FAITH LEADERS, SURVIVORS OF RIKERS, AND ALLIES HOLD VIGIL HONORING EARLY HERO IN RIKERS ISLAND HISTORY
Faith leaders, advocates, and other New Yorkers met this morning in lower Manhattan where they held a vigil celebrating the life and work of David Ruggles and the Committee for Vigilance. Following the vigil, they walked to the Manhattan Criminal Court Building to call for action to reduce the number of people detained at Rikers, and advance its closure. This event is part of a series organized by faith partners of the Campaign to Close Rikers during Black August connecting Rikers Island with the legacy of slavery and freedom in New York. At 1pm next Thursday, August 28, there will be a silent march and vigil near the Riker Homestead.
Many communities honor Black August by calling attention to the connections between Black liberation and the carceral state. Nat Turner, the Soledad Brothers, and other Black freedom fighters fought racialized American slavery and mass incarceration, but another important figure in this struggle was David Ruggles, whose Committee for Vigilance fought Richard Riker and the New York Kidnapping Club’s efforts from the 1830s to 1850s to detain free Black people and send them to enslavement the South under Fugitive Slave legislation. Rikers Island—named after Richard Riker—is legally mandated for closure by 2027, but is still a site of racialized state violence, with Mayor Adams slow-walking its closure while 42 people have lost their lives in DOC custody since his inauguration.
“May we break the chains of mass incarceration, from the prisons to the immigration detention centers,” said Danielle Williams of the Interfaith Center of New York. “May we break the chains of snatching up our loved ones off the street. May we break the chains of systematic poverty and racism. May we break the chains of classism, misogyny and homophobia that keep our movements divided. David Ruggles, protector and liberator, you protected free brothers and sisters as well as the children that slave catchers sought to abduct and take back into slavery. May we bear your courage to protect ourselves and to protect our most vulnerable community members.”
"We cannot let Black August become another celebration of self-care, and to lose the mandate to let the oppressed go free. We don’t do this work alone. We are still marching towards the day when there will be no Rikers, when the oppressed will go free, when we will not spend $500,000 to detain a person without proper services. We can live in a better world, and it starts with the work that we do here,” said Reverend Dr. Rashad Moore of First Baptist Church of Crown Heights.
“Just as David Ruggles stood boldly against a brutal system in the 19th century, guided by a moral compass that saw no compromise with injustice, people of conscience today must echo that legacy,” said Freedom Agenda Co-Director Darren Mack. “Rikers Island is a monument to cruelty, not justice. It is a place of suffering, not redemption. It’s time for every pulpit, every mosque, every synagogue, and every sacred space to echo the call: decarcerate and close Rikers now!”
###