Article: https://tinyurl.com/yuydtec4
The recent federal indictments of fifteen Minnesota activists must be understood for what they are: a serious escalation in the government’s effort to criminalize resistance to ICE operation, intimidate those who have stood up in defense of their communities, and to attack our basic right to organize.
Many of those charged have long records of community service and activism. They have been active in their unions, rapid response networks, mutual aid efforts, immigrant defense campaigns, and community organizations. Time and again, they have been willing to put themselves on the line to defend their neighbors and protect vulnerable members of their communities.
The federal government’s portrayal of these individuals stands in stark contrast to the reality that Minnesotans experienced during months of ICE operations and federal occupation. Throughout that period, residents were subjected to repeated acts of violence, intimidation, and repression. Yet there has been no meaningful accountability for the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good or for the many serious assaults and abductions reported during that time.
These indictments should concern everyone. The charging documents do not focus solely on specific actions by specific individuals. They repeatedly reference “coordination,” “communication,” and “collective efforts” to interfere with ICE operations and prevent the enforcement of federal immigration policy. Taken at face value, the logic of these indictments could potentially implicate thousands of people across the Twin Cities who participated in rapid response networks, immigrant defense efforts, school patrols, demonstrations, and other forms of collective action.
For that reason, these prosecutions must be viewed not simply as cases against fifteen individuals, but as an attack on the broader movement that emerged to defend immigrant communities and resist authoritarian policies. If the government succeeds in establishing that organizing, coordinating, and mobilizing communities in defense of their neighbors can be treated as criminal conduct, the implications will extend far beyond these defendants.
The labor movement has a special responsibility in this moment. Many of those targeted are union members, and some have served as elected leaders within their unions. More fundamentally, unions have historically been among the most important defenders of democratic rights, free speech, civil liberties, and the right of ordinary people to organize collectively against injustice.
These Draconian charges aim to lacerate the backbone of organized resistance to authoritarianism. They are a direct retaliation to the events of January 23rd when unions and workers mobilized across the country in the hundreds of thousands to participate in the “Day of No Work, No School, No Shopping.” It was this type of action that forced the Trump administration into retreat.
With our right to organize on the line, the labor movement has to consider what it is willing to do to defend this basic right for all of its members. Unlike the Democratic Party leaders of Minnesota who collaborated with ICE during Operation Metro Surge (despite their public proclamations to the contrary), unions cannot allow the sacrifice of even a few. The movement in Minneapolis proved to us all that “nobody is coming to save us but us.” Therefore, the labor movement should take a leading role in defending these activists and opposing any attempts to criminalize community resistance.
We call on unions, community organizations, faith groups, civil liberties advocates, and all supporters of democratic rights to stand with these defendants — the Minnesota 15. We must raise funds for their legal defense, organize public meetings, educate our communities about the stakes of these prosecutions, get resolutions of support passed in our unions, and mobilize broad public opposition to these attacks.
We should have no illusions that this will end with these fifteen defendants. Similar movements have emerged in Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, Newark, and communities across the country where residents have organized to protect their neighbors from ICE raids and deportations. If these prosecutions succeed, they are likely to be followed by additional indictments aimed at broader layers of activists and organizers — in other words, the rest of us are next on the menu.
The defense of these fifteen activists is therefore about more than a single case. It is about defending the right of working people and community members to organize, speak out, protect one another, and resist policies they believe are unjust. It is about defending the democratic rights upon which all movements for social justice depend.
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