Activists around the world are following events in the United States closely, in particular the killings and the mass protests in the city of Minneapolis. We stand in solidarity with the protestors who risk their lives to monitor the federal agents (“ICE”) who are running
rampage in city after city. We are publishing an analysis of the current situation in Minneapolis and across the US written by Marxist activists Stephen Edwards (Chicago) and Luke Aarin (Madison). This article was first published by “Solidarity Now”, a working class organisation which campaigns using a united front approach, connect both unaligned activists and members of existing organisations.
“This marks a turning point” is a phrase that has often and appropriately been applied to US politics over the last 10 years. The general strike in Minneapolis and the effect it has had on consciousness are only different in that the words should be underlined, italicized, and in bold. This marks a turning point.
Since the beginning of Trump’s first term, tens of millions have participated in protest movements. A central question has continued to loom over them: how do we transform periodic outbursts of anger into something that can win transformative change? Something sustained, united, and national in scope? The Justice for George Floyd movement was one of these turning points. It trained many thousands of young people to navigate violence enacted on our movement by militarized police. It also trained millions more that protest movements alone are not enough to win meaningful reform. These lessons were carried through and solidified in the movement in solidarity with Gaza under Biden.
Time and again, our leaders have told us that the energy of these movements should be funneled into elections. Yet time and again, our elected officials have betrayed us. From their political burial of Medicare for All to the genocide in Gaza to Democrats and liberal institutions rolling over for Trump, millions have come to the conclusion that we have to rely on our own organized power to win change. It is no accident that these lessons converged in Minneapolis, the epicenter of the J4GF movement, where tens of thousands of people took it upon themselves to organize the defense of their communities.
This movement has now inspired the country by going on the offensive, targeting the very basis of both parties’ power by threatening to shut down the economy. It has shown the way for tens of millions of Americans who have been striving for an answer to that question: what will it take to win transformative change? Like recalling a forgotten memory, the working class, reminded by Minneapolis, has instinctively taken up the slogan General Strike!
Nothing short of Abolish ICE
January 23rd was the first attempt to flex the muscle of a general strike in generations. In fact, vanishingly few Americans have ever participated in any kind of strike. The level of organization of our movement is, with ragged breath, attempting to catch up to the desire to act. At this moment, when the billionaire class is engaging every tool at its disposal to regain the initiative, we need to tighten our ranks.
While Republicans have begun to put pressure on Trump to de-escalate, Democrats have been forced into a more combative posture, and corporate media is suddenly reporting on some of the horrors carried out by DHS. But their message is: “Trump and DHS went too far, but that is no reason to toss the baby out with the bathwater”. What “we” need to do, according to one billionaire Democrat, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, is “Abolish Trump’s ICE”. Once that is accomplished, according to this narrative, DHS can return to a nicer form of mass deportations and concentration camps. This was even more plainly revealed by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on January 27th when he called $50,000 bagman Tom Homan a “law enforcement professional.” Walz is happy to help DHS safely kidnap “the worst of the worst… when they’re not suspecting it in the middle of the night”.
Our movement, which has organized itself outside of and in opposition to the billionaires and their institutions, needs to say clearly that our demand is to Abolish ICE. Period. This, like the demand to end US support for the genocide in Gaza, must become a political litmus test as we enter the midterms. And its realization should be the guidepost in determining whether our movement must continue to escalate.
DHS agencies like ICE and CBP have been carrying out abductions, detentions, and deportations for years. The apparatus that Trump has now fully unleashed was constructed under Obama and further built upon by Biden. As with the genocide in Gaza, the murders of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, Keith Porter, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Renee Good, Alex Pretti and an unknown number of other victims is the legacy of the two-party system.
Since the beginning of January, eight deaths at the hands of DHS agents have been confirmed. This is likely only a fraction of all who have died in DHS custody, and merely scratches the surface of the immense suffering they are inflicting. Independent and citizen journalists have gone further in documenting the atrocities being carried out. Under pressure from the movement, corporate media have begun to reveal even more. It is being reported that in detention camps throughout the country, captives are sleeping on cement floors, if not on top of one another, with nothing but emergency foil blankets. Many are permanently kept shackled. If captives aren’t being actively starved, they are receiving meager rations, sometimes spoiled. In many cases, DHS agents or subcontractors are intentionally neglecting medical care.
DHS’s shock tactics, smashing car windows and grabbing the occupants, in some cases leaving the vehicle running or even leaving small children in the vehicle or by the side of the road; their use of battering rams to burst open doors as they recently did with a US citizen who they dragged out wearing only a blanket; and most recently their grabbing protesters who are citizens, throwing them in a cell for hours, stealing their phones then dumping them outside in freezing weather; all of these are deliberate. The same applies to their systematic denial of basic rights like the right to counsel or to call a family member. And there is still no accounting for the 1,200 people who disappeared from Alligator Alcatraz.
Shots at the Second Amendment backfire
On the morning after 100,000 people marched on the Day of Truth and Freedom, eight CBP agents deliberately killed a protester, Alex Pretti, in a public, execution-style shooting. After the first shot in the back at point-blank range, these Federal agents stepped back and fired at least nine more shots into his body, with one of them captured on video, applauding as the last few shots were fired. This has caused an explosion of mass outrage, which has deeply affected the labor movement as the victim was both a VA nurse and a member of the Federal employee’s union AFGE. . DHS officials Greg Bovino and Kristi Noem threw fuel on the fire with their outrageous claims that this ICU nurse was a “domestic terrorist.” Millions saw him killed on video while trying to protect two women from being assaulted by these Federal thugs.
The videos circulating on social media have forced even Trump’s loyal sycophants at Fox News to have second thoughts about the “terrorist” accusation. They clearly show that Pretti was holding a cell phone, not a gun, when Border Patrol agents threw him to the ground, and that he was swarmed, beaten, held down, and his gun taken away from him before the shooting started.
Their attempt to frame Pretti as a Rittenhouse of the left, aiming to carry out a “massacre” of Federal agents, has backfired. The Second Amendment, through the interpretation of the gun lobby, has been a red line for Republicans for decades. The Trump administration’s open attack on this right raises yet more questions about their violations of other constitutional rights.
In Trump’s first year, he has violated seven of the ten constitutional amendments that form the original Bill of Rights (1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th; also the 14th). Bondi’s letter makes it clear they are in the process of violating the 15th Amendment. The SAVE Act would also violate the 19th Amendment by attempting to disqualify over 60 million married women from voting. Trump has also frequently floated the idea of violating the 20th Amendment with a third-term run.
Operation Metro Surge continues
The demotion of Gregory Bovino is a small victory but we should not let the show that is being put on distract us from the fact that ICE is not yet out of Minnesota. While the reorganization of command structures may temporarily reduce the chaos that DHS has unleashed, it does not signal the end. Trump is well known for sacrificing his lieutenants to deflect blame while he attacks from a new angle. In fact, Trump has begun reorganizing operations in the Twin Cities, rather than pulling out altogether. Daily clashes between protestors and DHS agents have continued. According to a memo obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, Trump is requisitioning military barracks at Fort Snelling to be a new permanent base of operations. Another memo leaked from within DHS also indicates that Metro Surge is still moving forward.
It is not yet clear whether operational chaos will eventually be reduced with Homan taking charge, but it is clear that the movement has not yet defeated Trump’s mass deportation machine. The role of Democrats in providing cover for Trump has been appalling.
Yesterday, Trump announced that he had “productive” conversations with both Governor Walz and Mayor Frey. Walz echoed this sentiment, stating on social media that he told Trump, “we need impartial investigations of the Minneapolis shootings” and “that we need to reduce the number of federal agents.” At the same time, Walz and Frey have deployed the National Guard and MPD into neighborhoods to protect ICE and CBP, escalating the repression of protests in the process.
Just last week, Democrats voted to increase funding for ICE. But following the rapid spread of talk about a national general strike, they have abruptly done an about-face. They are now threatening a government shutdown – along with seven Republican senators! – unless Trump concedes on new regulations for ICE and CBP. As with the Democrats, recent coverage by corporate media, which has remained mostly silent about the long history of murder and abuse by DHS, is driven by the desire to regain control of the narrative.
Billionaires and big business want to avoid the working class rediscovering the power we have by wielding the weapon of the general strike. So their representatives in both parties, and their spokespeople in the media, are doing damage control. We must be abundantly clear, the tinkering at the edges that is being proposed will do nothing to secure safety, let alone legal rights, for the millions of immigrants who are the main targets of this racist rampage. DHS has been a vital tool in keeping immigrants terrified and the working class divided, all so the super-rich can become even richer.
Trump encircled
Trump’s racist war of domestic terror is damaging his standing in the polls. Just 37% of Americans approve of Trump in his second term, and 61% now think the country is on the wrong track. Almost two-thirds of voters think ICE has gone too far, including 94% of Democratic voters. And 46% of all Americans want ICE Abolished, including 80% of Democrats and even 15% of Trump voters.
As his support has weakened, so have prospects for retaining control over the federal government. Operation Metro Surge is the lashing out of a cornered animal. But it should also be seen as a dress rehearsal for voter intimidation on a huge scale later this year, and in every election going forward. It is the equivalent of a reimagined Jim Crow-style assault on voting rights, aimed at deterring Native, Black, Latinx and Asian voters, especially in swing districts, to try to overcome the massive Democratic wave which every serious pollster is predicting. This was partially confirmed by an extraordinary letter from Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Trump’s ability to consolidate power and carry out his racist agenda is dependent on his ability to retain control over the Republican Party through its voting base and the support of a key section of the billionaire class. The latter is economically and politically tied up with Trump’s agenda. In a later article we will dig into these connections in detail. While MAGA has remained ideologically committed to Trump’s agenda, his failure to deliver economic prosperity while only creating more instability has weakened this support.
The move to the Right of the Republican base is rooted in the failures and corruption of the Democratic Party particularly since 2008, when Obama bailed out Wall Street while millions were losing their homes. It has now hardened thanks in part to Trump’s embrace of the forces of the far-Right media ecosystem and the carefully laid plans of the Heritage Foundation, including white nationalists like Stephen Miller, Russell Vought and others who now hold key positions in his administration.
As we predicted in our previous article, the movement against Trump has demoralized MAGA, forcing wedges into the cracks in his coalition. Some Trump voters have even joined the resistance to DHS’s occupation. Trump’s economic failures, together with the mass resistance of working and middle-class people from LA to Chicago to Minneapolis, are winning the narrative war. Republican politicians have felt increasingly pressured to distance themselves from Trump’s messaging. Marjorie Taylor Green was among the first, but now leading Republicans are warning Trump in the press that if he does not de-escalate, he will cost them the midterms.
Even Trump’s right-wing, billionaire-funded “independent” media-sphere–which often acts as a weathervane for his voter base–has begun lobbing criticisms. Talking heads like Dave Smith, Tim Dillon, and Megyn Kelly not to mention Joe Rogan with his enormous audience. Bondi’s bizarre letter offering to have ICE leave the state in return for access to its voter rolls was an attempt to find an off-ramp; that is a clear sign of weakness on the part of the Trump administration. If the movement is able to continue its escalation, it can force Trump out of Minneapolis and into retreat on more than mass deportations.
Trump was able to win the deindustrialized working class to a nationalist vision because Bernie and AOC failed to provide a working-class alternative to the corporate-controlled Democratic Party. In the absence of a working class political party, overreliance on individual politicians to win political change has hampered the progress of our movements. It is no accident that neighborhood defense networks have begun to pry some of those voters away.
Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, who died at the hands of fascists, once said of the struggle for democratic rights: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Minnesotans from across the political spectrum have been forced to notice their chains as they struggle to defend themselves and their neighbors from Trump’s trampling of our democratic rights. In conflict with both the Republican and Democratic parties, this grassroots movement is demonstrating in real time that the organized working class is the only force that is capable of accomplishing this.
Keeping Trump on the back foot
The partial general strike in Minneapolis was a success because of these community-based networks. The unions that endorsed the action did so under pressure from their own members. While the official endorsement undoubtedly increased the confidence of the movement, union leaders themselves played too little of a role in organizing and mobilizing. For example, despite ATU 1005 President David Stiggers openly calling for citywide strike action, most buses and the light rail were still running on schedule on January 23rd.
Despite this, the movement was able to organize itself into a massive demonstration, which drew 100,000 people. This first attempt at a general strike in 80 years has sent shockwaves throughout the country. News outlets, celebrities, unions, left organizations, and millions of ordinary people are actively discussing what it would take to make a national general strike possible.
Hearing the call by student organizations and union activists for a follow-up strike, hundreds of organizations are now calling for a nationwide economic shutdown on Friday January 30th, just one week following the Minneapolis general strike. This is a bold and necessary next step. With the widespread discussion throughout society, there is no doubt an opportunity to make it a reality.
Even if January 30th falls short of the success in Minneapolis, it is likely to be another important step toward a nationwide general strike. Momentum is building as the Trump administration has begun to backpedal in the media. Millions of people are looking to get organized for the first time in their lives.
Leading from behind, or leading from below
We need all organizations of the working class to participate in this fight, but we must also be sober about the willingness of our leaders to do what is necessary. Some Democrats closer to their base have taken an active role in the movement, as have locally elected officials like those on the city councils of Chicago and Minneapolis. We should welcome these efforts and build on them. However, their ties to the national party pose a danger. As with the Justice for George Floyd movement and the demand to Defund the Police, the demand to Abolish ICE could be lost in the mayhem if we hand the reins over to them.
It is a general fact of history that leaders, afraid of committing mistakes, tail-end the movement. In many cases, they become an active brake on it. The initial response of AFGE to the murder of one of their members by another one of their members was a cowardly example of this. AFGE represents nearly 800,000 federal workers. They could go over the heads of Congress to shut down the government until justice is met. Yet they rely on the tried and failed method of working with corporate politicians. Other major unions have gone a bit further, condemning the shooting and Trump’s violation of democratic rights, but falling short of calling for an escalation of the movement. We should commend the few unions like National Nurses United which have taken up the demand to Abolish ICE. We need them to begin demonstrating what organized labor can contribute to the struggle.
Without major organizations actually taking the lead to organize a united national shutdown, the task falls to ordinary people, most of whom are organizing for the first time. The movement needs to begin creating citywide and national structures to ensure momentum is not lost while waiting for them to take the lead. The attempt by Democrat aligned NGOs to redirect this momentum into another No Kings demonstration in March is being scoffed at. However, if the millions of ordinary people looking to take steps forward are not rapidly organized into local democratic structures, then a step backward could be seen as the only path available.
Organizing the momentum
As of now, the movement remains decentralized but still powerful as was demonstrated in Minneapolis with the success of January 23rd. It is vital that this kind of grassroots organizing continues to be the basis of the movement. But there are also weaknesses that come with decentralized actions, and the movement has instinctively recognized that it requires coordination between community groups, unions, and defense networks in order to escalate. That is what produced the community-labor coalition in Minneapolis. However, the lack of official democratic structures in the movement has allowed some leaders to become the face of the strike, even while the real work was being done by thousands of nameless people.
Solidarity Now believes they are the ones who must become the elected leaders of the movement. In our previous article, we mentioned the role that citywide and neighborhood general assemblies can play in boosting participation and effectiveness of coordinated actions. And how general assemblies can become the democratic organization of the movement.
While the movement finds its way to nationwide organization, it is possible that this first attempt at a nationwide shutdown is followed up by disparate acts of resistance at the local level. Local structures are presently far more developed and can still mobilize effective forms of resistance as exemplified by activists in NYC who recently occupied a Hilton hotel where DHS agents were housed. Noise protests outside of Hilton hotels have been an ongoing phenomenon in Minneapolis. Protests outside of concentration camps have also been a feature throughout the country.
If local defense networks and community organizations are able to build on these they could slow down the deportations, as can organized non-compliance within these camps. Following the transfer of a Minnesota man and his five year old son to a detention camp in Texas, they immediately informed other captives of the general strike in Minneapolis. This gave hope to the families held prisoner in horrific conditions and they held a demonstration within its walls. DHS relies on demoralization and fear to make their detention and deportation machine work. The movement should look to provide support whenever similar demonstrations take place.
The momentum of this moment is likely to carry many hundreds of thousands into these efforts around the country. Expanded local organizing will train even more people. This in turn can create the basis for a renewed, better prepared offensive.
Working people have an immense amount of social power, and we need to use it now. Without us trucks and planes do not move, packages do not get delivered, stores do not open, and manufacturing grinds to a halt. Without us, the whole money-making machine that Trump and his billionaire buddies sit on will seize up and stop working. It’s time for a reckoning with Trump and his gang of masked thugs and the billionaires backing them.
The Justice for George Floyd movement taught us all a lesson about the importance of organizing around clear demands. The demands most effective in mobilizing the movement are those which arise organically from within. However, as momentum splinters or dissipates, the most far reaching demands can begin to feel too far out of reach. This is what occurred with Defund the Police. Solidarity Now believes Abolish ICE must remain the focal point of the movement. We also need to make clear what this entails, and take up more immediately attainable guideposts along the way. We believe if the movement can consciously organize around some list of demands like the following, it could allow for a continual building of momentum and organizing strength.
-ICE out of Minneapolis, and everywhere else too!
-Abolish ICE and prosecute those responsible for its crimes!
-Prosecute the murderers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and every other DHS agent who is guilty of murder or abuse of immigrants, other detainees, observers or protesters.
-An end to abductions and deportations.
-The return of all those already deported.
-The release of all detainees, the permanent closure of ICE detention camps and an open, public investigation of every contract awarded by ICE, with criminal prosecutions for corrupt practices.
-Investigate and prosecute Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino and Tricia McLaughlin for their cover-ups of ICE and CBP abuses.
-A full investigation of every report of ICE or CBP abuse.
