No More Concentration Camps! - Poster of the Week
- politicalgraphics
- Jul 18
- 3 min read
#Close The Camps
Molly Crabapple
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
Offset, Circa 2020
Designed: New York, NY
Printed: Los Angeles, CA
69339
Justice Now! Reparations Now!
Artist: James Kodani
Printer: Miles Hamada
Little Tokyo Arts Workshop
Little Tokyo Peoples Rights Organization
Silkscreen, 1981
Los Angeles, CA
3084
A new detention center, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” and privately managed by Delta Foxtrot Solutions Inc, is now operational, holding hundreds of immigrants, many of whom have no criminal records or charges. This dreadful nickname is an effort to downplay the harsh living conditions for the people held at the detention center. It was built on an abandoned airfield of approximately 30-square miles and surrounded by alligator and python inhabited waters in the Florida Everglades.
Florida Congressmember Maxwell Frost witnessed abhorrent conditions at the detention center. According to recent reports, there were up to 32 people per cage and insufficient toilets which also serve as their only source of water. Detainees shared that they were served maggot-infested food, refused medical care, and denied religious rights. These conditions alone are cause for concern especially since there has already been 13 reported deaths of migrants in detention centers this year alone.
These poor conditions incentivize detainees to sign their deportation papers, rather than fight them. Journalists obtained a list of the 750 people at the detention center, their ages ranging from 18-74, and from 40 different countries around the world, half from Mexico, Guatemala, and Cuba.
CSPG’s Posters of the Week showcase the American legacy of discrimination of people they deem as a threat to American safety. In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, it was Japanese Americans who were targeted and forcibly removed and relocated to “internment” camps. During the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), the U.S. also forcibly relocated Filipino civilians into concentration camps. The earliest and most deadly example of concentration camp in the U.S. were the attempts to solve what was then known as “the Indian problem,” forcing tens of thousands of Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Ponca, Winnebago and other Indigenous peoples into camps from 1830s to 1860s, often as preparation for death marches.
Of course, the history of concentration camps is not solely an American design. Concentration camps were used against Africans during the Second Boer War (1899-1902), by the Spanish Army against Cuba during the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878), and most infamously, by Nazi Germany against the Jews and other enemies of the state during World War II.
These camps are very real manifestations of fascist, white supremacist regimes.
The attempt to paint detention centers as anything but concentration camps, is an attempt to erase the racist, inhumane, and discriminatory practices. These concentration camps are not an acceptable alternative to long-term permanent immigration reform.
We cannot support another concentration camp built on U.S. soil. We must demand the closure of all concentration camps! Close Alligator Alcatraz!
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