By: Megan Callahan, News Editor 

 On Jan. 17, the Tallahassee Immigrant Rights Alliance and Michael Noll, a former VSU professor who is now a civil rights activist, joined forces to protest the activities of the U.S. Immigrations and Enforcement agency (ICE). 

The protest was put together soon after Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother who was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. 

Similar protests have been taking place across the country since Good was killed. 

Several protesters stated that part of the reason for this protest was to get justice for Good’s death, along with several others who were allegedly mistreated by ICE officials. 

For example, the Tallahassee Immigrant Rights Alliance heard about a man named Juan Carlos Lopez. 

“He was not killed by ICE, but he was an American citizen. He was born in Georgia; he just didn’t speak any English,”. “So, he was detained by ICE, held in Leon County Jail, in Tallahassee, and we protested; he got released the same hour.” Sadi Carlson, Immigration Alliance Rights member 

 Sadi also pointed out that, “If we didn’t have that protest, he probably would have been sent off to El Paso and gotten lost in the system.” 

Sadi Carlson, Tallahassee Immigrant Rights Alliance member 

Carlson told the story to several of the protesters about what happened to Juan Carlos Lopez, and how he got released at the same hour. She then reminded the protesters that have either been protesting for a while or first-time protesters that what they’re doing does make a difference. 

The ICE protest consisted of 84 protesters attending and speaking out against the ICE organization.  One was Bill Reynolds, a retired Air Force Veteran, who served for 20 years.  

He now has been attending every protest that has been held around the area, to say what he thinks about the country’s problems. 

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get out of this. I hope I’m alive to see us getting out of all the crap he put us in,” said Reynolds. 

Towards the middle of the protest, the members of the Tallahassee Immigrants’ Rights Alliances started chanting, “NO JUSTICE NO PEACE, NO RACIST POLICE.” 

This made the protest even more powerful than it already was. One of the protest organizers, Michael Noll, who is a former VSU history professor, answered one question. 

He was asked: If you were president, what would you do differently? 

“I would start by pushing a pausing button, waving some passengers out of the Constitution, and getting everyone to notice how crazy things are,” said Noll. “We’re violating the UN charter; we’re destroying a military alliance that has been in place to keep us safe. Let’s go back to the things we didn’t do right.” 

 

When it came to who attended the protest, it was a mixture of the usual group of protesters who follow the protests that Noll and other protest organizers put together. Several VSU students also came to the protest, and members of the Immigration Rights Alliance drove all the way from Tallahassee to attend this protest. 

The protesters went from college kids all the way to protesters in their 60’s. All of them invested in what is going in the world right now. 

 Even though this was an Immigration related issue, the protesters didn’t just consist of Latinos, people of all races came together to protest against ICE.  

Throughout the protest, nobody got violent with any of the protesters, but one protester was in an inflatable dinosaur costume to show a message of solidarity for what happened during a protest in the past. 

Apparently, what happened was during a protest a government official came up to the person who was also in an inflatable costume and pepper sprayed the airflow system so the protester couldn’t breathe. 

Now protesters have been known to wear inflatable costumes to show solidarity for the protester. 

The ICE protest consisted of 84 people that were against what the ICE organization was doing and stood outside the Historic Courthouse in Downtown Valdosta holding up signs like, “Abolish ICE”, and “Brown is Beautiful humanity has no borders.” Each one of them practicing their right to the First Amendment.