On Jan. 20, ‘no more ICE’ chants could be faintly heard on The Yard. In 29-degree weather, around 12 students walked out of class to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) increased brutality in urban cities, especially in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where multiple unarmed individuals have been shot.
Led by the Howard University chapter of The National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS), students of multiple majors stood outside the Mackey building with various anti-ICE signs created by first-year architecture students.
Santino Vaughan, a freshman architecture major and philosophy minor from Baltimore, Maryland, serving as the executive assistant of NOMAS, felt that not enough organizations on campus were making a stand against ICE and the increase in deportations of immigrants and citizens alike.
“We wanted to use our platform because we do have a pretty solid platform within CEA,” Vaughan said. Howard’s NOMAS was reinstated as a NOMAS chapter last fall, but has yet to be officially recharted as a Howard organization. Vaughan hoped their action would spur other organizations on campus towards political action.
“Trying to spread the word to other schools and maybe other organizations to get down with the cause and use their voices and platforms,” Vaughan added.
The organization partnered with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) organizers, who joined the walkout and planned a protest later in the day on U Street and 14th that was attended by the students who walked out.
“Today, people across the country are organizing across states and multiple cities to organize actions exactly, like what students are doing at Howard” Cam White, a PSL organizer, said.
Carly Ato-Davies, a freshman architecture major from Minneapolis, joined the protest in solidarity with her hometown, where 2,000 ICE agents have been deployed, according to PBS.
“I work at Target and they came to my job… one of my coworkers couldn’t even come in because she felt unsafe,” said Ato-Davies, who had trouble finding an organized way to protest in D.C. before NOMAS’ actions, but was excited to see how many people stood up for the cause.
Oluwatimilein Bamgbola, a third-year doctoral candidate from New Orleans studying counseling psychology, was excited to support undergraduate student activism as a former participant in HU Resist, a group that led the occupation of the Administration building in 2018.
“What’s happened with ICE is an extension of the United States trying to separate our neighbors from one another. They’re trying to take away people who contribute to the community,” said Bamgbola, referring to the 1 percent. Bamgbola hopes to engage more graduate students in helping with undergraduate political activism.
By the time the group of students left for the protest, the temperature had dropped to 20 degrees, but they were still determined to go to the PSL rally, which took up about a block of U Street.
Tilanna Peterson, a freshman criminology and Spanish double major from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, went to the walkout and later joined the U Street protest. She felt that it was important to stand up against ICE’s actions, which she felt were morally reprehensible.
“They are kidnapping people, not sharing their rights, stepping over people’s rights, invading their houses,” said Peterson, who held up a sign that read ‘History Is Screaming. Listen!’ at the walkout.
The PSL rally marched to the White House later in the night, and hopes to spur a national general strike in protest of ICE, where all people would cease from their jobs and schooling until ICE conditions change.
Copy edited by D’Nyah Jefferson – Philmore
