14 | SEPTEMBER 3 • 2020 continued from page 13 continued on page 16 While participating in this fel- lowship, Adlerstein learned about the long history of immigrant rights organizing and was wel- comed into what she describes as a family of organizers, both undocumented and not. “The power the undocument- ed community has is the fact that our entire economy depends on immigrant workers, and we don’ t have to ask politicians nicely because they’ re not going to do anything, ” Adlerstein said. After she completed the fel- lowship, Adlerstein moved to Grand Rapids in April 2018 to help organize the local Cosecha branch’ s second May Day strike. Adlerstein and Cosecha organiz- er Gema Lowe met during the weeks leading up to the strike. “In Cosecha, we have 14 principles and one of them is that it’ s not a job; it’ s a passion, ” said Lowe, who’ s lived in Grand Rapids since 1991 after immi- grating from Mexico to join her family. Adlerstein and Lowe worked together on a number of proj- ects during her years in Grand Rapids, including their push to end ICE’ s contracts with the Kent County Sheriff’ s Office. If an individual was arrested on a non-immigration charge, ICE could previously issue a detain- er and ask the jail to hold the accused for up to three days past their release date until ICE offi- cers could begin their case. After protests at the Kent County Board of Commissioners’ meetings and sites of detainment, the Sheriff’ s Office changed their policy and now requires a war- rant for ICE to hold those arrest- ed past their release date. A CONTROVERSIAL COMPARISON While Adlerstein was working with Lowe to make these chang- es in Grand Rapids, the words “Never Again” and her conver- sations with her mother came to the front of her mind when Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York first used the words “concentration camps” on June 18, 2019, to describe ICE detention centers on Twitter. In so doing, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez sparked a fiery nationwide debate — and galva- nized leftist Jewish activists like Adlerstein, who saw the compar- ison as powerful and apt. “The fact that people can be put in detention centers indef- initely with no due process at all is incredibly terrifying, and the slowly creeping level of dehumanization and cruelty is becoming so normal … When is 100 deaths going to turn into 1,000 going to turn into 10,000?” Adlerstein asked. However, many scholars and Jewish organizations found and continue to see Ocasio-Cortez’ s words as not only inaccurate but insensitive and diminishing to the experiences of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. In a press release from June 2019, also signed by the heads of five other Holocaust Memorial organizations, the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills wrote that the term should not be used in a partisan discus- sion. “The Nazi regime targeted Europe’ s Jews for murder. It cre- ated a vast forced labor and camp system to exploit Jewish labor before murdering them. Ocasio- Cortez’ s inaccurate reference diminishes the inexpressible hor- ror suffered at the hands of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi regime and col- laborators, and wrongly equates current U.S. immigration policy with the systematic murder of 6 million Jews and the persecution of millions of others, ” the center’ s release read. The center declined the JN’ s requests for an interview for this story, but Rabbi Eli Mayerfield, its CEO, sent an updated state- ment on the movement. “The Holocaust Memorial Center firmly believes all people should be treated humanely with inherent dignity and provided the protection of fundamental human rights. At the same time, it is completely inappropriate and offensive for Never Again Action to use the term ‘ concentration camp’ as they are, ” Mayerfield said in the statement. “The disgraceful phenomenon of Holocaust analogies is danger- ous and should never be used for political gain or leverage. This politicization of the Holocaust must stop. ” Even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the Jewish Democratic Socialist and former presidential candidate who has been a huge rallying force for the Jewish left, told CNN in 2019 he doesn’ t use “that terminology. ” Judaic Studies scholars such as Hannah Pollin-Galay and David Caron from the University of Michigan see the debate as a matter of cultural memory and how words change over time. While Pollin-Galay said she Members of the group Never Again Action have been arrested in protests against immigrant detention policies. GILI GETZ/JTA Jews in the D