Date/Time
Date(s) - 08/13/2026
8:00 pm – 9:30 pm
Categories
Stopping ICE: Defend Joy and Organize Rage
General Assembly considered an Action of Immediate Witness (AIW) titled All Eyes on ICE. It included a suggestion of a visit to Delaney Hall, the Geo Group immigration detention center/concentration camp in Newark, N.J., which was controversial because of a lack of connection to local organizers. A faith-based action was already being planned for July 13th, and that was cited in a responsive resolution passed in lieu of the emergent AIW.
Our Guest Speakers
Christine Dunbar will discuss her experience at the Religious Leaders Social Justice protest held at Delaney Hall on July 13th. She will share what grounded and motivated their participation and the role that churches and faith groups can play as ICE embeds itself nationwide. Christine will include who and where they gathered for this historical protest and what organizing and training helped prepare them for their participation. She will also share the conditions she witnessed in and around Delaney Hall and her individual response to all of this.
Leo Martinez will discuss how VC Defensa, one of the most effective rapid-response teams and neighborhood-based support networks in the country, built an effective response to ICE terror in our cities. Aided by numerous other teams, VC Defensa has trained and supported groups across the nation with tactics and structures used at the height of the federal invasions of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minnesota.
VC Defensa is not only serving as the future of our community organizing efforts, but also can serve as an effective model of what can be implemented in every high-risk neighborhood to not only get ICE out, but also to build strong communities that can address any issues they face. . .together.
Speaker Bios
Christine Dunbar participated in the July 13th Faith Leaders’ protest at Delaney Hall in Newark, N.J. and is glad to have had that experience. Christine, a New Jersey-based Unitarian Universalist, is the UU Faith Action NJ (UUFANJ) liaison for the UU Fellowship of Sussex County and member of the UUFANJ Environmental Justice Task Force. She trained in 2017 as an original member of the Friends Committee on National Legislation NJ Peace Advocacy Team. She is the Paulins Kill watershed coordinator at the Foodshed Alliance, with a wealth of experience and a longstanding commitment to conservation advocacy.
Born and raised in Ventura County, Leo Martinez set up “Lab 805” in 2008. Originally Lab 805 was a creative studio, but it evolved into a community-based organizing hub. With this community hub already operational in support of local social-justice movements that had included confronting police brutality and tenant’s rights, it evolved further in defense of the community as ICE’s abuses materialized. VC Defensa was aided by Leo’s extensive networking background, and he considers himself lucky to have been one of its founding members.
Featured image by Master Steve Rapport – Abolish ICE Protest, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93757878