by Pat McCaughan
Activists are urged to get out their walking gear and join pilgrims of all faiths for a 96.5-mile “Clear the Road to Freedom!” walk Sept. 29 – Oct. 6 from the ICE detention center in Adelanto to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles to protest inhumane immigrant treatment.
It is “a long way to walk. That is precisely the point,” said the Rev. Canon Jaime Edwards Acton, rector of St. Stephen’s, Hollywood, in a press release. “Adelanto sits far out in the high desert, and that distance is not an accident—it is what keeps families from visiting, keeps attorneys at arm’s length, and keeps the conditions inside, and the deaths inside, safely out of view of the city that would otherwise have to reckon with them.”
Along the way, Episcopal churches in Hesperia, LaVerne, Upland and Monrovia as well as Sacred Resistance Orange County, will offer meals and hospitality for the pilgrims. In addition to Sacred Resistance, pilgrimage organizers also include CLUE, or Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice and Nefesh, a Jewish spiritual community, in partnership with No Camps California, Shut Down Adelanto Coalition, Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, and Matthew 25.
“Sacred Resistance Orange County looks forward to participating in the pilgrimage and supporting our neighbors who are incarcerated at Adelanto and elsewhere,” said the Ven. Laura Siriani, diocesan archdeacon, who co-chairs Sacred Resistance Orange County. “We are committed to a season of raising funds through CLUE’s bond fund.”
Participants may join for the entire walk, or part of it, a day or part of a day, or sign up to help host according to Edward Acton by registering here.
The groups are also raising money for CLUE’s Detained Immigrant Bond Fund, which provides financial support to help secure the release of community members detained by ICE. One hundred percent of donations go directly to bonds (minus fees if credit cards are used). After cases are resolved, the bond money is returned to the fund to help someone else, according to the website.
“St. Mark’s is grateful to provide a place for hospitality, respite, and nourishment for the pilgrims,” according to the Very Rev. Keith Yamamoto, rector, and Deanery 6 Dean. “We thank Sacred Resistance for organizing the walk; we all play a part in bearing witness to God’s love for our neighbor.”
Edwards Acton said the eight-day walk will be conducted “in the open, day after day, so that it can be seen. And we walk so that the people held at Adelanto know something simple and true: they have not been forgotten. Someone is out there on the road, saying their names.”
This pilgrimage is not a departure from our work. It is the next chapter of it. It grows directly out of what this community already does every day — sitting in immigration courtrooms, visiting detention centers, showing up at the offices of policymakers, opening our houses of worship, operating mutual aid networks, and standing in people’s living rooms to help meet the most ordinary daily needs.
“As clergy and people of faith, we are able to be a protective presence for those for whom speaking out is not safe, and we will carry that role onto the road with us. Cruel policy is not inevitable, and it is not the way of any tradition represented among us. It was made by human decisions, and it can be unmade by them. As we walk, we will be raising money for the bond fund — because getting one person out from behind those walls is not a symbol, it is a person, home. Walk a few hours or a day with us. Join us for the entire walk. Host us for a night. Give what you can. There is a place on this road for you.”