Greensboro Gilded Cage
Tsuru for Solidarity sent a 15 member team of staff and volunteer members from our Child and Family Detention Campaign to Greensboro, North Carolina. The team, who have been working closely with local Greensboro organizers, traveled to North Carolina over Mother’s Day weekend to launch a campaign to close a new child detention center. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) who oversees child detention is opening this new 800 bed site for unaccompanied migrant children on the grounds of the former American Hebrew Academy.
Japanese American concentration camp survivors Satsuki, Kiyoshi, and Akemi Ina and four young people who are survivors of child detention at the notorious Homestead Influx Care Facility in Florida led a march to the detention site and spoke at a press conference on the experiences of children in detention. Local leaders from the American Friends Service Committee and Jalloh’s Upright Services (an immigrant advocacy organization) shared a statement of opposition to the child detention site speaking as mothers concerned for the wellbeing of the children scheduled to be detained there. Following the press conference, a wreath of flowers handmade by the Tsuru team and community members was placed at the gate in honor of children currently and previously incarcerated by the US government including two young people who died in ORR custody in the last 3 months.
TFS and AFSC sponsored a coalition luncheon after the direct action and TFS Healing Circle facilitators then led cross-community Healing Circles that included Japanese American concentration camp survivors, child survivors of the Homestead detention site and community organizers.