Stumbling Stickers

Stumbling Stickers are being placed along Columbia Pike and other locations in Arlington County. They are memorial artworks positioned on sites where people in our community have been taken away by ICE agents. 

The Stumbling Stickers emerged from a moment of witness. 

 

In June 2025, Reverend Ashley Goff, pastor of the Arlington Presbyterian Church and artist Sushmita Mazumdar of Studio Pause attended a stumbling stone ceremony along Columbia Pike that honored the Check Brothers, who had been enslaved in what is now the East End of the Pike. These “stumbling stones” are part of a growing effort across Arlington to place physical markers on sidewalks where enslaved people once lived and labored, insisting on public memory in places where history has been paved over.

 

That local ritual traces its lineage even further back to Stolpersteine across Europe: brass blocks also set into sidewalks that mark where Jewish neighbors and others were taken by the Nazi regime. Each one says “this happened. And we remember.”

Being at the stumbling stone ceremony, Ashley and Sushmita couldn’t ignore the echo: If the Pike remembers those who were enslaved here, how do we remember those taken by ICE now in Arlington — when our Latino and Hispanic neighbors are living under constant threat of raids, detainment, and disappearance?

Unlike permanent stones, these stickers are intentionally temporary. Sushmita created the image, and Ashley crafted the language for a ritual read aloud as each sticker is placed. They go on sidewalks in Arlington where neighbors were taken by ICE—moments of state-enforced separation. Each sticker is an act of refusal, a spark of stubborn hope: a way of saying that silence will not erase these lives, and this Administration will not bury their stories. The stumbling stickers proclaim: harm was done here on this neighborhood block, and ICE does not get the last word. 

Prayer ritual read when placing a Stumbling Sticker.

 

“We are here to tell the truth.

To name harm that was done on this block.

To place a mark where someone was taken by ICE.

To remember what others would rather forget.

To build a community of memory, resistance, and care.

Across Arlington, stumbling stones mark the names and lives of those who were enslaved here –

A way of saying: this happened. And we remember.

Across Europe, Stolpersteine-

Stumbling stones- mark the places where Jewish 

Neighbors were taken by the Nazi regime.

We follow in that tradition of memory and resistance.

But we call these Stumbling Stickers – temporary marks for those taken by ICE.

Because this happened.

And we will not look away.

This sticker is temporary- and our witness is not.

Setting the intention.

We place the sticker not for spectacle, not to identify a home, but to say:

This happened here.

A person was taken. A family was harmed., Neighbors faced fear. 

We mark this place in mourning and protest – so this

story is not erased. So ICE does not get the last word.”

 

As of late September 2025, Stumbling Stickers have been placed at:

-The 800 block of S. Florida Street

-S. Greenbrier Street and 7th Road S.

-Columbia Pike and S. Frederick Street

-The 5000 block of Columbia Pike

-The 900 block of S. Buchanan Street

-Columbia Pike and S. Thomas Street

-18th Street S. and Walter Reed Drive

 

Some have been removed, some remain.

Photography by Lloyd Wolf.