Reverend Billy Talen outside the Varick Street Special Processing Center
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
NEW YORK — "The building is a detention center of the ICE, Immigration Correction Enforcement, an Orwellian development from 9/11 and the torture years of Bush and Cheney. But here it is in our special city, New York," said Reverend Billy, describing the Varick Street "Special Processing Center" in an after action report. According to Talen, what is special about the center is that a for-profit prison, designed to hold immigrant detainees who have not been charged with a crime, is located in the heart of "the ultimate immigrant city."
On Saturday, March 7, actor / activist "Reverend" Billy Talen and his Life After Shopping Choir visited the Varick Street Special Processing Center (SPC) on the lower west side of Manhattan. With bullhorn in hand, the Reverend, who is running for mayor on the Green Party line, shouted up to the unknown detainees, "you are free already…you are free in us, Amen." It was unclear if the immigrant detainees locked inside were able to hear the words.
Members of the Life After Shopping Gospel Choir
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
As Talen reached out to the uncharged occupants of the for-profit prison his choir donned emerald green gowns and prepared to sing. From around the corner, two brown uniformed Wackenhut private security guards, armed with handguns, appeared. They were looking for the person in charge.
Reverend Billy helps the Wackenhut Security guards with a procedural matter
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
Reverend Billy, wearing a bright blue suit ("it's vintage") rather than his familiar "full chicken" — the all white suit of a southern baptist preacher — spoke with the security guards. He assured them, "we'll be done in twenty minutes." The guards asked Talen to sign some sort of document and he agreed. "Sure, I'll sign anything you want," he said.
As Reverend Billy signed the papers, the choir sang an a capella piece entitled: "We Dance The Day You Are Free." Their paperwork completed, the guards retreated from view, huddling in front of the building's main entrance.
Reverend Billy preaching human rights
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
Reverend Billy gave a brief but memorable sermon, offering an indictment of the policies of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the Department of Homeland Security: "Warrantless invasion of homes…this is not the United States, this is not defending us against some bogeyman that's supposed to kill us after 911…there's another kind of safety besides at the end of a gun, besides false incarceration," he said.
After urging the assembled to take care of each other in a "healthy community", Talen yielded the bullhorn to Amy Gottlieb of the American Friends Service Committee.
Gottlieb said that, during a period of historic stock market losses, "private prison industries are seeing their stocks go up…because they are contracting with the federal government to house detainees." Gottlieb added that 33,000 inmates are being held in private prisons, without any charges being filed — at a cost of $90 a day to U.S. taxpayers.
"It is a crime that we are locking people up indefinitely," Gottlieb said.
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