Minnesota appears to be in gear for a mass uprising. Unions, community organizations, faith leaders, and small businesses there are calling for a statewide day of “no work (except for emergency services), no school, and no shopping” on January 23.
Festering grievances swelled into a national outcry on January 7, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed poet and mother of three Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis while she and her wife were observing federal agents swarming her neighborhood.
A week later, another federal agent shot a Latino immigrant from Venezuela in the leg. ICE agents have sprayed chemical agents in protesters’ eyes. Last Wednesday night, they detonated a tear gas canister underneath the car of a family just trying to get home from basketball practice; the baby, strapped in his car seat, was knocked unconscious.
Donald Trump’s regime has ramped up racist attacks targeting Somali, Latino, and Asian communities — battering down doors, raiding small businesses and forcing them to shutter, trailing school buses, dropping tear gas outside schools, and circling hospitals. He has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy the military to Minneapolis.
Under siege, Minnesotans are leaning on organizations at work and in their neighborhoods to end the terror.
“We are not going to shop. We are not going to work. We are not going to school on Friday, January 23. For some people they call that a strike,” said JaNaé Bates Imari of Camphor Memorial United Methodist Church at a press conference on Tuesday. “For many of us, this is our right to refusal until something changes.”
Among the unions endorsing the call are Service Employees (SEIU) Local 26, UNITE HERE Local 17, Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7250, the St Paul Federation of Educators Local 28, Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE, AFT Local 59), the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage…
Auteur: Luis Feliz Leon
