Dozens of businesses across Minnesota shut down on Friday as workers braved dangerously cold weather to protest federal immigration operations following the killing of an unarmed woman by an ICE officer.
The “Day of Truth & Freedom” strike brought a “no work, no school, no shopping” blackout to the state, where the Department of Homeland Security has claimed 3,000 arrests over the past six weeks and the Trump administration has dispatched 3,000 immigration officers. The US army has put 1,500 soldiers on standby for possible deployment.
Community leaders, faith leaders and labour unions organised the action demanding ICE leave Minnesota, legal accountability for the officer who killed Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month, an end to additional federal funding for ICE, and investigation of the agency for human rights and constitutional violations.
The Minneapolis City Council endorsed the general strike, which culminated with a march in downtown Minneapolis at 2pm local time despite forecast temperatures of -10F with windchills reaching -20F.
“We are going to be having dangerously cold weather on Friday,” Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, president of the Minnesota Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, told the Guardian. “We are a northern state, and we are built for the cold, and we are going to show up, but folks are going to need to pay attention to not just the march, but what people are doing, the individual stories of solidarity that people are going to be doing.”
The Minnesota AFL-CIO, the state’s federation of more than 1,000 affiliated local unions, endorsed the action along with dozens of local labour unions.
“I think what generated the idea for this action comes out of the need to figure out what we can meaningfully do to stop it,” Kieran Knutson, president of Communications Workers of America Local 7250 in Minneapolis, told the Guardian last week. “The government in the state of Minnesota has not offered any path towards stopping these attacks, this violence.”
A Minneapolis childcare worker, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation towards the immigrant families they serve, said families gave overwhelming support when consulted about shutting down for the day.
“We had time to ask the families that we serve if they would be on board with shutting down and we got a hugely positive response,” the worker said. “We serve families that are on childcare assistance, families that pay out of pocket. So they were all in agreement, even ones that have been trying to go to work, even during this time where they were fearful of being out of their houses.”
The Department of Homeland Security dismissed the strike. “This is beyond insane. Why would these labour bosses not want these public safety threats out of their communities?” a DHS spokesperson said. “These are the criminals these labour bosses are trying to protect,” the spokesperson added, citing 23 uncaptioned photos of claimed undocumented immigrants with criminal records arrested by ICE.
(With information from the Guardian/Photograph: Star Tribune/Getty Images)
