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‘When the U.S. ran out of land to ‘imperialize’ in its own continent, it expanded outward …’
Earlier this month, members of Colgate University’s faculty held a teach-in on “immigration enforcement, policing and resistance strategies” at the campus’ Center for Women’s Studies.
The Colgate Maroon-News‘s Ella Cuneo reminds readers that teach-ins “are a form of activism popularized by students during the Vietnam War.”
Anthropology Professor Santiago Juarez began the confab by comparing the contemporary United States to mid-1950s Guatemala — when the CIA helped orchestrate a coup in that country.
In order to “establish authority,” Juarez said the military dictatorship installed by the U.S. “targeted and killed” the indigenous descendants of the Maya — like what the U.S. is currently doing to “immigrant groups” here at home.
Juarez added those past actions are “directly responsible” for the ongoing flow of migrants from that country, and he dubbed ICE enforcement “fascist oppression” — “citizens being killed by a masked police force.”
Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Professor Nimanthi Rajasingham (pictured), who according to her faculty page “studies popular rural festivals, female workers’ theater, novels on ethnic war, theaters of trauma and violence, and protest art and literatures,” claimed ICE “initially” had been used to “to repress civilian concerns in the U.S. about the Iraq War.”
Rajasingham tied that premise to the current situation with Iran, saying “false claims” have been made about that country’s nuclear weapons ambitions, and that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks “militarized the police in a way that has yet to be undone.”
Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Omar Alsayyed presented next and connected the issue to indigenous rights. He also compared the War on Terror, as Rajasingham had previously noted, to westward expansion. Alsayyed argued that when the U.S. ran out of land to ‘imperialize’ in its own continent, it expanded outward into international issues, such as Iraq, Iran and Guatemala. He further argued that the U.S. was created out of violence and, therefore, its current state is only a continuation of it. Settler colonialism, on which the country was founded, leads to the imperialism experienced abroad, Alsayyed continued.
Alsayyed added that Israel “and other colonial states” could be considered an example of the U.S.’s continued “expansion of [its] frontier.”
Regarding “resistance,” Taryn Jordan, another women’s, gender and sexuality studies professor, said the “most effective strategy” is “mutual aid.” She noted those in Minneapolis who used whistles to warn of ICE agents and offered “support, refreshments and comfort” to community members who’d been arrested.
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