10,000+ Viewers Rally Online & In-Person to Free Detained Antiwar Vet Zahid Chaudhry from ICE

SEATTLE, WA - Kshama Sawant, former socialist Seattle City Council member and founder of Workers Strike Back, spoke at a protest Saturday at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma organized by Workers Strike Back and CAIR Washington, calling for the immediate release of longtime antiwar activist Zahid Chaudhry from ICE detention and for him to be given his U.S. citizenship immediately.

The rally was attended in person by at least 100 working people, Workers Strike Back members, and rank-and-file members from local Democratic Legislative District (LD) organizations. Activists from Veterans for Peace and the Backbone Campaign also joined the rally. The rally was watched over livestream by more than 10,400 people. 

Speakers at the rally included 

• Melissa Chaudhry, antiwar activist and married partner to Zahid; 

• Micaela Romero, organizer at Washington Community Action Network (WA CAN); 

• Imraan Siddiqi, Executive Director of CAIR Washington (a chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations); 

• Rizwan Samad, antiwar activist; 

• Jason Call, working-class and antiwar activist, member of the Green Party, and member of Workers Strike Back; 

• David Griffiths, antiwar and disability rights activist; and 

• Kshama Sawant, founder of Workers Strike Back and former Seattle Councilmember.

Zahid Chaudhry was taken into detention by ICE on Thursday, August 21, at his citizenship hearing in Tukwila, WA. Zahid is a decorated and disabled veteran, an antiwar activist, and a member of Veterans for Peace. He is currently being held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA, the location of the protest

At Saturday’s protest, former Councilmember Sawant and other working people called for Zahid’s immediate release, for him to be granted his U.S. citizenship, for an end to the deportations, to shut down the detention centers, and to shut down ICE. Sawant and others also called for an end to the genocide in Gaza, an end to all U.S. military aid to Israel, and an end to the repression of the antiwar movement and antiwar activists like Zahid.

“We are here to fight back against the vicious detention of longtime antiwar activist Zahid Chaudhry. Right now, Zahid is being held inside this facility, the Northwest Detention Center. He and his family need our full solidarity. My organization, Workers Strike Back, will be donating $1,000 to the fund that has been created to defend Zahid and fight for his release. I hope others will support that also,” Sawant said.

“We are seeing this horrific act being done against Zahid. We are also seeing thousands upon thousands of antiwar activists being arrested and facing even worse consequences. We saw how the administration at Columbia University has suspended or expelled or revoked degrees — can you imagine? — and they call this “sanctions” against the students. For what? For having the moral clarity to say no to a genocide? Similarly, three peaceful Workers Strike Back activists were arrested only recently by the Renton police department, for what? For handing out leaflets at Renton Technical College, a public area, outside a town hall held by Democratic Congressmember Adam Smith. The very same Democrat Adam Smith, who called antiwar activists leftwing fascists and demanded that they be arrested.”

Sawant spoke about both parties’ role in building Trump’s deportation machine, and called for a movement against the deportations that is independent of both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

“We need to build mass movements, yes. But these mass movements are going to meet a graveyard if they end up again trusting the Democrats, or worse yet Republicans. Mass movements have the potential to make breakthroughs only if the leadership of the movement is independent of the Democratic and Republican Parties. History shows that the threat of independent and organized working-class power is the only thing that can defeat the warmongering billionaires and the two parties that represent them,” Sawant said.

Sawant and Workers Strike Back member Jason Call urged working people not to put any faith Democratic Party politicians like Congressmember Adam Smith, Senator Maria Cantwell, or Senator Patty Murray, all of whom voted to establish ICE as part of George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Act, and all of whom have supported tens of billions of dollars to fund the genocide in Gaza. Sawant also spoke about former President Barack Obama’s shameful record as “deporter-in-chief”, having deported more than three million immigrants. This is more deportations than any president in U.S. history.

“That is why we need to build independent working-class movements around concrete demands: stop the deportations, shut down the detention centers, shut down ICE, end all U.S. military funding to the Israeli state, and the brutal Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank altogether. And we need to join those with offensive demands: free healthcare for all by taxing the rich, national rent control, a $25 per hour national minimum wage and it should be at least $30/hour in big cities,” Sawant said.

Sawant called for escalating action against Zahid’s detention and against the deportations, including mass protests, mass civil disobedience, and strike action. She called on the labor movement to build these actions, and for rank-and-file union members to put forward new leadership that would break with the Democratic and Republican Parties.

“The Democratic Party’s own pundits are saying that it is like the party has gone into a ‘death cycle.’ And yet, what do we see most of the labor leaders and NGO leaders doing? They are busy trying to keep the Democratic Party on life support. And by doing that, they are fucking selling us out. They are selling out the working class. They are selling out people like Zahid. The same working class that according to poll after poll, has shown itself ready for a new party that will fight for workers and not represent the greed of the warmongering billionaires,” Sawant said.

“America’s working class is ready. We need new labor leaders who will fight for them. That includes people like Chris Smalls, who not only won the first and only successful union drive at Amazon, but who is the only — the only labor leader — to stand up clearly against the genocide in Gaza, who has put his body on the line for the fight to end the genocide, and who has been very clear that we cannot rely on the Democratic Party — that working people need a party of our own. Instead of trying to reform the clearly unreformable Democratic Party, our task is to create a new party. But that is not going to happen as long as the leadership of labor and the left supports the Democrats. And instead of trying to reform the capitalist parties and the capitalist system itself, we need to smash them both.”

Imraan Siddiqi, Executive Director of CAIR Washington, which co-organized the protest, spoke about the horrific treatment of Zahid, a decorated and disabled veteran, in contrast to the warm welcome given to genocidal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, D.C.

“Make no mistake brothers and sisters: this is truly a struggle. This is a man who served his country — something society valorizes — being abandoned during his time of need. A person who has special needs being confined in an overcrowded ICE facility,” Saddiqi said.

“You have someone like Zahid, who has used his voice to stand up against genocide, and now all of a sudden, he’s split up from his wife and two small children. Shame. These are the people that this administration is targeting. And at the same time you have war criminals and murderers being welcomed with open arms in Washington, D.C.”

Melissa Chaudhry, antiwar activist and married partner to Zahid, spoke about the terrible conditions of the Northwest Detention Center, and the shameful treatment of Zahid at the facility, which is owned by the infamous for-profit Geo group:

“When I spoke to Zahid for a grand total of 5 minutes on Friday morning, he told me he was being held alone, and nearly incommunicado. Every other detainee has access to wifi on tablets to call their family. He does not. As a permanently disabled veteran in a wheelchair, he has been denied accommodations that are his right. He was given no accessible bathroom, no accessible bed. The bed he was assigned was so high, it took three other people to lift him into it. His medication — thyroid medication, pain relief for his broken back, medicine he needs to keep from going blind — are not being administered in a timely or consistent way. This is not just cruel — it is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Chaudhry said.

“And I want you to think about that. A disabled veteran. An honorable soldier who gave his body for this country. A man who counseled suicidal veterans, who sheltered abused women and children, who volunteered as a paramedic and a firefighter to serve our communities — he is being treated like this in a federal facility on American soil. This should enrage every single one of us, because if this can be done to Zahid, it can be done to anyone,” Chaudhry said.

Kshama Sawant called for solidarity between the antiwar, immigrants’ rights, and workers’ movements: “All our fights are connected: our fight for Zahid, our fight to stop the deportations, our fight to end the genocide, our fight for free healthcare by taxing the rich. And to win any of these things — to win any of these things — we need to stop taking ‘no’ for an answer from these supposed leaders,” Sawant said. 

“We need to stop listening to the gatekeepers who tell us what we can and we can’t say, that we need to stop criticizing the Democrats. We need to build mass movements independent of both parties. We need to build campaigns independent of both parties of the billionaires, to fight back and win. Because history tells us that we can, and that we must do that.”