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AMOR protests forced sterilizations outside the Wyatt and the ACI

“Throughout history, forced sterilizations have been used as a means of controlling undesirable populations, immigrants, people of color, poor people, unmarried mothers, the disabled, the mentally ill, and programs of forced sterilization have been federally funded by this country and across this country in 32 different states…” Dozens of protesters, organized by AMOR (Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance) wet near

Rhode Island News: AMOR protests forced sterilizations outside the Wyatt and the ACI

September 24, 2020, 11:59 am

By Steve Ahlquist

Throughout history, forced sterilizations have been used as a means of controlling undesirable populations, immigrants, people of color, poor people, unmarried mothers, the disabled, the mentally ill, and programs of forced sterilization have been federally funded by this country and across this country in 32 different states...”


Dozens of protesters, organized by AMOR (Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance) wet near the Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls to organize a car caravan in protest of recent reports that private immigration detention center in Georgia has “an alarmingly high rate of hysterectomies – a surgery in which part or all of the uterus is removed – being performed on Spanish-speaking immigrants, many of whom did not appear to understand why they had undergone the procedure.” The report has raised allegations of racist/fascist eugenics programs, such as occurred in the United States following a 1927 Supreme Court ruling.

AMOR’s protest was a call to abolish all prisons.

“The United States has a long standing practice of forced sterilization within it’s prisons and occupied territories. Sterilizing Black, indigenous, and latinx folks while imprisoned or while seeking medical care, performing medical procedures without sufficient anesthetics, and failing to provide necessary medical care – these are all characteristics of the United States prison system with or without COVID-19,” writes AMOR. “Prisons and detention centers dehumanize people. We are calling to Abolish Prisons and Detentions Centers! This expose may not have been about the Wyatt or the ACI, but the attitudes and practices of mistreatment and dehumanization represent the culture of all prisons.”

“This event is to make visible the injustice and inhuman the immigrant community and people of color are suffering in detention centers said Catarina Lorenzo, director of AMOR, delivering her comments in Spanish and English. “We dream of a world where we are not victims of eugenics and forced sterilizations. We dream of a world without prisons and detention centers.”

Sophia Wright delivered a history of forced sterilization and eugenics here in the United States.

“Throughout history, forced sterilizations have been used as a means of controlling undesirable populations, immigrants, people of color, poor people, unmarried mothers, the disabled, the mentally ill, and programs of forced sterilization have been federally funded by this country and across this country in 32 different states,” said Wright.

Isabely Garcia:

The caravan circled the Wyatt Detention Center for about thirty minutes before making its way to Cranston where it circled some of the buildings at the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI).