ICE detentions at Bellingham courthouse prompt singing protest from activists
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Singing Resistance Whatcom formed earlier this year with one goal in mind: to bring community members together in a different form of protest. The local chapter of a larger national movement has sung at larger actions like the No Kings protest as well as organized their own.
On Thursday, they raised their voices outside the Whatcom County Courthouse in downtown Bellingham to protest federal immigration enforcement in and around the courthouse.
Group founder Mary Francell-Sharfstein said she tries to organize at least one action a month. So when she heard about Whatcom County Superior Court’s expansion of virtual hearings in response to an uptick in detainments by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), she decided that Singing Resistance Whatcom should bring attention to the issue.
“We want to bring attention to it so people know that what they’re doing is wrong,” Francell-Sharfstein told The Herald.
About 30 people gathered by the courthouse steps Thursday afternoon with banners, tambourines and microphones. Members of the Bellingham Troublemakers also came to act as peacekeepers and brought large signs reading “ICE abducted our neighbors here.”
Francell-Sharfstein said she’s sung her entire life, and became involved in activism in response to the Trump administration and its policies. She partnered up with a similar local group to form the Whatcom chapter of Singing Resistance, and members meet in small “pods” to practice each week. At the same time, Francell-Sharfstein said the group makes sure to sing songs that can be easily picked up at protests by people who don’t know them.
Francell-Sharfstein described singing as “a way to fight back in a way that is not aggressively confrontational.”
“It’s a joyful standing in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors who have been subjected to these unfair abductions.”
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