Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale: When is it acceptable to ‘refuse business’ to someone or some agency?
When is it acceptable to ‘refuse business’ to someone or some agency?
This is a real question.
Should we accept the fact that a hotel chain (maybe more than one, but one that we are sure of) in our area is renting blocks of rooms to ICE agents? And, when we have that intel, what should we do with it? Should we picket the business? Should we boycott the chain?
If a hotel has customers running a meth lab we don’t let them continue that without rightly flipping out.
If a hotel has customers operating a sex trafficking operation we don’t let that continue.
If a hotel is knowingly housing bank robbers and helping them continue to carry out local heists, we’d be outraged.
If ICE rents out rooms so as to wake up in the morning, don their masks, and then throw latino neighbors to the ground, without a warrant–smash windows, without a warrant–arrest people without a warrant–leaving women and children in traumatized situations in our communities ….I say don’t you dare house them.
How is it that we continue to let ICE abuse our neighbors without the local police intervening? Nobody is above the law–right? I know that police generally don’t want to get in the way of a federal agency doing its work–but they are not engaged in immigration enforcement. They are engaged in racial and ethnic cleansing.
Seems to me that every Mayor should be asking their police to arrest these criminals, and we, as the public, should be calling out any business that knowingly and quietly helps them along.
peace, seth
