![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/4.jpg\")
The “Radical Hospitality Zone,” where Eyes on ICE volunteers built a space for visitors coming to see people incarcerated in Delaney Hall.
\nOn May 22, 2026, amid a surge of hunger strikes in immigration detention prisons across the United States, 300 detainees announced from their cells in Newark, New Jersey that they would not eat and would not toil for their captors until their demands were met. This sparked ten days of protest and furious retaliation from federal, state, and local authorities. What began as a peaceful vigil outside Delaney Hall Detention Center in solidarity with the hunger strikers ended with New Jersey State Troopers encircling, brutalizing, and arresting scores of people.
\n\nThe series of events leading up to the strike and culminating in a marathon of violence has been densely packed. Consequently, the fog of war has obscured key details, including the complex dynamics at play between protesters and mutual aid workers, between experienced anti-ICE activists and the local terrain, between the government of New Jersey and federal mercenaries. Here, a participant in mutual aid efforts at Delaney Hall over the preceding months—who was on the ground for much of this wave of protests—recounts how the clashes unfolded.
\n\nYou can donate to support families impacted by immigrant detention here.
\n\nI am a volunteer with Eyes on ICE New Jersey, a mutual aid collective that has been providing aid and hospitality to the detainees held captive in Delaney Hall—which is one of the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in the Northeast—and to the families that travel to visit them.
\n\nEyes on ICE is a coalition of volunteers and a preexisting network of aid organizations, including Movimiento Cosecha, Pax Christi New Jersey, First Friends of New York and New Jersey, Mami Chelo Foundation, and others that have emerged over decades of advocating for those subjected to an increasingly archaic immigration system. Established immigrant justice and faith-based communities with aligned advocacy goals converged on Delaney Hall soon after it reopened in May 2025. Despite the forceful retaliation of federal and local police, the protests continued, only slowing down after the arrests of faith leaders and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.
\n\nOver the following weeks, protesters self-organized and refocused their efforts—shifting to assisting detainees and their families through networks of aid distribution, lawyers, and advocates, seeking to catch people before they fall through the cracks. At the same time that the aid group was being built, a ring of concertina-topped mesh-fencing sprang up around the prison. As the weather grew colder, the government of Essex County, the county that holds the detention facility, erected a permanent white tent to house Eyes on ICE. That tent has come to be called the “Radical Hospitality Zone.”
\n\n The “Radical Hospitality Zone,” where Eyes on ICE volunteers built a space for visitors coming to see people incarcerated in Delaney Hall.
\nVolunteers who do not have professional careers in advocacy participate by helping to maintain a community at the prison gates. Some of us cook or battle inclement weather. Others offer child care, collect donations of groceries and diapers, assist visiting families with transportation, or beautify the tent that houses us with art and music. All of us work together to document the detainees and their captors.
\n\nDelaney Hall Detention Center is situated in one of the busiest shipping hubs in the country. Located directly behind Newark Airport, the private prison shares the same square mile with multiple incineration plants and a busy commercial road. Periodically, a train screams by loaded with trash to be incinerated or animal carcasses for reprocessing at the facility across the street. The prison is about the size of a Costco, with a 1000-bed capacity. It is operated by GEO Group, one of the largest private prison contractors in the world. GEO Group has a poor human rights track record and is quick to dismiss any inquiries or criticisms.
\n\nThe New Jersey Globe reports that the prison is often at maximum capacity; volunteers do their best to count the number of captives inside the tinted windows of the vans that come and go. Some of the people who are released tell us they were arrested just days earlier, usually by accident or as a consequence of racial profiling. Others have been in the system for months,
\n\n\n\n\n“…transferring between detention centers in Louisiana, Texas, and then back to Delaney, seemingly with the dual purpose of keeping them hidden or underrepresented in the legal system, while also creating excuses for GEO Group (owner of Delaney and often the largest private prison company in the states) to run up quite the tab with the obsequious federal government.”
\n\n \n
The facility is built on a filled-in portion of marshland and river. Backfill and debris from old construction form the foundation for Delaney Hall and the rest of the Ironbound neighborhood. The Ironbound is a historically redlined neighborhood, meaning it has long been home to Black, brown, and immigrant communities. Consequently, the Ironbound was zoned for heavy industry, and the 16-mile stretch of land that Delaney Hall sits on has come to be known as “Chemical Corridor” due to rampant environmental contamination from every form of industry imaginable.
\n\nIn short, it is desolate. There are no homes nearby and a single bus line serves the area. This was the arena for the week of state violence that shook the country.
\n\nOn May 22, Gabriela Soto, whose husband Martin Soto was then held in Delaney Hall, announced that a protest had begun within the prison. During the early hours of the protest, she publicly shared a phone call with Martin. The privilege of speaking on the phone with detainees has since been revoked for all families, along with all other forms of visitation. During that call, Martin announced that he had coordinated with up to 300 other detainees to begin a hunger and labor strike to draw attention to inhumane living conditions and lack of due process under the law.
\n\nDetainees in Delaney Hall are forced to do all the work to maintain their own prison, receiving $1 per day in return; they regularly report receiving extremely poor quality food, including spoiled food. There are also consistent reports of mistreatment, unsafe living conditions, medical neglect, and sexual assault. Navigating the legal procedures around their detention is difficult; at best, these are intentionally opaque.
\n\nStarting months before the strike began, Eyes on ICE volunteers and participating organizations received a series of handwritten letters from detainees. In March, a letter arrived captioned with a large “S.O.S.” and undersigned by 300 detainees from across various cell units. They detailed horrendous conditions, rapid transfers and deportation hearings, and other forms of torture. Many called specific judges out by name for their cruelty.
\n\nThe strikers demanded that New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill come to Delaney Hall to meet with them and witness the conditions in the prison. They also called for the very young, very old, and medically infirm be released from the prison; an end to coercive pressure to sign voluntary deportation papers; and a meaningful review of cases and habeas corpus filings.
\n\nGabriela Soto’s announcement precipitated a coordinated call for all Eyes on ICE volunteers and their communities to participate in a 24/7 vigil in solidarity with the strikers.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/3.jpg\")
May 22, 2026: the hospitality tent outside Delaney Hall. Gabriela Soto holds a sign she made with her family as she announces the hunger strike.
\nThat vigil began immediately after Gaby made her announcement at noon on May 22. At 2 pm, family members of the detainees who were on strike reported that they were unable to communicate with their loved ones. The detainees typically had access to tablets that could make video calls, but the prison guards had revoked the communication privileges of the units that were on strike in retaliation. This information was confirmed by a person detained in the striking unit 2a/b. About to be deported, he used his final phone time to validate this detail. While other detainees in other units had agreed to the strike, 2a/b was the unit Martin Soto was held in, the unit that had initially announced the strike.
\n\nBy 6 pm, the number of protesters at the vigil had swelled to between thirty and forty people. There were several local media vans on scene. The story garnered a brief mention in the evening news in relation to the other strikes across the country.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/6.jpg\")
Outside Delaney Hall on the evening of Friday, May 22.
\nAs protesters chanted and sang into the night, detainees could be seen silhouetted in the windows closest to the street—waving, dancing, and placing heart-shaped cutouts against the opaque glass. Their response drove home that the vigil was cutting through their isolation.
\n\nAs the evening went on, a few detainees were released, as usual, one or two at a time, often as a consequence of paying bail. The volunteers carried out their intake process and made sure they were safe and had access to transportation and legal advice.
\n\nThe protest lasted through the night and into the following days without incident. Guards and protesters exchanged insults, but neither side deployed anything stronger.
\n\nOn Saturday, May 23, Gaby shared that her husband Martin, now seen as the primary instigator of the strike, had been offered release if he would call off the strike. According to Gaby, he said, “I don’t want to talk, put me back into my cell.”
\n\nThe alarm system for the building was set off for the day and night, a tactic that Eyes on ICE volunteers have witnessed as a means of psychologically torturing the detainees. The alarm is about the volume of a fire alarm in most high schools, but left on for the entire day and night to prevent sleep.
\n\nThough guards initially denied him entry, Senator Andy Kim was eventually able to enter the facility. He spent several hours inside, speaking to dozens of detainees. In a speech he made afterwards, joined by Representative Rob Menendez, Kim confirmed most of the claims of the strikers, including the poor food and water quality, unacceptable sanitary conditions, and reports of mistreatment and medical neglect.
\n\nAnother night passed without incident as the protesters maintained a continuous presence. On Saturdays and Sundays, the facility is open for visitation and families are allowed in. Families continued to come for regular visitation throughout the weekend, bringing children and elders. This gave a familial air to the protest, with children chalking on the driveway leading to the gates and sometimes leading chants.
\n\nOn Saturday evening, Martin’s cell mates reported that ICE agents or guards came to the room to remove Martin to solitary confinement. Each twenty to thirty or more people inside. All thirty of Martin’s cellmates grouped around him and locked arms, refusing to let him be punished for his role in the strike.
\n\nAt about 4 pm on Sunday, May 24, Gaby approached the prison for a scheduled visit with Martin. Once she was inside the fence but had not entered the facility itself, she saw two ICE agents physically carry her husband out of the prison and throw him into the back of one of the white vans used for detainee transfer. Later, when she was eventually permitted to talk with him, she discovered that guards had lured him into leaving his cell by reassuring him that he was going to be released. He followed them to a second room, where ICE officials attempted to interrogate him, then prepared him for transfer and tossed him into a van.
\n\nA call went out to Eyes on ICE volunteers and to various other leftist and aid groups as far afield as New York and Pennsylvania. Because Delaney Hall receives detainees from a large area, this was not just New Jersey’s fight. The message of Eyes on ICE was simple: “They’re retaliating against the strikers, and we won’t let them disappear even a single one until their demands are heard.”
\n\nElected officials who had been planning a congressional oversight visit that week were notified. The US representative for New Jersey, Rob Menendez, arrived later that night for an unannounced visit. He had visited a week prior but had left with the impression that the prison had been prepared in expectation of his inspection. Menendez was allowed into the gates of the prison, but was barred from entry for fourteen hours while a cleaning crew came to dispose of whatever they did not want him to see. He remained in the courtyard in the rain that whole night, trying to check vehicles for transfers and relaying information to protesters outside the gate.
\n\nThe blocking action started immediately with the legal protection of a federal judge’s court order—put in place pending the review of a previously filed Habeas petition barring Martin’s removal from the facility. With the blocking action in place, protesters formed a barrier from orange plastic water tanks commonly used as construction barriers. About 150 protesters stood behind the barrier by 8 pm on Sunday night.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/5.jpg\")
Outside Delaney Hall on the evening of May 24.
\nAs the night wore on, the crowd thinned to about 75 people, but they successfully stopped each attempted transfer from the facility. Eyes on ICE volunteers attempted to persuade the crowd to respect the property boundaries and refrain from physically obstructing the personal vehicles of GEO Group employees. Newark Police were dispatched several times to escort the transport vans past the crowd; people clearly and calmly explained to them that they were participating in an illegal removal. They disengaged at about 11 pm.
\n\nSpirits were high, but several protesters argued over tactics. Many did not understand why volunteers asked that GEO Group vehicles be allowed to leave. The crowd did their best to inspect non-transport vehicles as they exited, but some protesters wanted to limit all vehicle movement in and out. Volunteers with Eyes on ICE repeatedly explained their reasoning for not wanting to engage with the police. Many volunteers had been present for the previous year’s protests at the facilities’ opening and did not want a repeat incident.
\n\nAt several points, GEO employees lurched their vehicles through the crowd, hitting people and almost pinning one against a barrier.
\n\nAt 1:30 am that night, a light rain began to fall. Protesters were formed in two groups, one by the main gate composed of between forty and fifty protesters and a smaller group of about ten by a secondary unused gate a hundred yards to the south, called gate five. It had been almost two hours since the agents attempted any transports, and the energy of the protesters was settling for a night’s vigil.
\n\nSuddenly, approximately twenty ICE agents stormed from the south gate, armed with pepper spray. They shoved through the newly assembled barriers and sprayed several people in the smaller group of sentries. The ICE agents grabbed those who attempted to defend the barrier and threw them to the ground. One woman in her sixties remained at the barrier; three agents shoved her to the ground, picked her up, and threw her back down with considerable force about ten feet away. She was taken to the University Hospital about an hour later for broken ribs and trouble breathing.
\n\nAs soon as they had cleared a pathway, a convoy of ten unmarked vehicles, mostly Jeep compasses, sped out of the facility headed north toward downtown Newark. Later, a suspicion was confirmed that one of the vehicles carried Martin Soto, illegally transporting him to Elizabeth detention center—a smaller ICE facility.
\n\nOnce the vehicle carrying Martin and an escort vehicle were clear of the main body of protesters, the remaining eight cars turned around in the entrance of the Essex County Corrections Facility, a medium-security state prison right next to Delaney Hall. The feds sped recklessly through the protesters on the street, narrowly missing several. They stopped their cars in a line directly in front of the south gate and deployed from their vehicles, one to two agents emerging from each car. Most agents were armed with telescoping batons, and about five carried large cans of pepper spray (likely MK 38, supplied by Safariland).
\n\nThe protesters at the north gate began responding to the ICE agents. Gaby was taken into the hospitality tent and instructed not to leave, as she was four months pregnant. Some protesters stayed behind at the north gate to ensure that the agents were not acting as a decoy. The rest rushed south. Just as they arrived to find that the crew at the south gate had been beaten and sprayed, the agents resumed spraying. However, the parallel parked vehicles on the street partially screened the protesters, and a truck returning from the port with a large shipping container in tow was stopped, further blocking the spray.
\n\nSome protesters and independent photographers ran into the street to confront or photograph the agents. They were sprayed and chased back to the sidewalk, where agents hit several people with batons and sprayed several more at point-blank range. The entire encounter lasted about three minutes from the ICE agents exiting the gate to the moment they returned to their vehicles and sped south for the night.
\n\nThe pepper spray had severe effects, as most of the protesters that evening lacked adequate PPE.
\n\nRepresentative Menendez maintained that he did not see the agents move Martin from the back of the van that he was believed to be in, but Menendez did not claim to have been watching it the whole time.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/2.jpg\")
Graffiti directing people in New York City to show up outside Delaney Hall in Newark.
\nThe events of the previous night marked the escalation that set the tone for the following week. A continuous presence of volunteers and protesters maintained the vigil throughout that night; the following morning, approximately ten protesters remained outside the gates of Delaney Hall. Governor Mikie Sherrill was due to arrive at 10 am to attempt entry and give a press briefing at the facility. Menendez remained inside the gates, still barred from entry.
\n\nAt about 7:30 am, a group of ICE agents could be seen staging down Doremus Ave, the road on which Delaney Hall is located. The agents were joined by a BearCat—a police armored personnel carrier. The roughly twenty agents were armed with pepper spray; the agent in the turret of the BearCat sported a FTC PRO pepperball gun.
\n\nThe agents dispersed the last few protesters and tore down the temporary barriers, lifting them into the dumpster beside the south gate. They then staged in front of the gate, standing across from a slowly growing crowd of protesters and journalists.
\n\nGovernor Sherrill arrived with more media in tow to cover her press briefing. She unsuccessfully attempted to enter Delaney Hall, then delivered a speech in front of the gates. Her speech frustrated protesters, as she offered few details about how the strikers’ demands might be met. She also misrepresented some details of the demands and the operations of the facility, suggesting that she had only a superficial understanding of the conflict.
\n\nThe governor departed by 11 am, and tensions between protesters and ICE agents mounted quickly. ICE agents attempted to clear a path through the crowd for a steady stream of transport vehicles. Senator Kim attempted to intervene, negotiating with the ICE agents and the gathering crowd to allow vehicles to pass if he could check them for transfers. Some protesters continued blocking vehicles. For the most part, Kim was denied access to the transport vehicles.
\n\nWhile Kim stood between protesters and the agents, still negotiating, a transport approached from the gates. The crowd pressed forward and the agent on the turret of the BearCat opened fire indiscriminately. Afterwards, Kim reported that he felt the sting of something hitting him in the back, and then a chemical burn in his lungs and eyes. The agents also deployed pepper spray, striking many people, including Kim and several of his staffers, who required eye flushing afterwards.
\n\nKim eventually gained entry to the facility after personally calling the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayn Mullin. This was possible only because of congress is the source of funding for all DHS operations, which secures them legal power of oversight. Afterwards, Kim was able to confirm that Martin Soto had been transferred.
\n\nAfter the melee, the pressure of the crowd diminished as protesters and volunteers regrouped. Throughout the day, reports returned from family that the strikers were being collectively punishment. Most of the strikers were prevented from communicating with anyone outside, including with lawyers or with commissary accounts needed to purchase supplemental food. Some prisoners were forced to stand for extended periods of time, and many were threatened with transfer. Visitation was canceled indefinitely. The strikers reported that they were frustrated that people outside Delaney Hall were focusing on the conditions in the prison, emphasizing their desire for freedom, due process, and the closure of the detention facility.
\n\nThe agents who had attacked the crowd eventually reentered the facility. The rest of the afternoon and evening passed without incident.
\n\nThroughout the afternoon and evening, protesters built a barricade, tearing up cement bricks from a retaining wall between the prison and the sidewalk. They employed additional scrap metal and refuse from the adjacent train tracks to reinforce the barricade.
\n\nOnce again, at 7 am, ICE agents reinforced by a BearCat deployed from the south gate. Using pepper spray and batons, they cleared a path through the crowd of about twenty protesters. Confrontations between protesters and ICE agents continued.
\n\nBy 4 pm, the crowd had grown to about 60 protesters. As the number of protesters grew, more agents appeared, forming a line. They pulled up three vehicles branded with ICE logos. These vehicles are typically not used for regular immigration enforcement operations; they first showed up in Minneapolis during a retaliatory rampage Greg Bovino led on January 13. They staged the vehicles in front of the gates, with the agents shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk facing the protesters assembled in the street.
\n\nAs the sun set at 8 pm, the shoving match between agents and protesters settled into a 30-minute rhythm in which agents repeatedly lunged forward across the five feet separating the two lines. First, some agents would deploy pepper spray while others charged forward holding their batons horizontally as a bar at chest height. Once in contact with the arm-locked crowd, they would shove people to the ground, often swinging the batons at people’s knees. Sometimes this push coincided with vehicles leaving or entering the south gate, but often, there were no vehicles coming; it was as if they were adhering to a schedule.
\n\nThe agents deploying the pepper spray repeatedly sought to pull protesters’ protective masks and goggles away from their faces in order to spray directly into their eyes and mouths. At first, the medics treating those impacted by the pepper spray were baffled by how long the effects lasted and how resistant the spray was to decontamination with soap solution. They eventually concluded that ICE had switched to a pepper-gel formulation, likely to compensate for the persistently windy conditions on Doremus Avenue.
\n\nThree individuals were marked for capture in the course of the night, and agents repeatedly broke through the line of protesters in twos or threes to chase them down. ICE agents incapacitated one of these individuals with a taser, and slammed the other two to the ground. All three were carried through the prison gates. One of the detainees was a volunteer with Eyes on ICE, marked with a red cross and explicitly operating as a medic. The agents flashed their flashlights at him repeatedly, and one protester reported hearing a confirmation of location and target from the agents immediately before they attempted to detain him. Eight agents surrounded and tackled the medic about twenty yards outside the conflict line, and carried him face down back to the prison.
\n\nLater that evening, all three of the people that ICE had captured that day were left under a bridge about two miles away with all of their possessions. The medic was still marked with his red cross. One of the detainees reported being locked in an unventilated van for almost seven hours with his hands restrained and a possible concussion.
\n\nClashes continued through the night, with the agents using copious amounts of pepper spray. By morning, when many of the protesters had dispersed, the BearCat returned. During an outdoor recreation period, one of the detainees called out to the protesters: “Libertad, libertad, libertad!” Guards were observed mocking the prisoners and attempting to goad them into a confrontation, threatening them with large canisters of what volunteers suspected to be tear gas.
\n\nThe detainees who were still able to call their lawyers reported that the labor strike had forced the prison administrators to clean the bathrooms themselves. The strikers were not allowed to leave their rooms, and there were reports of a strong chemical odor emanating from the ventilation pipes. One ambulance left the facility that evening. One of the hunger strikers was released.
\n\nOnce again, the ICE agents adhered to the 30-minute intervals, repeatedly pushing protesters back, often into heavy traffic. Doremus Avenue serves as an industrial artery, with large cargo trucks comprising much of the traffic. ICE agents repeatedly shoved protesters into the wheels of passing trucks. The agents appeared to be attempting to coordinate their attacks with the passing of traffic.
\n\nThe agents mostly used their batons as barring tools to secure space while other agents swung the batons at the knees of protesters. In the course of the day, several protesters required transport to the hospital, suffering nerve and bone damage from beatings or vehicle strikes. The same woman who had been the first casualty of Sunday night required a return trip to the hospital. She was unable to walk.
\n\nThat evening, protesters intensified their defensive strategy, employing shields constructed from traffic cones. More experienced anti-ICE activists from the Twin Cities, Los Angeles, and Chicago arrived to share tactical experience. Activists from Minnesota reported shock at the intensity of violence on display at the gate.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/10.jpg\")
Demonstrators confront ICE agents outside Delaney Hall on Wednesday, May 27.
\nGovernor Sherrill held a press briefing on the afternoon of Thursday, May 28, announcing a need for DHS to step back from crowd control functions at the gate and declaring that the state police would take their place the following day. She also announced the establishment of a “First Amendment Zone” to “protect” the protesters. During the day, prison officials spray-painted a line marking the boundary of the property of Delaney Hall. In fact, apart from the private property of the prison, the entire sidewalk and street is public property, and should legally require no special demarcation regarding where people’s rights begin and end.
\n\nAt about 1:30 pm, advocates and family members began receiving calls from detainees relaying that about forty guards from the Corrections Emergency Response Team (CERT) had entered their unit and began beating selected targets among the strikers, with ICE agents joining in.
\n\nThis retaliation occurred when CERT entered the striking unit 2a/b to remove a detainee who had been translating for the strikers’ communications with advocates outside. The strikers, gathered in a common area between cells, locked arms around that person. The agents and CERT team beat them and deployed CS gas in the hallways to drive the strikers back into their rooms. Then they opened each door in the unit and sprayed a heavy dose of pepper spray into the poorly ventilated rooms. Four ambulances carried away severely injured detainees later that afternoon, and nearly all of those in the striking women’s unit (unit 1) were transferred out of the prison.
\n\nThe contact between the line of ICE and the line of protesters replicated the established pattern of the previous day, intensifying at sundown, then becoming less frequent in the early morning as the number of protesters dwindled. During the day, the agents used batons less, opting for direct hand-to-hand confrontation. They would grab demonstrators’ clothing or PPE and use it to throw the protester to the ground. The agents appeared to be rotating on a nightly basis; Thursday night’s agents were visibly larger than their predecessors. They bodily lifted smaller protesters in order to throw them at the ground or into oncoming traffic. They continued to use batons, spray, and pepper balls, but to a lesser degree. Once again, a number of protesters were injured and required medical attention.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/11.jpg\")
ICE agents prepare to brutalize protesters outside Delaney Hall on Thursday, May 28.
\nOn Friday, May 29, reports began filtering in that strikers were eating again. The strikers communicated a new demand that outside medical treatment be offered to the members of unit 2a/b who had been beaten.
\n\nA number of Facebook groups announced a counter-protest at the prison planned for Saturday at 10 am. Pro-ICE counter-protesters had been appearing in growing numbers throughout the week, though never exceeding a handful. They typically arrived during the day and stood with the ICE agents, antagonizing the protesters.
\n\nNewark Police, in coordination with New Jersey State Police, began staging at the two roads intersecting Doremus about a half mile north and south of the prison. They put new barriers in place. The ICE agents were still visibly staged at the mouth of the south gate. An additional line of state and local police formed between the protesters and the ICE agents, facing the protesters. They conducted a few arrests, but much of the day passed without conflict. All non-commercial traffic was blocked from Doremus Avenue, forcing protesters and volunteers to park on the perpendicular roads, Roanoke Avenue and Wilson Avenue.
\n\nAs 9 pm approached, the crowd of protesters, holding steady at about one hundred people, received warning that they would be subject to arrest if they remained. State Police in riot gear closed off both ends of the street. At about 9:30 pm, a third line of State Police in riot gear appeared 300 yards north of the gathered protesters. The protesters formed their own line, facing north, and waited to see what sort of assault was coming.
\n\nAssuming a shield wall formation, the police began shooting mortar-fired tear gas behind the assembled protesters, into the direction that they were ordering the protesters to disperse. The police advanced, attacking the protesters with flash-bang grenades and less-lethal 40 mm foam rounds. Throughout the confrontation, they also used stinger pellet rounds, while ICE agents fired pepper balls from their position on the flank of the retreating protesters. The CS gas was largely ineffective, as the wind was blowing the gas from the south to the north, where the police line was formed. Mounted horse units moved in front of the advancing shield wall and charged the slowly retreating protesters.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/7.jpg\")
A photo supplied by a protester showing spent munitions that the New Jersey State Police fired at demonstrators on the night of May 29.
\nState Police fired tear gas directly at independent media journalists, hitting at least one person. Reporters from national media outlets suddenly disappeared into their vehicles and did not film the advance. It is possible they were instructed to do so ahead of time. As the protesters made contact with the shield wall of police, some shoving took place. The protesters eventually dispersed, retreating to their vehicles. Police arrested some of them. It was eventually learned from the police that the goal of the action was to open space for a shift change at the prison.
\n\nThe New Jersey Attorney General released a statement about the clashes between State Police and the protesters, characterizing the protesters as the instigators. Absurdly, they accused the protesters of attacking the police with tear gas, directly contradicting ample video documentation of what actually happened.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/1.jpg\")
A Department of Homeland Security vehicle damaged during a protest outside Delaney Hall on May 29.
\nNewark Mayor Ras Baraka announced a 9 pm curfew, calling for “order” in the streets. Newark Police erected metal corral barriers in front of their line facing the street and created a separation between the designated spaces for protest and counter-protest.
\n\nOver two hundred people assembled, despite the ban on parking on the entire street. Several hundred police were present as well, from multiple departments, both local and state.
\n\nAll this time, the volunteers at the hospitality tent had been organizing to receive people as they were released, as between one and three detainees had been released each day over the preceding three days. Volunteers also continued organizing peaceful protest events including prayer circles, singing, and dancing. Conflicts continued between volunteers and protesters who wanted to block vehicles. Multiple chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America had been called to the protest by the Eyes on ICE volunteers, with the request to train and assist in marshalling the crowd.
\n\nAt the most, between twenty and thirty individuals participated in the counterprotest. About eight of them claimed to represent the Proud Boys, arriving in shirts and masks branded with their signature logo. One carried a bottle of bear mace. No physical confrontations occurred and they eventually left at about 2 pm.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/8.jpg\")
Outside Delaney Hall on the afternoon of Saturday, May 30. Photograph by Fizzy Fox Photographer.
\nThe rest of the day passed without incident until the 9 pm curfew. Once again, the State Police staged to the north; but this time, they deployed the shield wall to the south of the crowd. They advanced on the crowd the same way they had the previous night, firing tear gas over the heads of protesters while throwing gas canisters and flash-bang grenades in front of them. Horse units deployed again, but this time, the protesters were less willing to give ground.
\n\nPolice pushed the protesters back to the part of the street directly in front of the south gate. At that point, Newark Police were attempting to hold the barrier fences between the police line and the street, perpendicular to the advancing shield wall. None of the local police were equipped with PPE; they began choking and covering their faces with their uniforms as clouds of gas wafted into their line. Protesters grabbed the dividing fence and pulled it away from the police, repurposing it as a barrier between themselves and the advancing shield wall. The Newark Police retreated into the prison gates.
\n\nThis time, protesters clashed more directly with the State Police, pushing back with makeshift shields and holding on to the barriers that they had pulled away from the local police. The police used same crowd control weapons again, eventually forcing the crowd of people north toward Roanoke Avenue. They made about a dozen arrests as the crowd retreated and inflicted severe injuries on several protesters, primarily by means of rubber bullets and other less-lethal rounds but also by slamming their shields into protesters.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/9.jpg\")
A confrontation outside Delaney Hall on the evening of Saturday, May 30. Photograph by Fizzy Fox Photographer.
\nAs the line of conflict moved past the hospitality tent, the police targeted several volunteers with Eyes on ICE and its affiliated aid organizations for arrest.
\n\nThe protesters slowly backed down Doremus until they reached the intersection of Roanoke and Doremus, where a second shield wall of riot police was waiting. The police stopped there and faced the remaining protesters for almost half an hour while the protesters led chants and gave speeches. Someone started a fire using the tires and debris scattered over the road. The protesters chanted “When the streets get hot, ICE MELTS! When the streets burn, ICE MELTS!” as they prepared for what appeared to be a kettling action.
\n\nThe confrontation fizzled when a person in a wheelchair, accompanied by someone pushing it, approached the police line and began asking to be let through. Both people identified themselves as press; one was an Associated Press photographer and the other, a New York Times reporter. Both were displaying press credentials on lanyards. The person in the wheelchair informed the police that their knee was broken and they needed to pass the shield wall to reach immediate medical attention. The police were silent.
\n\nThis encounter lasted for ten minutes, with the protesters offering to back up to convince the police to open a passage for the injured person. With no audible instructions from the police, the journalists continued to plead; eventually, the police opened a small hole in their line. The injured person asked several times if it was safe to approach; the police gave no discernible answer. Eventually, without instruction from the police, the two passed through the opening. Police issued warnings to the remaining protesters, arresting and charging a few of them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/12.jpg\")
A fire down the street from Delaney Hall on the evening of Saturday, May 30.
\nFar fewer protesters arrived on Sunday, May 31. The entire street was closed to nonessential traffic. Those who did show up stood at the intersections with Roanoke to the north or Wilson to the south. For the first time, police did not let in volunteers to receive released detainees.
\n\nAt midday, Governor Sherrill held a press briefing, announcing a coordinated effort to cooperate with local police to take over and eventually close Delaney Hall through legal means.
\n\nAs the curfew approached, between fifty and sixty protesters gathered at the intersection of Wilson and Doremus, facing the State Police at the new roadblock. Some protesters pleaded with the police to reconsider their actions, informing them that the protesters were unarmed and holding their hands up to demonstrate this. At one point, people on foot who had traveled to Doremus to visit friends in the Essex County Corrections Facility walked into the middle of the standoff and, not knowing what exactly was going on, joined the protesters. They down sat in front of the protesters, who gave them helmets to protect them from less lethal munitions.
\n\nAll of the medics departed, pleading with the protesters to do the same, arguing that they had sustained too many injuries and arrests to remain in danger.
\n\nAt about 10 pm, the police began firing rubber bullets sporadically. Officers could be seen coordinating to target specific protesters. Some protesters began singing, “All that we are saying is give peace a chance,” hands raised in the air. Police received the order to advance and began rushing toward the protesters, shooting rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. The protesters turned and ran.
\n\nSynchronizing their movements, the police encircled the retreating crowd with a shield line. They formed a half circle around the protesters, backing them up against a wall. For ten minutes, they periodically picked off protesters at the edge of the kettle. Four police officers seized one of the people who had happened upon the protest while on their way to visit the Essex facility, dragging him into the wall of shields in a seated position. The wall of police closed around him, concealing the officers as they beat and pepper-sprayed him.
\n\nThe police closed in three steps in unison. Then they announced that individuals with “verified” press credentials would be allowed to leave. An officer checked press passes as at least ten independent journalists left the kettle.
\n\nAfter pushing the journalists to a distance of over a hundred yards away, the police mass-arrested the remaining detainees. They made a total of sixty-four known arrests that night, including mutual aid volunteers. All the arrestees were held overnight and released with court summonses after twenty hours in custody. Most of the charges were “disorderly persons” and resisting arrest.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/04/13.jpg\")
Demonstrators use traffic cones to attempt to extinguish tear gas canisters on the night of May 30. We recommend immersing canisters in water to extinguish them; you can learn about how to do so safely here.
\nThe next day, Mayor Baraka announced that he would not be participating in cooperation with the State Police or ICE. He cited the misuse of police force, claiming that it was putting Newark’s own officers in danger.
\n\nGovernor Sherrill also made an announcement, presenting a plan to close Delaney Hall by bringing a lawsuit against GEO Group for illegally barring state inspectors from accessing the facilities’ medical units, bathrooms, and sleeping areas. She characterized the Eyes on ICE volunteers who had been rendering mutual aid and legal assistance to detainees and their families as “peaceful protesters, there for the past year,” implying that the Radical Hospitality Tent was some sort of state-sanctioned, palatable protest center. This is how her remarks were reported on outlets like Fox News. She also announced that she would be handing management of the street over to the Newark Police and withdrawing most of the State Police.
\n\nOn Monday, as a limited number of Eyes on ICE volunteers were allowed back to the tent, they discovered investigative units from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations inside, ransacking it. The agents had overturned everything inside the tent; many items were missing including diapers, an electric cooler, announcements of prayer gatherings posted on a bulletin board, and personal possessions.
\n\nThe hospitality tent still stands, though it will take professional cleaning crews to decontaminate it of CS gas residue. The volunteers are exhausted, but those who were arrested have been released, albeit with charges. Eyes on ICE continues working to ensure some degree of independent monitoring at the detention facility as well as supporting detainees and their families.
\n\nNew Jersey is still reeling from the week of vicious retaliation for the strike from both the state and federal governments. Narratives about the protests are regularly misrepresented in corporate news outlets. Nonetheless, centrists who were mostly sympathetic to the volunteers before this week have experienced collective disillusionment with state authority, especially with their Democratic governor, Mikie Sherrill.
\n\nIt remains to be seen whether conditions will improve for the detainees in Delaney Hall. Yet their story has been elevated to a national audience, forcing another discussion about police violence and immigration enforcement. For now, ICE continues to operate from their field office in downtown Newark at 614 Frelinghuysen Avenue.
\n\nAn increasing number of people have been released from the facility, including some who managed to obtain the attention of congresspeople on oversight visits. Many of those released have expressed profound gratitude for the nationwide expressions of solidarity, and the solidarity of the protesters, which they could hear from within their cells. The strike at Delaney Hall has sparked strikes in other facilities around the country.
\n\nVisitation is set to resume soon with new restrictions. The people who stand at the gates of Delaney Hall, day in and day out, will continue to stand there. Many will continue working to dismantle the unjust immigration system, as they did before the opening of Delaney Hall.
\n\nAnti-ICE protesters will regroup and converge on the next flashpoint, wherever that may be. Their numbers will likely be bolstered by new companions from New York and New Jersey, who will add their recent experience defying ICE to the movement’s collective memory. The fight will continue as they refine their tactics and strategies.
\n\nFrom February 28 to March 2, hundreds of abolitionists and anarchists from across the country converged in Gainesville for the first Florida Abolitionist Gathering (FAG). Across a passionate weekend of workshops, films, food, debate, ritual, and protest, the contours of a robust regional resistance movement came into focus. The intergenerational, heavily queer and trans, and strongly multi-issue and anarchist group of abolitionists that converged in Florida articulated an expansive vision of liberation anchored in the urgent need to dismantle the prison-industrial complex in all its manifestations. The gathering showed that even as liberals wring their hands about the death of democracy, scrappy groups of organizers continue to fight back—and sometimes win—deep within the belly of the beast.
\n\nEven within the darkening landscape of hyper-policing, anti-immigrant crackdowns, racist backlash, and transphobia spreading across the US, Florida poses a particularly chilling context. Despite his conflicts with Donald Trump, popular conservative governor Ron DeSantis has led a vicious campaign against activists in the state for years, prefiguring the national MAGA obsession with pushing back against all things “woke.” The notorious 2021 HB1 law passed in the aftermath of the Justice for George Floyd uprisings dramatically expanded the definition of a “riot” and the charges that can be levied against protesters, made toppling statues a felony, and limited the liability of anyone who injures or kills protesters, among other appalling provisions. The power of developers continues to surge, resulting in rollbacks of environmental protections and further reductions in affordable housing, while punitive policies criminalizing homelessness have led to sweeps of parks. As poverty and harsh laws sweep more and more people into jails and prisons, the conditions inside have worsened. New policies have ended physical mail delivery in most facilities and nearly succeeded in eliminating in-person visits, while DeSantis has called in the National Guard to staff prisons.
\n\nSuffice it to say: in Florida, abolitionists face an uphill battle.
\n\nYet the state also features a robust array of resistance movements, including a strong anarchist presence, which have long pushed back against environmental destruction, gentrification, xenophobia, and mass incarceration. The Earth First! Journal was based in Lake Worth, Florida for some years, and active EF! chapters along with groups such as Fight Toxic Prisons have fought campaigns against ecocidal developers and prison profiteers. Protesters have targeted the headquarters of the GEO Group, a major private prison company; the Lake Worth-based Prison Legal News collects and circulates a wide range of information on prisoner rights.
\n\nIn 2020, outside organizers concerned about the horrifying conditions facing prisoners during the COVID pandemic launched the Community Hotline for Incarcerated People in South Florida, documenting abuses and offering support to hundreds through legal referrals, advocacy, and protest. A mass demonstration in Tallahassee memorialized people who died in Florida prisons in the pandemic, featuring the testimony of a person whose father died from COVID-19 in prison and the laying of body bags in front of the state capitol building.
\n\nGainesville in particular has been the site of powerful abolitionist activism in recent years. Campaigns by Florida Prisoner Solidarity successfully forced the termination of prison labor contracts with the city and county in 2018, effectively closing the Gainesville Work Camp facility; in 2023, in response to activist pressure, the Alachua County Jail became the first in the South to offer free unlimited phone calls to prisoners.
\n\nLast year, local organizers agreed that something needed to happen to mobilize against rising fascism in the state and nationally. They proposed a gathering that would bring together abolitionists and anarchists to network and share strategies. While many solidarity groups and campaigns operate in Florida, the geography of the state is so spread out that organizers from different regions may rarely have the chance to connect and collaborate. This gathering offered a chance to bring these far-flung radicals together while keeping the spotlight on prison solidarity organizing, which can often be ignored in broader progressive activist spaces.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/03/15/1.jpg\")
Tabling materials at the 2025 Florida Abolitionist Gathering.
\nThe Civic Media Center (CMC) served as the home base for the 2025 Florida Abolitionist Gathering. One of the longest-lasting radical community spaces still operating in the US, the CMC emerged from the global justice and Indymedia movements of a previous anarchist generation. Since its founding in 1993, the space has offered an alternative library, reading room, and infoshop, hosted events in support of grassroots activism, and featured do-it-yourself music and cultural events. In addition to the CMC, organizers partnered with other local art spaces and the public library to ensure that they could accommodate a wide range of workshops and activities. It’s a good thing they did, because over two hundred participants thronged the gathering over the course of the weekend, filling most event spaces to capacity and spilling out into countless discussions in the CMC’s outside courtyard, in a nearby park, and elsewhere across the city.
\n\nThe gathering’s provocative acronym reflected the centrality of queer/trans organizers, participants, and topics. As we’ve observed on an international level, newer generations drawn to anarchist activity are disproportionately gender/sexual outlaws as well as political radicals; that pattern was very much in evidence in Gainesville.
\n\nTablers such as the Pansy Collective and Queers for Climate Justice offered queer/trans merch and perspectives. Sessions took place over the weekend on producing hormones for do-it-yourself HRT and herbal transition options, a prison book luncheon hosted by the Tranzmission Prison Project on strategizing to get queer content into prisons, a participatory poetry workshop on “writing the queer/trans body,” and a presentation on “Radical Queer Histories of Faggotry, Abolition, and Anarchy.” The Alyssa Rodriguez Center for Gender Justice, an organization dedicated to strengthening movements for gender justice across prison walls, fighting gender-based violence, and eliminating barriers to political participation for incarcerated survivors and other grassroots advocates, presented on the experiences of trans people in Florida DOC facilities and spoke about coalition organizing around reproductive justice and bodily autonomy within and beyond prisons. At a time of intensifying gender fascism, as the right increasingly demonizes trans people, restricts access to abortion, and excuses male sexual violence, it was encouraging to see abolitionist organizers foregrounding struggles for gender self-determination in the movement to end prisons.
\n\nThis intersectional logic informed a wide range of activities at the gathering. Presenters emphasized connections between varied struggles in workshops on Palestinian political prisoners, immigrant solidarity and anti-deportation efforts, and the environmental impact of jails and prisons. The final event on the program involved the screening of Can’t Stop Change, a new documentary film connecting stories from “LGBTQ2S+ artists, organizers, and educators across Florida (and the new Florida diaspora) into an intersectional climate justice narrative.”
\n\nThe weekend showed that today’s abolitionists see prisoner support and prison abolition movements as inseparably linked to a wide range of liberation struggles and can confidently articulate the links between them as they build solidarity.
\n\nThe specific context of Florida and the Southeast informed many presentations. The workshops included a teach-in on the oppression of Haiti and Haitian migrants, and its role within US empire; perspectives on Appalachian anti-capitalist and abolitionist organizing from the mine wars to mountaintop removal; the bail fund and hurricane relief mutual aid efforts in Asheville, North Carolina; and campaigns against new prison construction across the region by Fight Toxic Prisons. One especially interesting presentation by Root Legal, a South Florida nonprofit public interest law firm and community organizing project oriented towards addressing root causes of harm, shared their efforts to forge an abolitionist strategy working with “crime victims” to reject pressure from prosecutors to pursue criminal punishment.
\n\nAn innovative cultural project launched by the South Florida Community Hotline for Incarcerated People (CHIP) has produced “Bending the Bars”, a full album of original hip-hop written and recorded entirely by musicians inside the jails and prisons of Broward County, Florida. Despite a complete ban on in-person visits and severe restrictions on costly phone calls, outside supporters collaborated with a wide range of incarcerated rappers to produce a powerful musical effort that defies the state’s efforts to isolate and silence prisoners. This was one of many examples on offer of how ferocious, creative, and effective abolitionist organizing can thrive in unexpected places.
\n\nWhile local and regional efforts remained in the spotlight, on Saturday evening, attendees took inspiration from struggles in other territories. Many participants were relieved at the recent release of Leonard Peltier after nearly fifty years incarcerated on charges stemming from his participation in the American Indian Movement’s struggle for Indigenous self-determination. A longtime Florida supporter of political prisoners offered an emotional presentation on the significance of his case to prison movements; some older organizers recalled being radicalized by Peltier’s case decades ago, and despairing of ever seeing him freed in their lifetimes. After viewing a short video of Leonard addressing a crowd of supporters near his home in so-called North Dakota, the assembled abolitionists recorded a wildly enthusiastic cheer and message of support and solidarity, which was sent to Peltier through his supporters.
\n\nAfterwards, a large group viewed the recent CrimethInc. documentary Fell in Love With Fire, an anarchist account of the revolutionary uprising that swept through Chile from October 2019 to March 2020. Amid a weekend of sharing strategies for fighting back against an array of miserable conditions, it was electrifying to hear the stories of the Chilean revolt as a reminder that revolutionary possibilities exist in the here and now, that courageous mass defiance can dramatically alter the social consensus in a short period of time, and that the future is unwritten.
\n\nParticipants at the gathering showed a passionate interest not only in supporting prisoners and dismantling existing carceral facilities but also in critically rethinking the alternative ways our communities respond to harm. An evocative image appearing on stickers and t-shirts insisted, “Abolish All Carceral Logics,” illustrating the grip that our prison society can exert on our minds and hearts as well as our bodies.
\n\nOne of the weekend’s most widely discussed workshops was titled “Against Me Too: Against Survivor Politics,” which waded into the waters of controversy around efforts to respond to harm within radical communities via community accountability processes. The conversation proved so generative that when the session ended, participants agreed to convene a second time on Sunday to continue the dialogues that had begun. At a time when liberals commonly repurpose the MAGA chant “Lock Them/Him Up!” at spaces ranging from the Democratic National Convention to a rally to defend trans history at Stonewall, it is critical that those of us fighting for total freedom reject the creep of carceral logic into our own approaches to social transformation.
\n\nAnarchists have long critically reflected on our small-scale efforts to redress harm outside of criminal legal processes. The many discussions that unspooled within and beyond these workshops confirmed that a new generation of anarchists and abolitionists continue to debate how to dismantle patriarchy and keep each other safe outside of the ineffective and punitive approaches put forward by the state.
\n\nOn the last afternoon of the gathering, a well-attended caucus of non-white attendees met and shared experiences of navigating the gathering and broader organizing spaces. In the collective debrief session following, caucus participants shared a range of feedback about their experiences, critiquing the predominant whiteness of the gathering and asserting the importance of more autonomous spaces for non-white organizers to connect. While participants diverged in their perspectives of the weekend, many agreed that both the caucus space and the public debrief circle at the close of the gatherings schedule were key features that other gatherings should reproduce. In both autonomous organizing and critical participation in majority white efforts, Black, brown, and Indigenous attendees made clear that their perspectives are integral to effective movements for abolition and liberation. Other suggestions offered toward future gatherings included increased intergenerational spaces, sessions rooting us into the place we gather in and its local context, and expanding the variety of modalities for learning, sharing, and action.
\n\nFriday evening’s grief ritual offered one of the weekend’s most moving moments. The assembled participants shared a painfully long list of names of fellow organizers and loved ones who had died in recent years, adding them to a board that would eventually be composted, symbolizing their return to the earth to continue nourishing and fertilizing a new generation of resistance. One participant sung a song to honor Tortuguita, an anarchist murdered by police while defending the Weelaunee Forest in the movement to Stop Cop City in Atlanta.
\n\nAt the ritual and in several workshops across the weekend, participants honored the memory of Karen Smith, a prolific outside organizer who has been mourned by her comrades on both sides of the walls since her tragic death in a car accident in 2020. As a recently incarcerated organizer recalled, “She gave her heart, her mind, and her life to this movement.” Despite the intense grief and demoralization so many radicals feel amid personal losses and political defeats, the ritual showed the capacity of our radical movements to rebuild our resilience by honoring our departed comrades and sharing deeply with each other.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/03/15/6.jpg\")
The altar created by FAG 2025 participants during the grief ritual commemorating our departed comrades.
\nIn one of the weekend’s most powerful sessions, two Florida outside abolitionists joined Julius, one of the lead incarcerated organizers of the 2016 national prison strike in Florida, to discuss inside/outside resistance to the Florida Department of Corrections to a packed room of 75 attendees at the public library. After spending over seventeen years in Florida prisons since being sentenced as a teenager, Julius had just been released the previous month. In a particularly moving moment, a south Florida anarchist organizer arrived and approached Julius at the table; as it turned out, the two had been corresponding and organizing together for years, but had never before been able to meet in person. Their emotional embrace with tears in their eyes showed concretely the powerful bonds that can be forged through solidarity across prison walls.
\n\nJulius shared his perspectives on how becoming involved in inside/outside solidarity organizing since 2016 transformed his life. He traced his political development over his years inside, acknowledging the shame he felt about his past actions of stealing from other poor people from his own community and misogynistic behavior. While accepting responsibility for harm he caused, he explained that his sentence involved “no recognition of what I’ve been through, or the context that shaped me.” Receiving mail from outside organizers helped him reinterpret his experiences through a political lens, and as momentum built toward the national prison strike, he decided to go all in. He used his own scarce commissary funds to photocopy and circulate materials about the strike, and built relationships with prisoners who were widely respected whose influence could help ensure wider participation. His efforts paid off: at his facility, 90% of the prisoners participated in hunger strikes or sit-down work strikes. Florida prisons kicked off the strike nationally, launching in a dozen facilities two days before the scheduled date and startling Florida Deportment of Corrections officials.
\n\nLike other vocal strikers, Julius was targeted by the prison administration with made-up infractions and arbitrary transfers to other facilities in an attempt to hamper his organizing. Yet their strategy backfired. Although the authorities bounced him around to five different facilities in retaliation, Julius gleefully recounted, “I could reach five times as many people with the message as I could have if they’d just left me there.” But outside pressure proved instrumental to offsetting the consequences prison officials can inflict on inside organizers with near impunity. “That’s why your voices are so important,” Julius explained, “because they can’t tell you to shut the fuck up, pepper spray you, and throw you in a cell.”
\n\nJulius reiterated a lesson that incarcerated organizers have long emphasized: receiving mail, phone calls, visits, and commissary donations from outside supporters demonstrates to both prison officials and fellow prisoners that an inside organizer has support and cannot be subjected to abuse or isolation without consequences. Achieving a critical mass of both participation inside and support outside provides the only way to win victories and protect organizers, he explained: “They might catch us individually, but they can’t beat all of us.”
\n\nPrison was a harrowing experience, and adjusting to life on the outside for the first time in nearly two decades hasn’t been easy, Julius acknowledged. Small things could trigger his PTSD, from the jangle of keys (signifying the approach of guards) to the squeak of shoes on a basketball court (the soundscape of a fight or stabbing). But the organizing that changed his life inside has also transformed his notion of what could be possible in his life outside. The positive thing he’s taken from his seventeen years in Florida’s hellish prisons is the network he formed with other abolitionists—“It’s you comrades who are the inspiration.”
\n\nAlongside Julius’s powerful in-person testimony, panelists shared audio recordings of messages from two additional inside organizers who are still currently incarcerated. Their testimony—interrupted by the mechanical voice intoning “you have one minute remaining” that is so familiar to organizers—reminded attendees of the absence of the countless thousands of comrades who remain held captive behind the walls.
\n\nIn a poignant moment, Julius explained that across nearly two decades behind the walls, his biggest fear was “dying alone in prison without my voice ever being heard.” The panel showed how organizers can amplify those voices, strengthening movements for solidarity and abolition and overcoming the state’s efforts to bury people alive.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/03/15/4.jpg\")
Materials for participants at the gathering to write to prisoners.
\nAt the panel discussion, Julius had explained the powerful impact that noise demonstrations outside prisons and jails can have: “That gets their attention, I promise you!” So it was appropriate that the weekend concluded with a demonstration outside the Gainesville Work Camp, a prison focused on extracting prisoner labor that has recently reopened after activists successfully shut it down several years before. About twenty-five participants from the gathering held a spirited rally, making noise and chanting to let officials know that the exploitation of local prisoners did not go unnoticed.
\n\nA particularly feisty child of perhaps ten years old who had attended much of the gathering provided a highlight, getting on the bullhorn and chanting, “Oink oink, piggy piggy / We’re gonna make your lives shitty!”
\n\nAs the demonstration concluded with a chant of “We love you, we see you / We won’t be free without you,” a group of incarcerated workers could be seen waving. One organizer described it as the best part of the gathering: “After a weekend of talking about solidarity, then being in it.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/03/15/3.jpg\")
The demonstration at the Work Farm prison in Gainesville.
\nIn addition to the demonstration, the weekend’s cultural events raised a significant sum of money for a variety of solidarity projects. A show one evening benefited Florida Prisoner Solidarity’s support efforts, while proceeds from a rave helped the Gainesville Books to Prisoners program and mutual aid efforts in Gaza and Sudan. In particular, money raised throughout the FAG weekend successfully funded a water well in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, which is now supplying 300-400 families, enabling them to resist Israeli colonial forces seeking to displace them. The relationships of solidarity that were strengthened this weekend transcended apartheid walls and national borders as well as prison walls.
\n\nThe Florida Abolitionist Gathering showed the outlines of a fierce and broad movement against prisons and the world that creates them, anchored in an anarchist vision of total liberation. In the difficult times ahead, we can find strength in remembering that prisoners in the most horrific conditions have sustained their determination through the power of solidarity—and that every one of us can play a role in fighting back as we build towards a world free of prisons and all forms of exploitation and oppression.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/03/15/2.jpg\")
\nTo learn more or get involved:
\n\nOrganizations:
\n\nFilms:
\n\n\n\n" } ] }