This past November, the Oakland Education Association, a union which represents schoolteachers in Alameda County, Calif. approved a solidarity statement recognizing the horrific conditions faced by immigrants in detention centers across California, the courageous struggle led by the immigrant community, and that this struggle is directly tied to the living and working conditions of OEA members and the communities that they serve and form part of. Solidarity statements such as this can serve as the basis for further organizing, providing principles to rally around and an opening for political discussions among coworkers that can pave the way for concrete action.
We reprint the OEA’s statement below:
Therefore Be It Resolved, the Oakland Education Association expresses its support and solidarity with the struggle of immigrant workers detained at the Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex detention centers in Kern County and Desert View Annex detention center in Adelanto, California.
Therefore, OEA recognizes that 10% of OUSD’s student body are newcomer students who have arrived in the US within the last 3 years. Many of these students were detained or have family members who were detained in immigrant detention centers.
Therefore, OEA supports the multiple protest actions such as the labor and hunger strike that have been taking place over the last few months in these detention centers by the immigrant population detained by ICE and held in private prisons run by the GEO Group, the second largest private prison company in the world. Our support is based on the fact that we consider their demands to be just and part of the struggle of the American working class and as such we make them our own:
- No to the $1 dollar a day wage. Yes to a minimum wage for detained immigrant and incarcerated workers.
- Yes to decent and basic medical services for detainees.
- Yes to safe food and drinking water.
- No to solitary confinement and repression by ICE and GEO officers.
- Yes to the right to free phone calls to their lawyers and family members.
- No to sexual harassment at security screenings by GEO officers.
Therefore, OEA demands that ICE terminate their contract with the GEO Group who run the Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex detention centers in Kern County and Desert View Annex detention center in Adelanto, California.
Be It Finally Resolved, OEA stands in solidarity with the struggle of the immigrant worker community and particularly with the labor and hunger strike actions carried out by immigrant workers in detention centers in California.
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