Bluesky

Thousands of ICE thugs roam the streets, attacking schools, smashing car windows, shooting residents, and “visiting” activists in their homes. Now President Donald Trump is threatening to impose the Insurrection Act, allowing him to deploy troops.  Welcome to Minneapolis during the Trump regime.

What is happening in Minneapolis is a fascist shitshow, but there is also mass, grassroots resistance. The oppression is all over the news, but the stories of ordinary people fighting back needs to be circulated as well.  Dan Troccoli, a public school teacher at Justice Page Middle School and union activist, says that the battle for Minneapolis is not a one-sided rout by ICE if it was there would not be these threats to impose martial law.).

“Many people around the city have been going around patrolling and keeping an eye on these agents,” he told me. “There are estimates as high as 10,000 people that have been involved in the city in these efforts in the last six weeks. Given the legacy of the uprisings after [the 2020 police murder of] George Floyd, people in the city have been activated for years now. I would argue we were Trump’s target for that reason, but it’s not going exactly like they planned, and people need to know that.”

One example of things “not going exactly like they planned” happened at Roosevelt High School. Only hours after the ICE killing of Renee Good, ICE tried to storm the gates of Roosevelt, when a person they were pursuing ran onto school grounds just as students were heading home. Instead of retreating, ICE assaulted and gassed students and educators. But their attack was met. “In our union, in the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, there has been now for about a year and a half, a group of educators calling themselves the Deportation Defense Group,” Trocolli explained. “So at Roosevelt, they were ready, and we had a network of people ready to go on this, and we have been doing training around how to be an observer, how to go on patrol,  what are the most risky times for students to be dropped off or picked up, and how can we do mutual aid for families who can’t even pick up their kids.  So the staff members at Roosevelt were outside of the building ready to ID ICE and physically get in between them and their students.”            

But ICE aggressively pushed forward and then struck and sprayed chemical agents on students and staff. After all of that, ICE arrested one educator who was then let go hours after the union’s lawyers were on the scene.

The Minneapolis teachers’ unions (there are two) have been front and center in this fight: opening up their halls for meetings every night, partnering with parent organizations, and holding training sessions.

“This past weekend,” Troccoli recalled, “we had a training at one of our high schools, and there were something like 300 parents and staff mixed together, working together to try and organize in their buildings. At recent meetings of this same network of Unionists in MFE, there have been something like 60 to 70 percent of schools represented. And I would imagine it’s much higher now since Renee’s murder, with more buildings getting activated, involved, mostly out of fear and concern for their students’ safety.”

Troccoli stressed that the union’s leadership and active response to the crisis comes from having a unique union president: Marcia Howard. Howard taught at Roosevelt for 20 years. When George Floyd was murdered, she, still a teacher, “was the coordinator, and hub of George Floyd Square.”

Howard took the entire year off then to do this work, turning George Floyd Square into a kind of  autonomous zone, and both teachers’ unions made sure she was paid during this time. This drew her closer to the union. Howard, with grassroots encouragement, ran for union vice president and president. “She’s just been a fiery and amazing leader for our union, especially in terms of trying to marry union struggles with other social justice struggles in the city,” Troccoli said.

In the face of this resistance, ICE is upping its oppression. Agents are showing up at the homes of people who follow ICE in their cars even at a safe distance are —no matter their citizenship.  Troccoli also said that when these ICE-watchers leave their cars, phones in hand, to document their violence, they have been hit, without warning, with mace, pepper balls, and “non-lethal” bullet rounds.

And yet ICE violence has yielded not compliance and pacification but even more resistance. Troccoli said,  “a number of unions in the city are now committing to a day long-strike on January 23.” This call already includes the backings of some of the biggest unions in the city including, according to the PayDay report, The Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1005, SEIU Local 26, UNITE HERE Local 17, CWA Local 7250, and St. Paul Federation of Educators Local 28, with more coming. “We’re not sure exactly what’s going to happen that day yet,” Troccoli said. “But it’s happening.

As far as what people can do Troccoli told me that social-media support definitely keeps spirits up but “in addition to appreciation, we want emulation. We need that out there in the streets in every city”