Protesters hold signs criticizing ICE outside the Marriott Hotel on Olentangy River Road on Wednesday night. Credit: Trevor Voigt | Lantern Reporter
Bells, whistles, drum beats and tambourines punctuated chants of “O-H, ICE-OUT” that cut through the cold air outside the campus area Marriott Hotel at 3100 Olentangy River Rd. Wednesday night.
A crowd of roughly 60 gathered around 7 p.m. on the sidewalk and marched carrying signs, improvised drums of pots and pans and other instruments as part of a noise demonstration organized by the Columbus chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, also known as PSL.
Olivia Rowland, a PSL member and graduate student in English, said that the protest was held outside of the hotel near where Ohio Homeland Security is hosting a counter-terrorism conference.
The conference was scheduled to take place on Wednesday and Thursday at the OhioHealth David P. Blom Administrative Campus building, according to an online registration page. The conference was less than a block away from its recommended hotel, the Marriott Columbus OSU, where the chanting took place.
“We do not believe that they are ICE agents,” Rowland said, “but it is confirmed that there are federal agents in the hotel.”
Similar protests have occurred outside hotels where Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, more commonly known as ICE, have been confirmed to be staying.
The protests follow the Jan. 7 shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, which Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said occurred after Good attempted to run agents over to attempt to kill or injure them, according to a press conference posted by the Associated Press.
At around 7:40 p.m., an event organizer who identified himself as Umar got on a microphone and addressed the crowd, who had formed a picket circle.
“We’re not going to just sit by while the feds host a so-called counterterrorism conference at the same time ICE is coming into our streets and ripping our communities apart,” Umar said.
Chants continued to be led over the microphone, calling for “Justice for Renee Good” and “Justice for Keith Porter,” who was killed by an off-duty ICE officer in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve after allegedly pointing a weapon at the agent, according to ABC7 reporting.
Other chants included “Abolish ICE,” “f*** ICE” and “down, down with deportation, up, up with liberation.”
“ICE is still very active in Columbus,” said Riley Scott, an employee at the Wexner Medical Center and member of PSL Columbus.
Scott said that the purpose of ICE having a large presence in Columbus and Minneapolis was not a coincidence.
“These are the two largest Somali populations in the country, and this is just terror, they’re here to cause terror, to rip apart communities, it’s brutal, it’s barbaric and we want them out.”
PSL organizers invited the crowd to attend other protest events planned for the next week, as well as an information session that will take place Saturday at the Columbus Liberation Center, located at 1004 Parsons Ave. at 3 p.m.
The protest officially disbanded with closing remarks by organizers around 8:00, but roughly half of the crowd remained for some time afterward, with some staying well into the night.
