General Strike Day

One of our local online alternative publications, Racket, has created an oral history of the ICE occupation. They posted it today without a paywall for the general strike. I don't know if it will be accessible beyond today or not.

The whole thing is worth reading, and I'm glad it will be available as documentation of this time. Here are a couple of quotes.

A young Eritrean-American woman, a first-generation immigrant, says she has been doing a lot to fight the invasion, but also sometimes is overwhelmed by it all and can't do anything.

And yes, sometimes that fills me with shame, with guilt. But mostly, it makes me furious. I have every right to be here. Our neighbors have every right to be here. Renee Good had every right to be where she was that Wednesday. The only ones who don't belong here are the ICE agents marching around in their ridiculous camo gear, doing their best to make themselves feel big and powerful, thinking that the more they shout, the more we will cringe before them. 

I am furious that I have to waste a moment of my day thinking of these fools. I am furious that Renee Good isn't alive today, at home with her wife and child. I am furious when I think of the families separated by ICE, Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump. I am furious that our state, which has already seen so much tragedy in just the past year, that is still trying to repair from the murder of George Floyd and the unwilling spotlight we were thrust into, is yet again a part of history through no choice of our own. 

A person from Monticello (Monticello! a far northwestern exurban town, most of the way to St. Cloud) wrote:

I was several feet from two ICE agents, whistling, and one [of them] yelled, “You’re obstructing!” and came at me. He tried pepper spraying from afar, soaking my pants, then as I turned away, I saw spray in the air next to me. Then he reached around, put the nozzle under my glasses and sprayed directly into my left eye. 

A Minneapolis dad wrote,

My daughter has a surface understanding of the situation — she "trains to beat up ICE" with friends at recess. Years from now, when she asks me how our family fought back, I want to be proud of the answer I give her.

That reminded me of how my sisters and I used to play "English and Germans" when we were children. Imagine that from now on children here will play "people and ICE." 

Here are some photos (not mine) that show some of the scale of today's huge march in downtown Minneapolis. It was –8°F ambient, probably about –20° wind chill. 

And finally, I was somewhat amazed to see this Associated Press story in today's Pioneer Press, which is generally considered to be the more conservative of our two local daily papers. As you may know, JD Vance was here yesterday for some triumphalist or damage-control reason. In the story about that (which was on the front page, but buried in below the fold in the center under a photo of someone else), this was the lede:

Insisting that he was in Minnesota to help "lower the temperature," Vice President JD Vance on Thursday blamed "far-left people" and state and local law enforcement officials for the chaos that has convulsed the state during the White House's aggressive deportation campaign.

He also defended federal agents who detained a 5-year-old boy while making an immigration arrest. 

The recent turmoil "has been created, I think, by a lot of very, frankly, far-left people, also by some of the state and local law enforcement officials who could do a much better job in cooperating..."

"We're doing everything that we can to lower the temperature," Vance said, adding that he wants "state and local officials to meet us halfway."

This was on the day after ICE/CBP had used the 5-year-old as bait to capture the child's dad, then shipped them both to Texas (despite the fact that the child is a citizen with other adults here to care for him), and Greg Bovino and dozens of his goons had paraded through South Minneapolis gassing people for no reason except to make a show of force and use the bathroom. 

And on the same day they were preparing for Pam Bondi's Department of Just-Us to arrest local civil rights leaders — without an arrest warrant — for disrupting the Sunday service of a church co-led by the local head of ICE. (What would Jesus do with a church like that? Knock over a few tables?)

That's the way this regime "lowers the temperature," and the AP clearly knows that is not the case, given the way its reporters wrote that story of contrast. The regime expects cooperation and "being met halfway" to fascism the same way the Third Reich did. 

Half way to fascism is fascism.