Bitter cold and wind that brought a feels-like temperature of around zero degrees Fahrenheit on Friday evening did not keep some 60 to 70 East Hampton Town residents from a vigil at the Hook Mill in East Hampton Village for those killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. A defiant mood mixed with resolve to join together in resistance to the Trump administration’s increasingly authoritarian actions.
The “ICE Out” vigil was one of nine on the East End, including at the windmill at Sag Harbor’s Long Wharf. It came in the wake of the Jan. 24 killing by ICE agents of Alex Pretti during a protest against ICE actions in Minneapolis, which itself followed the fatal shooting on Jan. 7 of Renee Good, also in Minneapolis. Both were American citizens, both 37 years old.
Friday’s actions preceded another on Saturday in Riverhead, with those attending the nine smaller vigils encouraged to unite outside Riverhead Town Hall, following an 11th-hour change of venue.
“If this many can gather tonight to honor those whose lives have been lost at the hands of ICE, imagine what we can do to support the impacted communities,” Paloma, an East Hampton resident who declined to give her last name, told the gathering. She spoke about Operation Stand and Protect, which she said was launched by Organizacion Latino Americana of Eastern Long Island, or OLA. “This rapid-response strategy has created an active network of around 300 local volunteers, myself included, who are on call to . . . monitor ICE interactions, document rights violations, and track detentions that occur on the East End, and note which law enforcement agencies are involved.”
“It also helps OLA support the urgent needs of the families, including children of those who have been taken.” The goal is a thousand-strong network, members of which will be trained by OLA to work safely and lawfully, she said.
“By being here today, you’re showing your immigrant community members that we’ve got their backs and we stand in solidarity with them,” Paloma said. “We, the community, are each other’s eyes and ears.”
Krissy Feleppa, another speaker at the vigil, told the assembled that “while we gather as individual villages and towns, we recognize that we are part of a larger East End community, and we are strongest when we unite as one.” She asked that all present introduce themselves to someone they did not know and to “connect with each other” during and after the vigil.
“Let’s remember that this path is not short. If it was quick and easy, it would’ve happened already,” Ms. Feleppa said, referring to the 381-day bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 and 1956, which was initiated after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat and ultimately resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that declared segregated buses unconstitutional. “They didn’t have social media and e-blasts to spread the word,” she said. “Let’s remember that there is a lot that needs to be done by hitting the literal bricks while we honor those lost to the brutality of ICE, and while we gather in larger and larger numbers, with new people joining us every day.”
The killings of Ms. Good, Mr. Pretti, and others at the hands of ICE “are not unprecedented acts of violence,” she said. “Indigenous, Black, and brown humans have been living with this as their daily reality and begging for our aid, shouting into the void for us to come together like this and listen.”
“We are each other’s mutual aid,” Kate Mueth, founder of the Neo-Political Cowgirls, a not-for-profit dance theater company, said regarding resistance. “I just think it takes all of us to be imaginative and willing to step out of our comfort zones.” Silence, she said, “is not an option.”
Jane Hastay of Springs, who held a sign that read “Standing With Minnesota,” said she is a Minneapolis native. Her friends there “are just devastated,” she said. “I know the neighborhoods very well where all of this is going on. I lived in those neighborhoods. Minneapolis is a beautiful city, a cultured city. They really care about the environment and about each other, and they really take care of each other. They’re indivisible.”
ICE, she said, “is picking on the wrong people.”
