The People United Converges on Farmville
On Sunday, November 7th, about 15 activists working with The People United converged on Farmville from Richmond, Louisa and Charlottesville. The occasion, the annual Christmas parade for the Town of Farmville, was rendered more poignant by the death of an immigrant detainee at Farmville's Piedmont Regional Jail the week prior.The crowd at the parade was surprisingly diverse and 500 Christmas-themed anti-detention center flyers disappeared in no time. Sue Frankel-Streit of Louisa, walking on stilts, stepped into the street and walked along with the parade for a portion of it's route. While she encountered no opposition, at regular intervals there were shouts of encouragement and agreement with the "No New Jail" sign she wore around her neck.
From the parade, the group traveled to the Piedmont Regional Jail for a vigil in memory of Guido Newborough, the immigrant detainee who died there in November. Guards were slow to respond as the activists walked around the entrance and fences closest to the cell blocks carrying signs and chanting slogans in English and Spanish. When they did respond, they were quite aggressive and the group moved their vigil out to the side of the main highway to avoid arrest.
The day finished with a visit to the site of the proposed new detention center, where a patch of forest had been leveled into an ominous red clay field. Activists festooned the bulldozers, backhoes and other equipment with their protest signs before leaving, including grave markers for Guido Newborough and Abdouli Sall, another immigrant detainee who died in Piedmont Regional Jail in 2006 amidst allegations of severe medical neglect.
Later that same week, Margarita Gonzalez, an immigrant living in Louisa County, generated front page coverage in the Farmville Herald when she confronted city council about the plans for a new detention center. Read the story here