This campaign against deportation flights shows how to target companies enabling Trump

On the surface, the pro-immigrant activists who took to the streets in Connecticut last month looked like every other recent march against Trump’s deportation machine: a multiracial crowd of all ages carrying witty signs and chanting. Their target was the commercial airline Avelo, which has proposed operating as an ICE subcontractor to carry out deportation flights. 

What made this protest different, however, is what happened next: The group New Haven Immigrants Coalition and its allies went beyond protesting to directly attacking Avelo’s key “pillars of support” in Connecticut. Like any public company, Avelo is effectively a Jenga tower — if several key pillars upholding the company are removed, the tower falls.

For starters, they began working to undermine support for the company among elected officials. They called and met with lawmakers who had sponsored an airline fuel tax subsidy — worth around $150,000 annually to the company — to urge them to let it expire. They also worked with coalition partners to urge the state’s attorney general to consider investigating Avelo. 

The TRUST Act Now Coalition advocated for stregthening the TRUST Act during a public hearing on March 19. (Instagram/New Haven Immigrants Coalition)

Read the rest of this article in Waging Nonviolence.