Extreme cold didn’t stop the shutdown on Friday as some 100 faith leaders were arrested, residents stayed home from work, and many tens of thousands more marched through downtown Minneapolis.
cf. Minneapolis General Strike Movement Spreads to 300 Cities on Friday
cf. https://generalstrikeus.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfP8GPIKnjM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbTSN8vSWbI
Sarah Lazare || Tens of thousands of Minnesotans chanting “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,” marched through downtown Minneapolis Friday afternoon to demand ICE leave the state.
Organizers estimate 50,000 or more took to the streets, though some estimates were lower and as high as 100,000. The crowds were apparently undeterred by subzero temperatures.
“Oh my God, today is amazing, overwhelming, and very powerful,” says Feben Ghilagaber, an airport food service worker and steward for UNITE HERE Local 17. “It was bigger than I was expecting, much bigger. I was kind of worried about the weather, but everybody showed up.
According to Ghilagaber, “a lot” of airport workers in her union didn’t go to work today to support the shutdown, many of them calling in sick.
A commercial electrician and member of IBEW Local 292 who was holding a sign reading “General Strike is a Path to Justice” during the march told me he was “out here to support immigrant rights, support every American.”
“I mean, ICE is just deplorable,” he said. “And I mean, anyone could get in the path of the ICE agents. It just infringes on our own civil rights.”
One Minneapolis resident, who requested anonymity to protect her from ICE retaliation, told me, “I’m here today to stand up for everyone, stand up for myself. I am impacted. I came here when I was two years old. My parents brought me here from Mexico. All I know is America, so seeing everything that’s going on, seeing my family ripped apart, seeing kids being snatched, an innocent woman shot for standing up for what’s right, it’s all surreal.”
https://bsky.app/profile/lucagalletti.bsky.social/post/3md5aq7uhq22o
“I’m speaking out for those who couldn’t be here today, who are hiding, who every time the doorbell rings their heart stops,” said the Minneapolis resident, who is 29 years old.
Many of the signs at the march referred to Renee Good, a poet, Minneapolis resident and 37-year-old mother of three who was killed on January 7 by an ICE agent.
Good’s killing has been raised throughout the day, including during an act of civil disobedience by faith leaders at the airport, and during an accompanying news conference there.
The civil disobedience from Minnesota faith leaders resulted in the arrests of about 100 clergy who engaged in civil disobedience by blocking a key road at the Minneapolis – Saint Paul International Airport Friday morning, according to the ICE Out of MN coalition.
The clergy, according to a coalition news release, were arrested for their part in “the statewide shutdown ICE Out of Minnesota: A Day of Truth & Freedom.” The clergy’s demands focused on Delta and Signature Aviation, which they say have been complicit in and have helped facilitate the deportations of Minnesotans.
Their demands include that Delta and Signature Aviation “publicly call for an immediate end to the ICE ‘surge’ into MN and for ICE to leave the state,” to call for the officer who killed Good to be held accountable, to “publicly call for Congress to stop funding ICE” and to ensure Target stores deny entrance to any agents who do not have “signed judicial warrants.”
[UPDATED: 12:15 p.m. CST]: Police have started arresting clergy blocking the road outside of Terminal 1 departures at the Minneapolis – Saint Paul International Airport as the crowd chants “we love you.” Many faith leaders prayed in the moments before they were taken away.
“The MSP Airport serves tens of millions of travelers each year and is now used as the key site in DHS’s operations to abduct and rush out Minnesotans to detention centers. An estimated 2,000 people have been deported through MSP, and many people who work at MSP have been abducted by ICE while at work or commuting to and from the airport.”
A crowd of thousands — including striking workers and union members — stayed outside in subzero temperatures to cheer on the civil disobedience. People passed around hand warmers and snacks to help sustain the crowd.
Katrina Zabriskie, 22, just watched her mother, a Minnesota-based chaplain, get arrested. “It was really emotional,” she tells me. “When the crowd started chanting, ‘We love you,’ I started to cry. Mostly I’m just really proud.”
“We care about the safety of our neighbors,” she added. “We believe it is deeply unjust taking people from their homes and deporting them, brutalizing them, and keeping them in detention centers. It’s not something that should be happening.”
The airport has become a flashpoint in the federal assault.
“Delta relies on MSP as a major hub, and Signature Aviation provides logistical support for ICE operations,” the ICE Out of MN coalition said in a statement released after the arrests of clergy.
“The MSP Airport serves tens of millions of travelers each year and is now used as the key site in DHS’s operations to abduct and rush out Minnesotans to detention centers,” the statement said. The coalition added that “an estimated 2,000 people have been deported through MSP, and many people who work at MSP have been abducted by ICE while at work or commuting to and from the airport.”
[EARLIER]: About 100 faith leaders blocked the road outside of Terminal 1 departures at the Minneapolis – Saint Paul International Airport Friday morning in an act of civil disobedience and as part of the January 23 Minnesota shutdown against ICE.
They sang “before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail, everybody has a right to live.” And they held signs that show abducted members of UNITE HERE Local 17, as a crowd of thousands of supporters sang and chanted.
The action comes as all eyes are on Minnesota Friday morning. A major work stoppage has been called by a large coalition to resist the onslaught of thousands of federal agents that have descended on the state, unleashing violence and abducting Minnesotans.
Some of the protesters, workers and faith leaders outside the airport could be heard chanting “We are the workers, the mighty mighty workers!” “We are under reacting” and another person with a bullhorn loudly emphasized: “We are here to tell corporations to stop being complicit with ICE.”
Earlier at the airport on Friday morning, Nick Benson, an organizer with the grassroots and non-partisan group MN50501, looked around and lamented the scene.
“This airport is the narrow end of the funnel where our neighbors are getting shipped off to God knows where,” Benson said. “Yesterday, we hit our 2,000th estimated deportation this month.”
https://classautonomy.info/minneapolis-general-strike-movement-spreads-to-215-cities-on-friday/
Friday’s press conference and the strike and actions across the state — as well as solidarity actions across the country — come on the heels of harrowing news that a 5-year-old was taken by ICE agents from the driveway of his home in the Minneapolis area on Tuesday. The preschooler and his father are now reportedly being held in a detention center in Texas.
“This is not just a local struggle,” Betancourt said. “It is a test of who we are as a nation and what kind of future we will build together.”
“This moment demands that we show up in solidarity, to witness what is being tested here, to learn from how communities are responding and to help bear the burden together,” said Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, in a news release sent to reporters released ahead of the action.
“This is not just a local struggle,” Betancourt said. “It is a test of who we are as a nation and what kind of future we will build together.”
The action at the Whipple Building Friday morning kicks off a day of a Minnesota-wide shutdown under the banner of “no work, no school, no shopping.” The call was put out publicly 10 days ago by a coalition of unions, faith groups and community organizations. The idea is to “suspend the normal order of business” as a way to protest the unprecedented federal deployment of thousands of masked, armed federal agents on Minnesota.
For weeks, those agents have been stalking and abducting people at schools, daycares and from their homes — and unleashing violence on people trying to protect their neighbors.
That violence has been extreme and deadly. On January 7, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old poet, mother and Minneapolis resident Renee Good, and public outrage and despair over the murder has been a rallying cry throughout Minnesota and across the country.
The broad coalition that came together to help organize today’s work stoppage also has specific demands that include ICE immediately leaving Minnesota and that Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Good, be “held legally accountable.” They’re also calling for ICE not to receive any “additional federal funding … in the upcoming congressional budget, and ICE should be investigated for human and constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.”
“We are asking every single person, every family member, every teacher, every bus driver, every childcare worker, to come together, to be in community, to stand with one another,” said JaNaé Bates Imari, who was representing Camphor Memorial United Methodist Church (located in the majority non-white Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul) at a news conference on January 13.
“We are asking every single person, every family member, every teacher, every bus driver, every childcare worker, to come together, to be in community, to stand with one another,” said JaNaé Bates Imari.
For the throngs of those participating on Friday, the stakes are not academic. SEIU Local 26, which represents more than 8,000 of the state’s janitors, window cleaners and other property service workers, has “lost over 20 members to these abductions by federal agents, often without warning, often without due process,” said union president Greg Nammacher at a January 19 press conference. The federal agents’ strategy, he added, is “to break up families, to disappear loved ones who for hours and days often don’t have any idea where their family members are and often have no access to legal counsel.”
But it’s not just immigrant workers who are harmed. Nammacher emphasized that “if the declared purpose is to help U.S.-born workers get higher wages, which is sometimes what we are told, it has had the opposite effect.”
A window cleaner who led a strike four years ago to win improved safety measures on the job was recently detained at a routine immigration check-in, Nammacher said. He had lived in the country for 30 years, yet agents have already deported him to Mexico, away from his family. “His sacrifice made all window cleaners in the Twin Cities safer, no matter where they were born, no matter what their citizenship status,” Nammacher said.
Around sixteen members of UNITE HERE Local 17 (which represents more than 6,000 hospitality workers in the Twin Cities metro area) have recently been abducted, and the Minneapolis – Saint Paul International Airport has become a site of repeated kidnappings of both union and non-union workers.
“Uber drivers are continuously harassed and snatched away, leaving abandoned cars behind, their families completely unaware of where they are,” Sheigh Freeberg, Local 17’s secretary-treasurer, said at a January 9 press conference inside Terminal 1. “UNITE HERE Local 17 members who work at the airport have been taken away behind TSA, and ICE flights have increased — sometimes twice daily.”
https://worldecology.info/category/towards-an-ecological-general-strike/
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