Ash Wednesday Pilgrimage 2014 : Filthy Rotten System's Emancipation Song...

#FilthyRottenSystem doing Bob Marley's Emancipation Song into Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land at #LibertyStatePark, across the footbridge from #EllisIsland & within sight of the #StatueOfLiberty, for the 5th Annual #AshWednesday #Pilgrimage For Dismantling of the #Detention and #Deportation Machine that Feeds the #Prison Industrial Complex At Sites Across New Jersey on Wednesday, March 5, 2014.

https://www.facebook.com/events/210937349105529/

This was the beginning of a day-long series of events in 4 cities in #NewJersey, including a 10-Mile March from Ellis Island to the Elizabeth Detention Center; which culminated in the 18th Annual #Vigil at #EDC. People from across the state representing over a dozen #faith-based, #community, #youth, and #immigrantrights groups, & families of current & former #detainees
(including members from Pax Christi USA New Jersey Chapter or PCNJ,
IRATE & First Friends, PICO-NJ, American Friends Service Committee #AFSC #Immigrant #Rights
Program, Wind of the Spirit and New Jersey Advocates For Immigrant
Detainees or NJAID), The Most Rev. Bernard Hebda, Presiding Co-Adjutor
Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark; The Most
Reverend Thomas A. Donato, DD, Regional Bishop for Hudson County of the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark; Rev. Canon Petero Sabune; Yves
Nibungco, chairperson Anakbayan USA; Ana Bonilla Martinez, organizer,
Wind of the Spirit; Luke Nephew, spoken word artist and member The Peace
Poets) gathered in #Camden, #Elizabeth, #JerseyCity & #Newark to call for the dismantling of the detention and deportation machine that is feeding the prison industrial complex.

Participants drew attention to the interconnectedness of our county's projection of #military and economic power abroad with the flow of #migrants
and the way in which the detention and deportation machine feeds the
prison industrial complex, tearing apart families in the process. #Vigils, #rallies and #protests
including prayer, music and testimony to call attention to our
country's foreign policies that force people to migrate, were held to
call for a halt to the detentions and deportations that are tearing
apart families and to call for an end to prison profiteering.


Actions were held at Liberty State Park, the Hudson County
Administration Bldg., St. Peter's University's Panepinto Plaza, St.
James Church, the offices of Senators Cory Booker & Robert Menendez
at One Gateway Center, the Rodino Federal Bldg., the Essex County Hall
of Records, the Union County Courthouse, & EDC (a for-profit
facility operated by the Corrections Corporation of America or CCA,
where ICE first started incarcerating immigrants in NJ almost two
decades ago).

A public statement against for-profit
incarceration was made at the Board of Chosen Freeholders Meeting at the
Essex County Hall of Records at 7pm. And there was also a mass held in
solidarity at the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Camden & a
press conference with the family of a released detainee.

You can find the press release here:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/casa-esperanza/press-release-for-ash-wednesday-pilgrimageday-of-action-against-immigrant-detent/10152235270748537

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opGMGCoIqNg