IfNotNow helped us start a movement to stop ICE
This past June, when headlines and photos surfaced of the horrific conditions that immigrants were facing in camps at the border, I felt a punch in my gut.
We have seen this before.
The words that we had learned in Hebrew school and from our grandparents climbed up from deep within us and out of our mouths: Never Again.
Within days, a group of Jews who were connected to each other through IfNotNow, Movimiento Cosecha, and other progressive Jewish and non-Jewish organizations came together to mobilize a Jewish response to the concentration camps at the border and ICE’s detention and deportation machine. We decided to call it Never Again Action.
Over the next two months, thousands of Jews in cities across the country — most of whom had never taken action — shut down dozens of ICE detention centers, slowing down the deportation machine. But this movement didn’t come out of nowhere.
We were only able to mobilize so quickly because of the network of Jewish organizers that have been developing their skills, building trust, and preparing for mass mobilization for years in IfNotNow and other movements.
As I watched American Jews across the country powerfully use Jewish ritual to shut down detention centers, ICE offices, and tech companies, I thought back to the first time I took action Jewishly.
It was two weeks after the 2016 election, and I knew I had to do something to fight back against Trump. I joined a massive IfNotNow march from the Holocaust Memorial to the GOP headquarters — we sang in Hebrew and English the whole way and chanted, “We are here because we have seen this before.” Tears welled up in my eyes as we marched. It’s true, I remember thinking. We know the warning signs. This is in our history.
In that moment, I knew I needed to fight these forces of white supremacy, racism, and antisemitism as a Jew, and I found my organizing home in IfNotNow.
I helped lead two other IfNotNow Boston marches from that Holocaust Memorial: When the memorial was vandalized after white nationalists marched in Charlottesville in August 2017; and again after the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh in October 2018, when in heartbreak and anger, we marched from the memorial to the GOP office to hold a full shacharit (morning) service.
In IfNotNow, I’ve built relationships with leaders from movements fighting for racial, immigrant, and climate justice — like Movimiento Cosecha, Black Lives Matter, and Sunrise Movement.
It is through these relationships that I have seen a vision of the world that we are building together: a world where Palestinians do not live under Occupation, where immigrants can live without fear, where people do not have to rely on jobs that destroy the climate.
We are fighting for the liberation of all people and against the forces that seek to divide us from one another.
And, as we enter the 2020 election, the stakes are only getting higher. As we get more powerful, our opposition is going to do everything in their power to keep us from seeing our common stake and joining together powerfully.
We — IfNotNow and the entire progressive Jewish movement — are going to need to be as strong as possible to achieve real power in 2020.
Will you join me and become a monthly sustainer of IfNotNow today?
Let 5780 be a year that the progressive Jewish movement grows more powerful, resilient, and liberated than ever before.
Shana tova,
Alyssa Rubin
IfNotNow Boston Leader
Never Again Action Co-founder
