An abbreviated version of this talk was given in Madison, Wisconsin April 11, 2026. It’s being reprinted here in solidarity with Detroit people’s fighters who are hosting a similar “Lessons of Minneapolis” event May 16, 2026 where WI BOPM members will be present. (1-4 P.M. – Eastern Time – at the IBEW, 1358 Abbot Street)

April 11, 2026 

Lessons From Minneapolis! 

Madison, WI 

My name is Bryan George Pfeifer, a proud member of the working class, a Co-Founder of Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement and a Steelworkers union member. Today I am speaking on behalf of WI BOPM. 

Thank you Minneapolis for the many lessons in courage, love, kindness, organizing, tenacity, self sacrifice, unity and solidarity! We warmly welcome you to Wisconsin and thank you for being here with us today. 

We are also honored to be here with other endorsers of this event, our courageous friends from Voces de la Frontera, the South Central Federation of Labor, We Rise Fighting! Labor Podcast, IBEW Local 159 and IBEW Local 2304. We also thank the Christ Presbyterian Church for offering us this wonderful space and for the tireless work of this event’s principal organizer Victoria Guiterrez, RN Leader of SEIU Wisconsin. 

I am the Grandson of George Pfeifer and Great Nephew of Art Pfeifer, strikers that ushered in the UAW-CIO Local 833 at the Kohler Company after an 11 year successful strike beginning April 9, 1954. UAW 833 – and many other UAW locals – have improved the lives of workers and community members in Wisconsin and beyond for decades now. 

I was honored to be in Minneapolis January 19-23, 2026 fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with union and community members against the ICE invasion and building for the January 23 “No Work. No School. No Shopping” action that drew 100,000 people marching and rallying in -25 below weather. 

Dr. and Mrs. King

We begin by honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, both leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), whose contributions to unions and communities continue to impact us positively. 

Dr. King was assassinated after returning to Memphis April 4, 1968 after his “I’ve Been To the Mountain Top” speech. He called for a boycott of businesses and a general strike until the city legally agreed to AFSCME union recognition for Black sanitation workers. A year prior to Memphis, Dr. King gave his “Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence” speech at the Riverside Church in New York City where he linked and protested the “triplets of evil,” poverty, racism and war. 

In that spirit: 

Stop the U.S.-Israel War On Iran! Free Palestine! 

We need money for people’s needs and not endless U.S. wars and ICE! 

There is a rally for justice Sunday, April 12 in Milwaukee at 2 p.m. at 1700 N Memorial Drive for Mr. Salah Sarsour, the President of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and an Executive Board member of American Muslims for Palestine. Mr. Sarsour was abducted by ICE March 30 and now in a concentration camp in Brazil, Indiana facing possible deportation. Sarsour has been a resident of Milwaukee for 32 years.  

Today, we raise some of the questions the Kings grappled with and similar ones now: 

• Why is completely independent working class organization a necessity? How did this work in Minneapolis to repel legal terrorist forces such as ICE and extra legal ones such as the Patriot Front? How did those in Minneapolis retain the lessons of the 1934 Teamsters led general strike? How did the relationships developed out of the struggle for justice for George Floyd influence the anti ICE people’s struggle in Minneapolis? How did the unions in metro Minneapolis work with refugees, the Indigenous and communities with dozens of nationalities to repel ICE? How did they have the working class organization and infrastructure positioned to do this? Why were politicians forced to respond to the mass based people’s resistance from the streets and worksites in the 1930’s, 1960’s and in Minneapolis in 2025-26?  

• How do we build deeper relationships with union and community organizers and leaders in the U.S. South such as the Southern Workers Assembly, UE 150 and Black Workers For Justice, to learn more creative methods of organizing as Wisconsin labor laws presently are modeled on southern state laws. 

WI BOPM History

We officially formed WI BOPM as a completely independent people’s organization in June 2011 and have been directly or indirectly involved in all of the people’s struggles in Wisconsin since then. In 2025, we supported UAW, Meriter Nurses (SEIU Wisconsin) and Cheese Maker strikes and many other labor battles. We have worked with many self-sacrificing inspiring people’s fighters across the state. See our website at wibopm.org to see this tremendous history. 

We salute the tremendous internationalist class struggle, socialist history of millions of workers in Wisconsin over the decades and centuries. Here in Madison this includes the Black and Brown and Indigenous Freedom Struggles, the union workers struggle at Oscar Meyer, the students, staff and faculty history within the UW System, the women, LGBTQIA and immigrant rights struggles and much more. 

Our origins as WI BOPM started while we were occupying the state capitol with our fellow workers and community members in February and March of 2011 to oppose the Jim Crow Act 10. Despite mass resistance, this law – or a political and economic coup – outlawing almost all collective bargaining for public sector workers was implemented in June 2011. This set the stage for unrelenting Jim Crow based austerity in many forms over the past 15 years including the implementation of Right-To-Work (for less in 2015), the evisceration of environmental laws, the attacks on the UW System and the stripping of tenant rights laws. 

• How, with the tremendous class struggle and socialist history in Wisconsin, did we end up with an Act 10 and thus in our present conditions regarding union busting and related austerity and Minnesota and Illinois did not? 

• How, with the robust union infrastructure, funds, membership and connections that existed in 2010 leading into 2011, did workers and communities in Wisconsin be absolutely leveled with racist union busting and austerity? How was this prevented in Minnesota, Illinois and to some extent Michigan? 

The robbery of workers and communities in Wisconsin due to the escalated austerity since Act 10, is tens of billions of dollars, many suffering and dying unnecessarily and new generations of youth and students losing out on numerous opportunities. The Milwaukee based right-wing Bradley Foundation is the primary architect of this destruction with its “capitalism with the gloves off approach.” The Bradley Foundation understands that ideology matters. Do we? 

Utah Philips once said: “The Earth is not dying-it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.” 

• Have we analyzed the Bradley Foundation and other capitalists deeply to learn how they’ve done what they’ve done? Have we learned their tactics to develop our tactics on how to defeat the capitalists? Do we know who the capitalists and their servants are? Do we know who the capitalists servants are within the labor and community movements? 

• How do we learn about the enemies of the people and fight effectively against them? For example: Art Pope from the Civitas Institute, Chairman of Variety Wholesalers (a low wage non union chain of hundreds of retail stores in the U.S. South) and the former Budget Director for former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, led the Bradley Foundation Board during much of the post 2011 period. Pope, along with the likes of the General of the right-wing ideological wing of the capitalists in Wisconsin, Michael Grebe Senior, helped advise about “southern methods” for Wisconsin including how to gerrymander more efficiently, to union bust and make tax codes easier for the rich to rob poor and working people. Pope also Co-Founded the John Locke Foundation and the James G Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Pope, in 1975 as a first year student at the University of North Carolina, filed a complaint under the code of student conduct against Algenon L. Marbley, President of the Black Student Movement, for shouting down David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan

Moving Forward

Malcolm X once said: “History is best qualified to reward our research.” 

He also said: “The only thing power respects, is power.” 

Today, it is our belief that to be effective in advancing the class struggle and beating the bosses and bankers and their repressive forces such as ICE and the police, a correct program for the period we live in today then tied to correct organization is a necessity. It is our view that leaders in unions and community organizations must have this type of orientation to stay alive to build organizational bases, advance and win. And also make a foundational priority the forms, methods and roles of people’s culture within organizing and our communities which includes breaking bread.  

• What type of union leaders do we have and what are they doing? Do our union leaders understand that any win that’s won in the legal or parliamentary arena is based on the strength we’ve built as workers in the work sites and streets? And that our wins have to be continually defended? Are they internationalist with the understanding that there are No Borders In The Workers’ Struggle? Are they class struggle and anti racist orientated? Are they rooted in the communities they live in? What salaries do they make? Do they capitulate, are led by or or answer to the capitalist parties instead of our communities? Or do union leaders lead an independent union that understands the differences of negotiation, accommodation, maneuvers and capitulation? In our union and movement organizing, are we recruiting members to build working class wide power with all sectors and communities in all geographic areas or just recruiting or staying in larger cities? Are leaders connecting workers in urban, semi-rural and rural locations with issued based programs and creative organizing?

We suggest today, a deeper study and to learn from what might be ineffective programs and methods of organizing and what is effective and why? For those in Wisconsin, this means listening very intently to those from Minnesota and Chicago who have many critical lessons for us including what it takes to run an action such as the January 23, 2026 “No Work. No School. No Shopping.” march and rallies or a Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike of 27,000 workers. This will assist us in our deliberative discussions about actions such as general strikes and the serious work that will be necessary to get to that stage of the people’s struggle. 

• Also, are we in organized labor working with community and social justice based faith based organizations to create and build anti fascist committees and other self defense organizations to protect ourselves from legal terrorist forces such as ICE and extra legal ones such as Nazis and the Klan? Are we appealing to working class GI’s and national guard members to not scab on our unions and communities but instead protest their real enemies on Wall Street and the Pentagon?

There are no easy answers but together as workers and community we can and will figure it out. It will not be easy. We’ll have to grapple with many things. We will face many challenging hardships and trials. We will need love, unity, solidarity and grace with each other. 

But we the workers are the ones that make the world run every day no matter the obstacles. We are the ones that will put capitalism in the dustbin of history where it belongs. We are the ones that will build the new world out of the ashes of the old; the world we all need and deserve. 

Or, as the late People’s General Assata Shakur, wrote in “Assata: An Autobiography:”

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

It is our duty to win.

We must love each other and support each other.

We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

For the seven generations! 

Onward to May Day!

Si Se Puede – Yes, We Can!

Venceremos!