Tsuru for Solidarity: Protesting Immigrant Detention, Family Separation, and Border Violence at Fort Sill

Civil Discourse and Social Change is hosting a talk with members of Tsuru for Solidarity on Thursday, November 21^st at 11:00AM in the Aronstam Library (Manzanita 240).  Tsuru for Solidarity is a progressive Japanese American, activist project that is mobilizing against border violence, migrant detention and deportation, and family separation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which previously was the end point of the Trail of Tears, served as a detention center for Japanese immigrant and Japanese American leaders during World War II, and is currently a detention center for Latinx migrant children separated from their families.

As former detainees or the descendants of World War II incarceration camp survivors, Tsuru members organized their Fort Sill action under the banners, “Stop Repeating History” and “Never Again,” after it was announced that the federal government would repurpose Fort Sill to detain migrant children separated from their families. Their mobilization included a crowd-sourced folding of 10,000 origami peace cranes (tsuru) for an initial protest at Fort Dilley, Texas in March 2019 followed by a July 2019 civil disobedience at Fort Sill.

Tsuru members will discuss the importance of crowd-sourced artivism, collective memory, and intergenerational organizing to their organizing. Tsuru members will also talk about the centrality of interracial solidarity to their Fort Sill mobilization, which was organized in collaboration with Black Lives Matter Oklahoma City, Dream Action Oklahoma, the American Indian Movement, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations Oklahoma.