Patricia Bloem: Protest musings

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I went to a recent protest in Baldwin. I traveled the 33 miles from my Ludington home with three neighbors, all more politically savvy than I. It was lovely to be with them, but while I showed up happy to be on a mission with like-minded people, I found myself with a younger and different crowd, people who had traveled one to three hours to be present: A man from Plymouth, Michigan, who had been threatened, picked up, and let go once already. People who knew someone inside. People who were determined, who were intense, who were coiled tight. It was like no other protest I’d been to thus far.  

In Saugatuck, where the weather was great and everyone was thinking about going out to eat after it was over, where the veteran (“I’m at my first protest,” he announced) waved the flag like he was leading a parade, it felt like a party. When I stand in front of the courthouse in Ludington with a dozen other gray hairs, moments sometimes feel a bit scary. If there were violence, the cops wouldn’t help, I’m pretty sure, and angry young men in pickups shout and give us the finger. In Holland, I’ve always felt the support of cops and felt the solidarity of the other women, but so many people drive by with their eyes straight ahead, like they want us to go to hell and are biting their tongues not to say it.  

But today — there was a crowd of maybe 150 — while I felt energy and commitment from the other protestors, and absolutely no one was driving by to belittle us, we were standing in front of, well, evil. It felt creepy, like we were on a patch of grass in front of an evil building, on evil soil, with danger and ugliness and misery oozing around us. It didn’t help that two pickup trucks, safely inside the chain link fence, got as close as they could while filming and getting our faces on their videos.

We were told there were 600 people locked inside this shadow prison, but the business owners, Geo, are asking ICE for more, saying they have room for 1,800. The chairman sees the ICE deportations as “an unprecedented opportunity.” I wonder how much money Geo is making on all this misery? The facility was first built to be a youth prison, morphed into other kinds of prisons, then was shut down in 2022 after six (!) hunger strikes. Now it is called a “processing center,” as though it’s a fancy meat-packing plant.

The crowd was younger than I usually see, with many of them dressed in black and wearing black masks. A couple of them wore keffiyehs. Several, including a woman with amazing red hair, read the words of inmates, concentrating on getting the words out without breaking down. We heard a taped message from the minister of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, praising us for doing the work of Christ. My friend waved a sign that read "No Bergen-Belsen in Baldwin." A very articulate man in a pinstripe replica of what inmates wore in German concentration camps explained that the buttons he was disseminating included a blue triangle because, unlike Jews who wore yellow, migrants and forced workers in the German Reich were identified by blue. Now 150 of us are wearing his buttons in solidarity with the people inside the North Lake Detention Center.

When I asked if there was any chance the incarcerated people could hear us shouting (great chants today!), the answer was unequivocal: No. In fact, those inside were told that because of the “riots” that the guards were expecting (why?), no Saturday family visitation was allowed. I am discouraged that our presence added to the misery of people who were already denied due process.

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Baldwin is in the poorest county in Michigan (Lake County), but GEO employees can make $30 an hour. That’s nothing to sneeze at when you can’t get decent employment.

When we left to walk to our car about a half mile down a beautiful country road, we saw a half-dozen 20-somethings (I know. I keep reveling in seeing another generation at a protest) standing around a back entrance to the facility. I wondered what they were doing — were they trying to sneak in? I spoke to one guy for a moment, and he pointed to a gate that was opening. “This is why we need the face masks,” he said. “We are starting to get doxxed,” and he hurried back. The workers’ shift was over, and one car after another poured out, workers yelling “f*** you” and squealing off, while one protestor yelled “traitor" and the others quietly, quickly snapped pics of the license plates. They are the White Rose, I thought, those young people by the gate, a Rose Blanche unit. Was that Sophie Scholl I was seeing? Yes, this is Germany, here, now.

— Patricia Bloem, of Persisterhood Choir, was a long-time resident of Holland; she now lives in Ludington.