“They’re not prosecuting organizing because organizing failed. They’re prosecuting organizing because organizing worked.”
Cover: via https://www.redlakenationnews.com/story/2026/06/17/news/15-members-of-direct-action-minnesota-a-minneapolis-based-direct-action-group-with-antifa-ties-indicted/140970.html
Amie Stager || Following the federal government’s indictment of 15 Minnesotans on Wednesday, the state’s labor movement and community organizations are striking a note of solidarity, and determination to rally together to oppose the charges.
Among them are some of the people who were targeted in the crackdown on ICE and Border Patrol observers. “The real move on their part is to keep us from organizing on the things we need to be organizing,” Erik Davis, an educator and organizer who was among those indicted, told Workday Magazine.
He said that, as a condition of release for 12 of the defendants, they are not allowed to be in touch with each other, except for through lawyers. “The real pressure they’re imposing on us is refusing to let us speak to our best friends for months, potentially years. That’s punishment without a conviction.”
Nonetheless, Davis says the public support has been helpful, and more is needed. “When people fight for each other, it comes from deep sources of love. The labor movement in Minnesota and throughout the U.S. and around the world needs to double down on the love we have for each other and fight like hell for each other and we need to do it everywhere.”
Minnesota’s labor movement has moved quickly to express concern about the indictments that swept up a number of unionists, and cited participation in worker assemblies as proof of conspiracy. “A hundred thousand of us peacefully marched in minus twenty degrees. No matter what we look like, how we pray, or what language we speak, we looked out for our neighbors and stood up to attacks on our state,” reads a statement signed by more than 50 labor and community groups. “But now, ahead of our midterm elections, the Trump regime’s weaponized DOJ is lashing out in hopes of intimidating people who challenge their corruption, abuses of power, and attacks on our freedoms.
”The statement continues, “But Minnesotans have already proven we won’t cave to bullies and their billionaire backers, no matter their fearmongering and division. We’ll continue to stand together and stand up for what is right, because that’s what neighbors do for each other.”
Unions signed onto the statement posted by SEIU Local 26 on Facebook include UNITE HERE Local 17, CWA Local 7250, UFCW locals 1189 and 663, Education Minnesota, and the Minnesota AFL-CIO, among others.
Also on Thursday, international human rights watchdog group Human Rights Watch released a lengthy report in collaboration with Minnesota organizations, including the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center and Human Rights Program, documenting the widespread abuse and violation of rights during Operation Metro Surge. The report, titled “A Manufactured Crisis: Minnesota Communities Terrorized by the Federal Government,” concludes that the federal operation caused a human rights crisis. The report draws from over 130 interviews, as well as data and analysis from legal cases, surveys, testimonies, news articles, and other records from organizations. Panelists at a press conference hosted on Thursday at the University of Minnesota Law School gave remarks about the impact of Operation Metro Surge, and spoke out against the federal government’s targeting of community defense activists this week.
“They’re not prosecuting organizing because organizing failed. They’re prosecuting organizing because organizing worked,” said Emilia Gonzalez Avalos, executive director of Unidos MN at the press conference. “Every name is a mirror, every accusation is a confession, the lawlessness was never ours, the violence was never ours.”
Michele Garnett McKenzie, executive director of the Advocates for Human Rights, an international human rights advocacy organization based in Minneapolis that works on asylum and refugee cases, pointed to recent escalations of federal authorities, including a reported raid on the office of a voters rights organization in Ohio, as well as raids on the homes of immigrant rights volunteers in Washington, D.C. “They are using the playbook of Operation Metro Surge in a new way,” said McKenzie at the press conference.
The statement signed by 50 labor and community groups blasted the Ohio raids: “Last week, FBI agents raided offices and homes of Ohioans who ensure voters can cast their votes and have them counted. Now, the very same Department of Justice that refuses to investigate or press charges in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti is going after 15 Minnesotans.”
Jonah Giese, an organizer for National Lawyers Guild, which is representing some of the indicted and helped provide data for the report, called the indictment an “act of political repression” with the intention of chilling dissent. “On Tuesday, the Trump administration took another step in their rapid descent towards full throated fascism,” Giese said at the press conference. “A project of racial terror cannot be reformed. The National Lawyers Guild recommends a complete and total abolition of ICE.”
As for Davis, he says, “I’m grateful for all the solidarity and support, I need that.” (A fundraiser for legal defense has already gained considerable traction.) But, he added, “I’m not the person people should be focused on.”
Gonzalez Avalos underscored at the press conference that mass detention of immigrants remains an urgent human rights crisis. “Every headline about a conspiracy in Minneapolis is not a headline about a pregnant migrant teenaged girl in detention in Texas.”
