Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Momentum for a planned general strike-like event in Minnesota is building amid increasing outrage over the actions of federal immigration officials in the state.Schools and businesses across Minnesota are planning to stay closed on Friday as part of the 'ICE Out! Statewide Shutdown' day of protest.
The event was first announced last week by a broad coalition of local labor unions and faith leaders with the goal of forcing federal immigration agents to leave their cities and towns.Bashir Garad, chairman of the Karmel Mall Business Association and the owner of a Minneapolis-based travel company, told the Minnesota Star-Tribune that the planned shutdown is gaining 'momentum and support from a wide variety of communities.''Already, thousands of businesses have declared that they will shut down this Friday,' Garad added, 'and tens of thousands of workers and students have pledged to march in the streets, rather than go to work or school.'Hundreds of Minnesota businesses have announced plans to shut their doors so far, according to running list posted by Bring Me the News, which also lists dozens of other businesses that are remaining open while vowing to donate at least a portion of sales on Friday to nonprofit groups such as the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund.Keiran Knutson, president of Communications Workers of America Local 7520, told Payday Report that organizers are hoping to 'have tens of thousands of workers in the street in the Twin Cities' protesting against the actions of US Customs and Border Protection and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement .In addition to the events taking place in Minnesota, Payday Report has published a map showing solidarity strikes occurring in 120 different cities across the US.The planned Friday strike is the culmination of weeks of resistance against federal agents carried out by Minnesota residents.In a Wednesday thread posted on Bluesky, author Margaret Killjoy explained how people throughout Minneapolis have banded together to track the movements of ICE and CBP agents and to provide help to their immigrant neighbors.'First thing this morning, I saw cars following an ICE vehicle down the street, honking at it,' she wrote. 'Later, we didn't drive more than three blocks before we found people defending a childcare facility... Half the street corners around here have people—from every walk of life, including Republicans—standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes responders.'Taken as a whole, Killjoy said that she had 'never seen anything approaching this scale' of what activists have pulled off in Minneapolis.Minneapolis-based attorney Will Stancil, who has become one of the most high-profile legal observers following and documenting actions by ICE and CBP agents, argued on Thursday that the Trump administration is committing deliberately cruel acts with the hope of inciting violence.In particular, Stancil pointed to federal agents' decision to abduct a 5-year-old child and use him as bait to lure out and detain his immigrant father as a deliberately provocative action.'They clearly believed that Minneapolis would riot after they killed one of us,' Stancil wrote, in reference to Renee Good, a Minneapolis resident who was gunned down by an ICE agent earlier this month. 'We didn’t, we organized. We followed them, we monitored them. We alerted our neighbors. We fought them in the courts. And now they’re desperate, so they’re brutalizing us, without a hint of legitimate government purpose.'
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