On June 3, hundreds of demonstrators from the CT For All coalition staged a non-violent, escalatory action in front of the Abraham A. Ribicoff Federal Building in Hartford, CT. Police were restrained, calmly redirecting traffic around the protesters blocking Main Street. With the exception of designated police liaisons, law enforcement gave everyone a wide berth from beginning to end. Hearst’s CT Insider emphasized the level of organization and order provided by both organizers and Hartford Police (HPD) in their coverage of the event. In reality, HPD’s response and the ensuing corporate media coverage intentionally diluted the action’s message and objectives.

Protesters blocked Main Street for over an hour for a coordinated program that included chants, songs, a street performance, and remembrances for those kidnapped or killed by ICE. They demanded an end to ICE presence in Connecticut and for state representatives to return donations from corporations such as Palantir and GEO Group, profiteers and participants in the mass incarceration of immigrants. Palantir provides AI surveillance technology to ICE, while GEO Group operates a network of private detention centers nationally, as well as the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) office in Hartford. CT DSA members participated in the action, with some supporting as medics and marshals. 

Everything was planned offline and without the use of social media as a promotional tool; activists instead used their personal and organizational networks for turnout, in order not to forewarn the Hartford Police (HPD). HPD only arrived about 15 minutes after protesters first entered the street. There were minimal interactions between police and protesters, and police diverted traffic from Main Street several blocks away on both sides. Though federal security and other staff were seen watching from inside the Federal Building, the protest was undisturbed by ICE or any other federal law enforcement. When the action ended, marshals escorted protesters off Main Street and helped them make their way back to their cars without encroaching on federal property or straying to the back of the federal building, where a violent confrontation between peaceful vigil attendees and ICE had occurred in January.

There is an important distinction between nonviolent actions that are planned in collaboration with police departments and those that are not. Choosing to block the street without notifying police effectively draws a line between the people and the state. By leaving law enforcement out of the loop, protestors knowingly risk a higher likelihood of arrest or other forms of violence. Instead of reaching a negotiated settlement in advance, the contradictions between the people’s demands and cops’ protection of the status quo are left to play out in real time. As socialists, we understand that while mass state-sanctioned protests such as the No Kings rallies are an excellent recruiting ground for our movement, they pose no real direct threat to the state or capital, and are therefore allowed to proceed uncontested. The surprise alternative requires training, and more careful planning for contingencies such as arrest, bodily harm, or even outright kidnap by ICE. 

The state and corporate media responses to the June 3 action reveal how the initial counter punch against an action such as this sometimes involves no punching, kicking, pepper spraying, or zip tying at all. While the first 50 or so cars blocked by the line of protesters saw banners explicitly stating the purpose of the action, when HPD arrived they diverted traffic more than a quarter mile up the road in each direction. Marshals entered the street around 4:15pm. By 4:30, drivers could easily assume they were being diverted due to a car accident, a planned street festival, or any number of occurrences much more mundane than a protest against ICE. By placing the police line so far out from the actual protest, police created the illusion that it was their idea to block traffic. The action appeared to be happening on their terms, even enforcing the idea that they were there to “protect and serve” those in the street. 

In the early hours of Thursday, June 4, CT Insider published their coverage of the event. A few paragraphs in, reporters Dan Haar and Josh LaBella assess the protestors’ demands:

Protesters called on Connecticut’s members of Congress, all of them Democrats, to stop taking money from billionaires and corporations in a way that perpetuated the oppressive immigration system. The connection, however, is not clear. Every U.S. House and U.S. Senate member from Connecticut has decried ICE tactics loudly.

The connection is, in fact, very clear, and the action communicated this emphatically. Only Haar and LaBella know whether ignoring this is an honest mistake or deliberate obfuscation, but the truth was on display that afternoon. Ahead of the street performance, around two dozen signs were passed out with explicit anti-Palantir messaging. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal’s record of taking donations from Palantir was reiterated twice. GEO Group’s presence at the ISAP office up the street from the Federal Building was emphasized. Representative Rosa DeLauro was called out for refusing to back the abolition of ICE in a meeting with organizers from New Haven. 

Haar and LaBella then lean into the banality of HPD’s response (or lack thereof) to the protest: 

It took about 15 minutes at the start of the action for police to arrive and reroute traffic. Some protesters said Hartford Police have been respectful and have avoided escalating tensions over the last year, as ICE activity has ramped up… The scene was more chaotic on Jan. 8, when a crowd at this same location gathered to protest the killing of Renee Nicole Good, an unarmed protester driving her car, in Minneapolis. In the Hartford incident, protesters tried to obstruct two vehicles believed to be federal agents. There, reports said that the vehicles contacted protesters as they drove through, and that one protester threw an object that broke a window in one of the vehicles.

By choosing to paraphrase anonymous protesters who complimented police, Haar and LaBella smudge the careful line drawn by the people between themselves and the perpetrators of state violence. This attempt to represent HPD as neutral actors in a conflict between our community and ICE is woefully misaligned with the truth. Police violence, and state violence more broadly, can be perpetuated through both action and inaction. During the January 8 vigil referenced above, HPD stood aside and watched as masked federal agents brutalized civilians with pepper spray, culminating in a hit and run carried out with a large transport van. Afterwards, HPD declined to confirm that pepper spray had been deployed at all, despite standing right across the street. For their part, Haar and LaBella seem to know based on context that it was a protester who threw an object that broke a window in one of the vehicles; however, the drivers of the very same vehicles, hooded and wearing punisher masks, flanked by others firing pepper spray from behind the security gate of the federal garage, are only ‘believed’ to be federal agents. 

Though CT Insider is technically a local news outlet, its pedigree is anything but. The paper is owned by Hearst Media, a company which over the past 20 years has come to dominate “local” Connecticut media by acquiring newspapers such as the Stamford Advocate, New Haven Register, and the Journal Inquirer. The Hearst media empire was founded by Nazi sympathizer William Randolph Hearst, who famously commissioned and published op-eds written by Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, even traveling to Berlin to interview Hitler himself. 90 years later, the whitewashing of police violence and apparent deafness to the role of corporations in an industrialized prison system by one of Hearst’s CT outlets would have made William Randolph Hearst proud. 

Nevertheless, the action on June 3 was a resounding success. It was well planned and executed, and another step in the long road toward abolishing ICE. The messaging was explicit in not only representing the suffering inflicted on our neighbors, but the root cause that capital formations play in the process as well. Without being confronted by the economics of mass surveillance and immigrant detention, one can easily be fooled by the statement, “Every U.S. House and U.S. Senate member from Connecticut has decried ICE tactics loudly.” However, if someone knows Murphy or Blumenthal take money from Palantir, they can surmise that both are only interested in curbing the rogue DHS agency enough to satiate the public while quietly ensuring that DHS is able to continue giving new contracts to Palantir.