On Saturday, June 6, Blue Line Indivisible and Indivisible ADK/Saratoga brought around 34 people, in the rain, to the Queensbury branch of Citizens Bank to bring attention to Citizens Bank’s financing* of the GEO Group, which operates Delaney Hall, a detention center in New Jersey.
North Country Light Brigade held signs spelling out “Citizens = Ice Camp Abuse,” arranged in front of the bank, and on the two corners of the intersection of US-9 and Aviation/Quaker Roads, protestors held banners saying “De-ICE Citizens Bank” or “Due Process for All.” A cage was also set up with a doll wearing a blue bunny hat in honor of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old who was detained in January, as a visual representation of “the shattering of families’ lives through ICE actions, even before being brought to detention camps,” according to a statement from Indivisible ADK/Saratoga.
Immigrants detained at Delaney Hall, launched a labor and hunger strike to bring attention to inhumane living and work conditions. Since then, state violence has increased against both detainees inside the prison and protesters outside the prison.
A protester from Thurman said “Citizens Bank is making a very large profit from financing these prison camps. People in them are being given bad food. Food with worms in it! People’s life threatening medical needs are being ignored. Children are being traumatized in a way that will never, ever go away. What in the world are the heads of Citizens thinking? How can they keep doing this? I don’t understand it.”…