Leah Stevens
Yesterday, Minneapolis was rocked by the first political strike against the Trump regime. Tens of thousands of Twin Cities workers skipped work and joined a massive rally downtown, shutting down the city to protest weeks of violent ICE occupation. Over 700 businesses closed their doors as did many large institutions like the Science Museum of Minnesota and Walker Arts Center. Unionized Starbucks workers forced six locations to shut down, and many unions mobilized workers to the strike. Dozens of smaller protests took place around Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the entire state of Minnesota.
The corporate media is stressing that business owners shut the city down, but to be clear — this was not driven by business owners or bosses taking a stand of their own accord. Minneapolis ground to a halt because over the past month, ordinary working people refused to accept that ICE could occupy their city, assault their children, detain thousands of their neighbors, and murder them when they peacefully resisted. Tens of thousands of people have been organizing themselves into neighborhood groups and courageously confronting ICE in the streets. Union members built rallies and pressured their leaders to act decisively, which led to over 100 unions and community organizations calling yesterday’s work stoppage across multiple sectors. Socialist Alternative Minnesota (ISA in the United States) has been out every day postering, canvassing, and calling meetings to build for the biggest possible strike. Yesterday’s monumental action makes clear that ICE terror will be met with an all-out fight.
Minneapolis is no stranger to mass protests—the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 took place just blocks away from the intersection where ICE murdered legal observer Renee Good and detonated one of the largest protest movements in US history. But there is a new, key ingredient in the struggle today: the labor movement has stepped into the ring, pulling alongside it the social weight of thousands of working-class people. January 23rd was not just a step, but a leap forward in building the kind of fightback that will be necessary to defeat Trump and his reactionary agenda.
Massive Protest at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport
Upwards of 5,000 people crowded Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport at 10 am to protest the airport’s role in carrying out over 2,000 deportations. The mood was electric as the crowd blocked the access road to Terminal 1, chanting “Fuck ICE, shut it down, every city, every town!” This drastically slowed down business as usual at the airport for two hours. In addition to the role airports play in facilitating the Trump regime’s anti-immigrant operation, they are economic lifelines of the US economy. This action points toward the immense power working people have to disrupt economic chokepoints and force the capitalist system to its knees. It did not go without retaliation from the airport police, who arrested 100 peaceful clergy members.
Socialist Alternative Minneapolis members picketed the length of Terminal 1 alongside protesters, handing out nearly 2,000 flyers for an organizing meeting this Sunday to discuss what comes after the strike, including an even stronger strike to kick out ICE following the ICE murder of Alex Pretti (shocking video), and a nationwide strike to kick ICE out of every city.
Workers Take the Streets
The harsh -34 C “real feel” temperature in Minneapolis yesterday did not dissuade the spirits of the tens of thousands of workers who gathered downtown, many in ski goggles and snow pants to withstand the cold. The crowd was filled with educators, hospitality workers, young Somalis and Latinos, chanting and holding signs such as “Neighbors Say—Ice Out!” Socialist Alternative marched alongside the mile-long procession that started at the Commons. After hours of marching, protesters flooded into the Target Center for an indoor rally.
Local clergy from different faiths gave moving speeches to the crowd. Unfortunately, the speeches lacked concrete steps needed for escalating the movement further. National labor leaders like Randi Weingarten of AFT spoke, but there was nothing about the role of the national labor movement to continue this fight, especially as ICE threatens other cities. Figures like Weingarten should be using their positions to call for spreading the movement: a nationwide strike.
From Minneapolis to Every City
While Minneapolis was the epicenter, hundreds of solidarity actions shook the country, including marches and student walkouts called by Socialist Alternative in over a dozen cities. Several waves of protests have hit the shores of the Trump administration over the last year, but the awakening of the labor movement lays the basis for a tsunami that, through its power to threaten the flow of profits, can more decisively push back this authoritarian regime.
The movement cannot stop here—the strike needs to be spread across the country. As in the Twin Cities, workers across the country must build support in their workplaces, and pressure in their unions, to take up this crucial tactic and escalate the movement to a nationwide strike. While sickouts are an important start, defying anti-strike rules and laws will be absolutely necessary. In the face of retaliation, workers in the Twin Cities will need to keep the pedal to the floor, building for stronger, more sustained strike action. As we have seen, when the wider movement pulls even a section of the labor movement into action, the power of the organized working class strengthens the movement as a whole. Imagine if the entire US labor movement threw its weight into the boxing ring to keep ICE out of our communities!
No ICE, No Trump, No Capitalism
Kicking ICE out, however, is only the first step toward ending the terror campaign against immigrants and taking on Trump’s authoritarian regime. We need to fight for an end to deportations as whole, and for immediate legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants. We need to abolish ICE and put its $170 billion budget to the things working people actually need, including affordable housing, fully funded public schools, and programs like SNAP.
To win this, and more, we need to build a nationwide strike. We can’t rely on the Democrats to take up this, who despite the angry chest-thumping are, as a whole, committed to ICE continuing its raids in a slightly less violent manner. To fight Trump and the billionaires, we need full independence from the parties that uphold the capitalist class and a new workers’ party that can organize our movement with working-class methods like strikes and walkouts.
Labor leaders need to lead boldly: an injury to one is an injury to all. We reject the violent abductions of our neighbors, the scapegoating of immigrants, and the ICE occupations of our communities. Capitalism relies on the exploitation of the most marginalized communities, including immigrants, to keep the entire working class down as a whole. It relies on divisions in the working class to keep us fighting each other instead of the billionaires we make rich through our labor. Yesterday, Minneapolis said no to billionaire greed and right-wing rule. Solidarity from the Twin Cities to every city in the struggle to build the fight against Trump, ICE, and the whole rotten system!
