A Mass Strike in Minneapolis Against ICE?
General strikes don’t happen very often in the United States. But in the face of widespread anger at ICE abuses and the murder of Renee Good, the Twin Cities’ labor movement is moving toward organizing one at the end of this week.
Under siege, Minnesotans are leaning on organizations at work and in their neighborhoods to end the terror. (Renee Jones Schneider / the Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)
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.
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