Look Up ICE is Melting
The weekend of “Independence Day” I was riding my bike over the Williamsburg Bridge, when I noticed and could make out a message that said “ARREST ICE” ending with the hashtag #XMAP. This and several other messages that weekend were part of a collaborative visual performance of 80 artist along with visual and performance artists Cassils and Rafa Esparza. They presented to us “In Plain Sight”, a performance exposing detention camps that are hiding “in plain sight” to the American public.
From July 3- 4 2020, In Plain Sight launched skytyping plane fleets to spell out artists-generated messages over 80 detention facilities, immigration courts, borders, sites of former internment camps and other significant landmarks. These messages were used to create an interactive map using geolocation technologies allowing people to locate ICE detention facilities in your immediate vicinity.
Map provided by IPS
The focus is to amplify both voices of those inside the detention centers as well as to serve as a pipeline to the organizations directly serving the immigrant community. The situation for most of the incarcerated migrants shown through reports are inhumane as they are overcrowded, rely on toilets as drinking fountains, lack of access to showers for prolonged periods of time. These poor conditions are exacerbated by COVID-19 and according to the ACLU more than 5,400 children have been separated from their families at the Mexico border since July 2017.
NO MORE CAMPS #XMAP _ Tsuru For Solidarity -Karen L. Ishizuka. Los Angeles , Santa Anita Assembly Center. July3, William Camargo, In Plain Sight.
As we are highlighting men of color this month, below are a few artists and the statements used on their skytyping.
Message: Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia
Location: Statue of Liberty National Monument
Statement: My message is “Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia”. This is the name of the first immigrant to die in US detention from Covid-19. It will be written above the Statue of Liberty on the 4th of July weekend. The Statue is associated with America as a whole in the eyes of many people. It is typically thought of as “Give me your tired, your poor…” The people who run America and set its laws and policy didn’t care about Escobar Mejia’s life. Much the way demonstrators are saying the names, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, remembering the name Escobar Mejia both honors the individual and helps people demand an end to a system that killed him.
Message: LIFE, LIBERTY, AND
Location: Hudson County Correctional Facility
Statement: "I have decided to use a simple, familiar phrase that will be timely.
“Life, liberty, and”
The text is extracted from the declaration of Independence. Here are a few examples of how it has been used.
The Declaration of Independence
""We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Declaration of Sentiments
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted deriving their powers from the consent of the governed.
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1848
[T]here is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1858"
Message: PA LAGE BATAY LA ( Written in Haitian Creole)
Location: Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center
Statement: Pa Lage Batay La (Don’t Give Up The Fight).
Message: TO BE HUMAN
Location: Rikers Island
Statement: This is the simplest manner in which I might point out the need to center humanity in all of our efforts. In my work there is one thing that I have noticed more and more and which has formulated much of my approach in the work I do—this idea that in the mechanics of prison, in the day to day, the very first thing that is removed to allow the operation of prison to run is a sense of humanity. It’s what allows the prison system to move on as a business as usual. Whether you’re on the legal side or whether you are now in reentry as a formerly incarcerated person, or whether you’re young person being churned through the court system, or whether you’re a survivor of crime that has really been blocked from the decision-making process of, let’s say, what restitution or healing looks like. All of these groups are unified in that there is no humanity that allows them to connect with one another.
We encourage you to look closer into this project and drop us a comment below on any other initiatives involved to shut down ICE.
