rights. I care about many other issues, but my focus is set on immigration because I believe that all of the other causes I support are dependent on this immigration fight.

• • For instance, how can we expect a government that violates human rights at home to ever practice a foreign policy that values human rights abroad?
  • How can we expect a government that abducts grandmothers, mothers, and sisters to ever care about a woman’s right to control her own body?
  • How can we expect a government that separates families to ever care about children?
  • How can we expect a government that provides endless funds for ICE to ever invest in healthcare and education?
  • How can we expect a government that builds concentration camps on protected land to ever care for the environment?
  • How can we expect a government that overrides the will of democratically elected state officials to ever care about voting rights?
  • How can we expect a government that harasses, arrests, and imprisons people because of where they were born and how they look to ever care about racial justice?
  • How can we expect a government that militarizes our cities and towns to ever support gun control?

This is why I’m focused on immigration; not because I don’t care about other causes, but because I believe that our government’s anti-immigrant project will lead to the undoing of everyone’s rights.

To these ends, members of the Immigration and Sanctuary Group (and other Follenites) support immigrant families living in Lexington and neighboring communities, participate in vigils outside the Burlington ICE office and Hanscom Field and elsewhere, collect children’s books for the Chelsea Health Center, and contribute funding to the LGBT Asylum Task Force in Worcester. More details on these and other initiatives will appear in subsequent editions of Follen for You this month.