Use our resources
When planning an event or activity, use resources from the Free Families toolkit (songs, prayers, vigils, and more)
Get the Toolkit
CONNECT COORDINATE NOURISH
PROTECT RESPOND PREPARE PROTECT
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Free Families is a way for our communities to connect and coordinate our actions around family separation, detention and deportation; to plan and carry out activities that nurture and protect our families; and respond and prepare for greater crises.
Our message is straightforward: The use of family detention is wrong, inhumane, and must come to an end. It preys on poor and vulnerable communities, while inflicting long-lasting harm on those who are detained and their loved ones. It is especially traumatizing for children.
This cruelty is an affront to our communities, values, and faith traditions, which call us to create a society that honors our inherent human dignity and protects and ensures our fundamental rights.
Free Families invites us to come together – wherever we are – to rise up and build a community that can respond to this crisis now and be prepared to protect each other everywhere. By connecting these acts of care and resistance, Free Families is a mechanism to amplify our actions and project our shared commitments with greater power.
Newark, NJ
Creating a Dia de Los Muertos altar outside the Delaney detention center.
Leavensworth, KS
Building community and faith coalitions that are resisting the opening detention facilities in their cities and towns in the streets, the courts and the legislature.
San Antonio, TX
Holding prayer vigils outside court houses and in the public square.
Our families inside detention need us right now. Human rights are being violated every day inside and outside of detention. The families being detained and separated urgently need us to take action wherever we are. The communities on the frontlines are showing massive courage in dangerous contexts to keep gathering and resisting. Every week our people gather outside of Alligator Alcatraz in South Florida, outside of GEO in Aurora, Colorado, and in so many more places where our people are crying out.
How to Participate in Free Families
Use the name
Add Free Families to the name of what you’re planning (Free Families dinner, Free Families service, Free Families vigil, Free Families song circle, etc.)Tell us about your eventIncorporate the message
Incorporate the Free Families logo and color scheme to your event posters, social media, flyers, or other materials. (include logo, color scheme)Get the brandJoin Free Families Advocacy
Tell your members of Congress to end the inhumane policy of family detention.Act now
Free Families Toolkit
Resources for planning an event activity
Gatherings
Whenever even two of us are gathered together, we create a Free Families event. These sample agendas can help you plan your own gathering.
Songs
Whether at a meal, vigil, or other gathering, these songs express our commitments to all of our families being free.
Rituals
These rituals have been drawn from communities across the country. Use them in private or public settings and adapt to your context.
Prayers
Draw on these (interfaith) prayers to open or close your events or for deeper discussion about the role of faith in this moment.
A Free Families’ Promise
We are alive – we were made for these times
We are the people – all of us are powerful, all of us are equal
We are community – when some attempt division, we build unity
We are compassion – when our people are in pain, we take action
We are the movement – for every single human
We have come to love – we have come to win
we have come to heal – we have come to sing
Because we are the song – where we all belong
We are ocean – falling and rising as one
We are sky – our eyes shining with sun
We are land – abundant for everyone
Because Liberation – Is the destiny of creation
We are a promise of protection – for dignity
For justice – for peace
For all our families – to be free
For today, for tomorrow – forever after
We are living our commitment – to ALL our children’s laughter
This pledge is an expression of our commitment to our families facing immigration enforcement, detention, and deportations, and to the future we all deserve. Include it in activities you organize with Free Families and beyond.
Everything we do matters
Every action we are taking against family separation, detention and deportation is important, no matter how big or small. Whether it is a dinner at home or a public vigil, every action we connect to Free Families projects our values and vision of society more broadly. When we share our local stories, we are breaking our isolation and exchanging lessons from across different geographies and communities. Together, our actions can inspire other communities to join with us.
Connect with us
Tell Us About Your Action
Share your Free Families activity, what is happening in your community, about the action you planned or took part in.
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</style>About Free Families
Free Families is anchored by the faith engagement working group of the National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention and the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice. We are joined by other partnering organizations, networks and thousands of individuals in supporting this work for Free Families.
The National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention is a collaboration to protect and prevent immigrant families from detention and deportation and end the unjust practice of family detention. With the participation of over 40 organizations at the grassroots, state, and national level, the coalition aims to build collaborative strategies to shift narratives, act in solidarity, and advocate for protection, oversight, and the importance of providing direct legal support to families experiencing enforcement, detention, deportation, and disappearances.
The Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice is a center for leadership development and power-building within poor and low-income communities across lines of difference and division.
Free Families Partners
Free Family Songs
For all Free Families gatherings, we are focusing on being human together. Sing like it's a way to be free together. Sing like our voices could be keys to open the cells of those unjustly held. Sing like your heart needs to cry with those missing their loved ones. Sing like your voice melting into other voices could conjure the hugs of separated families into the future. Sing like music can heal us while we struggle for justice. Because it can. Sing like there are thousands of people just like you out there who are also adding their vibration into a movement for all our liberation. Trust us, we are singing with you. (You can find more songs in the Toolkit!)