In Iowa City, No Kings rally-goers demand Fatou Traore’s return, encourage early voting; opponents of jail bond proposal make their case

Hundreds gathered at the Pentacrest on Saturday morning for the No Kings Vote Early rally. The Iowa City rally was one of almost 3,000 No Kings events across the county, including 30 in Iowa, intended to boost early voting ahead of the Nov. 3 election. 

The crowd in Iowa City was smaller than the last No Kings rally in March, which attracted about 2,000, and smaller crowds were reported as well at rallies from Davenport to Sioux City. But the participants in Iowa City were as enthusiastic as they were in the past, despite the morning’s chilly weather. 

Like the previous No Kings events, the Iowa City rally featured speakers and live music, and it finished with a march along the sidewalks of downtown. The event was officially billed as nonpartisan, but the speakers talked about the importance of voting to create change. 

“We cannot accept this as normal,” Ed Flaherty of Veterans for Peace said, after listing actions by the Trump administration, from mass arrests and deportations of immigrants to the war on Iran and military strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. 

For Esoumaila Diallo, the need for change is extremely personal. The 19-year-old is Fatou Traore’s oldest son.

Traore, a longtime Iowa City resident, was seized by plainclothes ICE agents early on the morning of Sept. 24, as she was getting ready to drive to work with her sister, and deported on Oct. 12. The mother of four, who immigrated from the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) 21 years ago, was granted an order of withholding-of-return in 2011 by an immigration judge, which prevented her from being sent to Ivory Coast, because she had demonstrated that she would face persecution, violence or death there. Instead, the Trump administration sent Traore, who has no criminal history, to Sierra Leone, a country she has no connection to. 

The Trump administration has used the formerly rare tactic of third-country deportation to get around legal restrictions like withholding-of-removal orders. Attorneys working on Traore’s behalf are concerned Sierra Leone will send her to Ivory Coast, because foreign governments are not bound by U.S. immigration rulings. 

Diallo said his family has set up a GoFundMe page to help cover legal expenses. He thanked the community for its support, and encouraged them to keep contacting Iowa’s elected officials and pressing them to work on Traore’s case. 

“My mom spent 15 years cleaning hospital floors and caring for our family,” Diallo said. “This week she was deported to Sierra Leone without due process, before a judge could even rule on her request to stop her deportation.”

“But the fight is not over, our family is not giving up and we will not stop until we bring her home,” he continued. “We are assessing our legal options, including a possible lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security. And we are demanding that Rep. Miller-Meeks, Ashley Hinson, and senators Grassley and Ernst act now to bring my mom back.”

“My mom belongs home with us, and together we will keep fighting until she is.”

Mazahir Salih, director of the Immigrant Welcome Network of Johnson County and an Iowa City councilmember, took the microphone after Diallo to speak about the impact ICE’s seizure of Fatou Traore has had on immigrants in the county. 

“I just want to say, as you see, the immigrant community is really going through a lot,” she said, her voice heavy with emotion. “How can we change that? I think it is on you to change that. We need to put people in office who are going to work to make this country work for everyone. Please go from here and vote.”

She added, “We don’t have another solution.”

Chris Jones, the Democratic nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, talked about other areas where change is needed.

“If our government can’t even ensure that our water is safe to drink, what can our government do?” he asked the crowd. 

Jones, who spent his career as a research scientist focused on water quality issues, has made changing the corn/soybean/CAFO model of agriculture and improving water quality the centerpiece of his campaign. On Saturday, he evoked a phrase used by the late senator from Minnesota Paul Wellstone: “We all do better, when we all do better.”

His listed changes that would improve life for everyone, including better-funded public schools, universal healthcare, access to affordable housing, securing reproductive rights, promoting local food systems and making sure state park beaches aren’t polluted. 

“When we have safe water to drink, everybody does better,” Jones said. 

“Everybody says these days that Trump is on the ballot,” he said as he concluded. “Well, maybe, but what’s on the ballot are these other things. That’s what’s on the ballot.”

The priorities Jones listed, like those of most other speakers, were ones the crowd enthusiastically embraced. But rally organizer Sue Thompson of Indivisible Johnson County acknowledged there was one topic on the ballot that might prove divisive among the people attending No Kings — the $94.5 million bond for a new, larger county jail. Two county supervisors, V Fixmer-Oraiz and Mandi Remington, spoke about their opposition to the bond when they addressed the rally. Thompson said a speaker supporting the jail bond had been invited to the rally, but ended up canceling. 

Malina Amjadi, a volunteer with Johnson County Deserves Better, a group formed to oppose the bond, also spoke on Saturday and explained why she believes a no vote is important. 

“You may have seen our campaign signs stating ‘No New Jail,’” Amjadi said. “But looking back, ‘new’ isn’t the adjective I wish we had focused on. I acknowledge that inmates and staff working in the Johnson County deserve an updated facility. But I am also in fierce opposition to the one featured on this ballot.”

The proposed jail has almost 50 more beds than the needs assessment by the Prison Policy Initiative. What this new jail proposal does is build bigger infrastructure for more incarceration.”

Amjadi said a larger jail does not reflect the community values of Iowa City or Johnson County. 

“This community has time and time again invested in jail diversion and that is precisely why as our county’s population has increased, our daily inmate population has actually been decreasing,” she said. 

“This vote is an invitation to choose hope or fear. It asks that we respond to our problems through exclusion and punishment by supporting a bigger carceral system.”

Amjadi noted that even proponents of the bond acknowledge that increasing access to education, healthcare and housing helps prevent crime and keep people out of jail. 

“A jail is not a school, it is not a health facility and it’s not a home,” she said. “A jail is where we keep the people who slipped through the cracks, and didn’t receive the things they need to not end up there.”

Voting no isn’t the same as voting to do nothing to address problems in Johnson County, Amjadi contends. 

“The power of ‘no’ in this vote means we get another chance to keep working on something else,” she said. “A ‘no’ vote means that we didn’t already spend $94-and-a-half million, plus $30 million interest, and we still have the spending will for ideas that reduce harm, both long- and short-term, rather than perpetuate it.”

The crowd had dwindled in size as the rally after about 90 minutes, but most of the crowd that remained until the end joined in the march that followed. 

Early voting runs through Monday, Nov. 2, the day before Election Day.

See also: Photos from Davenport’s No Kings rally