This report is an attempt to summarize the campaign against a proposed immigrant detention center in Farmville, VA. While this does not cover every step of the campaign, it serves to communicate the successes, failures, and lessons of a multi-racial, multi-class, bilingual campaign for immigrant justice in Virginia. Feedback is welcome.
The People United is a network of organizers working for social justice in Virginia and the surrounding area.
September 2008 organizers with The People United (TPU) learned through a Richmond news article of plans to construct a for-profit, 1,000-bed immigrant detention center in Farmville, VA. At this time plans for construction were already approved and moving ahead. The Incarceration Corporation of America (ICA) based in Richmond, VA was the private interest behind the center.
After extensive research, The People United approached allies in the region regarding joint action to oppose this new center, including the Virginia Immigrant People's Coalition and one of its most prominent members, Mexican@s sin Fronteras, the largest immigrants rights organization in Virginia. These groups, while interested and supportive, could not engage at that time due to work in response to ongoing crises. Because of the immediacy of the issue, The People United decided to start the campaign and keep the invitation to allied groups open.
Forty people from groups around the state attended an initial meeting, including immigrant members of immigrant solidarity groups in Charlottesville and Louisa. VCU students were the largest contingency. TPU and allies identified three goals for the campaign:
1. Stop construction of the center
2. Educate potential allies and the general public about immigration and immigrant detention issues
3. Build a stronger, better-connected network in the region, better prepared to respond to issues like this in the future
The initial strategy was to raise awareness and concern among Farmville residents and put pressure on Farmville town council at monthly public meetings. Participants gave testimony as allies and as directly affected immigrants.
Town council members are elected officials in Farmville, and the primary decision-makers on whether the plan would proceed to its completion, so were our primary targets. The campaign identified indirect ways to influence them as well, through the chamber of commerce, Farmville Herald, church and citizen groups, individual citizens, and business owners. TPU presence at town council meetings continued for most of the next six months.
Other actions included:
- Leafleting and Participating in Farmville/s Christmas Parade
- Ongoing Action Alerts
- Parody Website
- Canvassing
After several months, organizers heard that a detainee had died in Piedmont Regional Jail (also in Farmville) under suspicious circumstances. Outreach to legal support and detainee witnesses confirmed rumors. Further information from a FOA to ICE was denied. TPU escalated its media campaign.
The heightened media coverage reached detainees and their families, who were outraged at the local coverage of detainee deaths, which parroted ICE information on the issue. Detainees families and TPU coordinated presswork, which resulted in NPR's All Things Considered, the New York Times, and the Washington Post covering the Piedmont scandal. The Farmville Herald reversed its position on the new detention center to now challenge its relevance.
The critical coverage of management of detainees in Farmville had immediate results. Detainees were shipped out to different facilities, which was cause for concern. ICA began to have trouble with financing and fell months behind the initial timeline. The campaign was having an impact.
The statewide network mobilized a large rally and march in Farmville. Groups in Harrisonburg, Richmond, Charlottesville, Northern Virginia, Culpeper, and D.C. held monthly meetings, fundraisers, and university events to pull together a caravan of buses and cans, musical acts, T-shirts, speakers, signs, and a puppet show. 200-300 people attended the festive demonstration, witnessed by a busy downtown full of Farmville residents.
Beforehand, organizers wrangled with the town of Farmville over their archaic and prohibitive demonstration permit policies (no loud noises, signs larger than 2 feet, people under 18, or marches wider than single file). The ACLU of VA stepped in and threatened to a lawsuit over the unconstitutionality of the restrictions. Farmville backed down, rewrote the ordinance, and the controversy stirred media interest in the event. VA public radio, the Farmville Herald and the Richmond Times Dispatch covered the event. Quality of coverage varied.
After the event the campaign lost steam. Next steps for a public forum and increased local outreach for involvement fell flat. A advisory committee was never formed, and meetings were canceled and never rescheduled.
Later that summer, we received the news that building permits had been issued and construction was set to begin. The project was scaled down to about 3/4th of its original size because of continued problems with funding. Other news was that a similar center was being proposed for Franklin County, WV, and that there had been a death due to medical neglect in the criminal unit at Piedmont and the family was asking us for help. TPU convened another meeting and again evaluated the campaign so far including discussion of the various factors behind it running out of steam in recent months. The campaign decided to produce documents explaining and summarizing the campaign, be in touch with legal advocacy groups who would be involved with center when it opened, develop an emergency response plan for incidents at new facility, support family of Michael Baker, who died at the Piedmont facility, and to research and expose possible detention center in West Virginia.
Summary and Reflections
What did we achieve?
- Multiracial core group of over twenty activists who had never worked together before.
- facilitated by being one of the first fully bilingual grassroots campaign in Virginia (rallies, media events, and town council meetings , all planning meetings and strategy sessions)
- Contact with detainees at Piedmont Regional Jail.
- Better relationships with media and legal advocacy groups that may assist in responding to requests for advocacy from within the facility if and when it is opened.
- Rally and march in Farmville which turned out hundreds from over a dozen communities across the state. All told, the Virginia grassroots (not a single non-profit with any budget) - lawyers, students, working-class white communities, hundreds from primarily Latino immigrant communities, and to a lesser extent, black and Native-American communities - turned out for a raucous and high-energy mobilization
The march left many feeling the momentum to reinvigorate the Virginia Immigrants People's Coalition and other efforts to continue in collaboration that for months had been left relatively dormant.
What did we struggle with?
- We did not find out about ICA's construction plans until well after the proposal had been approved and Farmville Town Council's formal community input process had ended.
- Our first goal: Stopping construction of the center, was ambitious at best, especially given that our campaign was being driven by one primary organizer for much of the time and the group in general had never worked together.
- The core group's most vocal and directive members all came from experience organizing in an anti-authoritarian context and desired an open process that would allow for newly politically active folks to get involved and have their voices heard. This context certainly provided outlets for newly politicized members of the campaign to continue building skills. However, this led tasks, like coordinating the media team, to be given to virtually unknown activists who showed up to one meeting, with admittedly little experience.
- We struggled with transparency around experience levels and never openly talked about the campaign also serving as a learning opportunity given deliberate mentoring.
- Interpreters were experienced activists and organizers and rarely able to fully participate in any of the strategy meetings.
- Core group began to fall apart- responsibilities with day jobs, home, family began to weigh in, construction on center was a roadblock.
- Activists driving the campaign were primarily white and bilingual - Spanish/English - many with histories of Latin America solidarity organizing. While connections were made between immigrant leaders active in the campaign and African-American prison justice organizers at a statewide conference, it's important to at least recognize that in Richmond, still a majority black city, where most meetings were held, only once was a black activist present. Again, in the South, where getting folks in the same room together can, in itself, be a campaign victory, we struggled.
- We also struggled with both responding to immediate needs (like torture inside the Piedmont Regional Jail) and building a campaign that could last through this issue, leaving something to be built on for future radical political work.
What have we learned?
- To realistically evaluate our capacity and to set a reasonable timeline accordingly.
- That leadership development is key - importance of checking-in regularly to see how things are coming along, and intentionally pairing more experienced organizers with those wanting to learn.
- We've learned that all goals and intention aside, sometimes organizing is magical. We didn't stop the detention center from being built, and that was a huge blow. But even as is this is being written, the fruits of new political and personal relationships forged and strengthened during this campaign are being born.
How can we take what we've learned and use it to inform action moving forward?
We realize our primary goal - stopping construction of the center--quickly became the focus of the campaign as opposition spread and momentum built. The secondary and tertiary goals were rarely discussed intentionally as campaign strategy was developed. Recognizing this, we are actively thinking of ways to bring organizational and education-oriented goals up to the forefront of our work. For example, in Pendleton County West Virginia, where a new detention center is being planned, we are thinking more in terms of political education around the roots of immigration and immigrant detention - through a community forum or media actions - than around stopping the detention center itself. This is due to an evaluation of our capacity and an understanding of the long-term and base-building work needed in our communities.
Most importantly, our current organizing comes from a place of creating sustainable structures. The People United Board of Directors has become a working organizers collective where long-lasting relationships and relevant political analysis can be built and nurtured - a springboard for action. In addition, we're looking into starting a Virginia-based popular education and retreat center, understanding the importance of rural/urban connections, and physical space that we can grow into - to incubate movements where we're literally looking for new ground to stand on.
Above all we want to apply rigorous evaluation to each of our campaigns as we move forward and not solely as we're winding down.
The People United is a network of organizers working for social justice in Virginia and the surrounding area.
September 2008 organizers with The People United (TPU) learned through a Richmond news article of plans to construct a for-profit, 1,000-bed immigrant detention center in Farmville, VA. At this time plans for construction were already approved and moving ahead. The Incarceration Corporation of America (ICA) based in Richmond, VA was the private interest behind the center.
After extensive research, The People United approached allies in the region regarding joint action to oppose this new center, including the Virginia Immigrant People's Coalition and one of its most prominent members, Mexican@s sin Fronteras, the largest immigrants rights organization in Virginia. These groups, while interested and supportive, could not engage at that time due to work in response to ongoing crises. Because of the immediacy of the issue, The People United decided to start the campaign and keep the invitation to allied groups open.
Forty people from groups around the state attended an initial meeting, including immigrant members of immigrant solidarity groups in Charlottesville and Louisa. VCU students were the largest contingency. TPU and allies identified three goals for the campaign:
1. Stop construction of the center
2. Educate potential allies and the general public about immigration and immigrant detention issues
3. Build a stronger, better-connected network in the region, better prepared to respond to issues like this in the future
The initial strategy was to raise awareness and concern among Farmville residents and put pressure on Farmville town council at monthly public meetings. Participants gave testimony as allies and as directly affected immigrants.
Town council members are elected officials in Farmville, and the primary decision-makers on whether the plan would proceed to its completion, so were our primary targets. The campaign identified indirect ways to influence them as well, through the chamber of commerce, Farmville Herald, church and citizen groups, individual citizens, and business owners. TPU presence at town council meetings continued for most of the next six months.
Other actions included:
- Leafleting and Participating in Farmville/s Christmas Parade
- Ongoing Action Alerts
- Parody Website
- Canvassing
After several months, organizers heard that a detainee had died in Piedmont Regional Jail (also in Farmville) under suspicious circumstances. Outreach to legal support and detainee witnesses confirmed rumors. Further information from a FOA to ICE was denied. TPU escalated its media campaign.
The heightened media coverage reached detainees and their families, who were outraged at the local coverage of detainee deaths, which parroted ICE information on the issue. Detainees families and TPU coordinated presswork, which resulted in NPR's All Things Considered, the New York Times, and the Washington Post covering the Piedmont scandal. The Farmville Herald reversed its position on the new detention center to now challenge its relevance.
The critical coverage of management of detainees in Farmville had immediate results. Detainees were shipped out to different facilities, which was cause for concern. ICA began to have trouble with financing and fell months behind the initial timeline. The campaign was having an impact.
The statewide network mobilized a large rally and march in Farmville. Groups in Harrisonburg, Richmond, Charlottesville, Northern Virginia, Culpeper, and D.C. held monthly meetings, fundraisers, and university events to pull together a caravan of buses and cans, musical acts, T-shirts, speakers, signs, and a puppet show. 200-300 people attended the festive demonstration, witnessed by a busy downtown full of Farmville residents.
Beforehand, organizers wrangled with the town of Farmville over their archaic and prohibitive demonstration permit policies (no loud noises, signs larger than 2 feet, people under 18, or marches wider than single file). The ACLU of VA stepped in and threatened to a lawsuit over the unconstitutionality of the restrictions. Farmville backed down, rewrote the ordinance, and the controversy stirred media interest in the event. VA public radio, the Farmville Herald and the Richmond Times Dispatch covered the event. Quality of coverage varied.
After the event the campaign lost steam. Next steps for a public forum and increased local outreach for involvement fell flat. A advisory committee was never formed, and meetings were canceled and never rescheduled.
Later that summer, we received the news that building permits had been issued and construction was set to begin. The project was scaled down to about 3/4th of its original size because of continued problems with funding. Other news was that a similar center was being proposed for Franklin County, WV, and that there had been a death due to medical neglect in the criminal unit at Piedmont and the family was asking us for help. TPU convened another meeting and again evaluated the campaign so far including discussion of the various factors behind it running out of steam in recent months. The campaign decided to produce documents explaining and summarizing the campaign, be in touch with legal advocacy groups who would be involved with center when it opened, develop an emergency response plan for incidents at new facility, support family of Michael Baker, who died at the Piedmont facility, and to research and expose possible detention center in West Virginia.
Summary and Reflections
What did we achieve?
- Multiracial core group of over twenty activists who had never worked together before.
- facilitated by being one of the first fully bilingual grassroots campaign in Virginia (rallies, media events, and town council meetings , all planning meetings and strategy sessions)
- Contact with detainees at Piedmont Regional Jail.
- Better relationships with media and legal advocacy groups that may assist in responding to requests for advocacy from within the facility if and when it is opened.
- Rally and march in Farmville which turned out hundreds from over a dozen communities across the state. All told, the Virginia grassroots (not a single non-profit with any budget) - lawyers, students, working-class white communities, hundreds from primarily Latino immigrant communities, and to a lesser extent, black and Native-American communities - turned out for a raucous and high-energy mobilization
The march left many feeling the momentum to reinvigorate the Virginia Immigrants People's Coalition and other efforts to continue in collaboration that for months had been left relatively dormant.
What did we struggle with?
- We did not find out about ICA's construction plans until well after the proposal had been approved and Farmville Town Council's formal community input process had ended.
- Our first goal: Stopping construction of the center, was ambitious at best, especially given that our campaign was being driven by one primary organizer for much of the time and the group in general had never worked together.
- The core group's most vocal and directive members all came from experience organizing in an anti-authoritarian context and desired an open process that would allow for newly politically active folks to get involved and have their voices heard. This context certainly provided outlets for newly politicized members of the campaign to continue building skills. However, this led tasks, like coordinating the media team, to be given to virtually unknown activists who showed up to one meeting, with admittedly little experience.
- We struggled with transparency around experience levels and never openly talked about the campaign also serving as a learning opportunity given deliberate mentoring.
- Interpreters were experienced activists and organizers and rarely able to fully participate in any of the strategy meetings.
- Core group began to fall apart- responsibilities with day jobs, home, family began to weigh in, construction on center was a roadblock.
- Activists driving the campaign were primarily white and bilingual - Spanish/English - many with histories of Latin America solidarity organizing. While connections were made between immigrant leaders active in the campaign and African-American prison justice organizers at a statewide conference, it's important to at least recognize that in Richmond, still a majority black city, where most meetings were held, only once was a black activist present. Again, in the South, where getting folks in the same room together can, in itself, be a campaign victory, we struggled.
- We also struggled with both responding to immediate needs (like torture inside the Piedmont Regional Jail) and building a campaign that could last through this issue, leaving something to be built on for future radical political work.
What have we learned?
- To realistically evaluate our capacity and to set a reasonable timeline accordingly.
- That leadership development is key - importance of checking-in regularly to see how things are coming along, and intentionally pairing more experienced organizers with those wanting to learn.
- We've learned that all goals and intention aside, sometimes organizing is magical. We didn't stop the detention center from being built, and that was a huge blow. But even as is this is being written, the fruits of new political and personal relationships forged and strengthened during this campaign are being born.
How can we take what we've learned and use it to inform action moving forward?
We realize our primary goal - stopping construction of the center--quickly became the focus of the campaign as opposition spread and momentum built. The secondary and tertiary goals were rarely discussed intentionally as campaign strategy was developed. Recognizing this, we are actively thinking of ways to bring organizational and education-oriented goals up to the forefront of our work. For example, in Pendleton County West Virginia, where a new detention center is being planned, we are thinking more in terms of political education around the roots of immigration and immigrant detention - through a community forum or media actions - than around stopping the detention center itself. This is due to an evaluation of our capacity and an understanding of the long-term and base-building work needed in our communities.
Most importantly, our current organizing comes from a place of creating sustainable structures. The People United Board of Directors has become a working organizers collective where long-lasting relationships and relevant political analysis can be built and nurtured - a springboard for action. In addition, we're looking into starting a Virginia-based popular education and retreat center, understanding the importance of rural/urban connections, and physical space that we can grow into - to incubate movements where we're literally looking for new ground to stand on.
Above all we want to apply rigorous evaluation to each of our campaigns as we move forward and not solely as we're winding down.