The following statement was sent to activists in Leeds who organised a recent protest in solidarity with the struggle in Minneapolis and against Trump’s regime, from Kieran Knutson, a Minneapolis trade unionist and socialist. (Photo above: comrades at the protest in Leeds including, on the left, our chair Natalie Kopytko.) Kieran is also very active in Ukraine solidarity campaigning; and speaking online after the 23 January Minneapolis general strike against ICE, he drew comparisons with Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity.
Greetings to our friends in Leeds!
The working class in Minnesota has been under attack for the last six or seven weeks by a racist campaign of terror carried out by federal ICE agents.
Families have been ripped apart, neighbours have been brutalized, people have been shot and killed on the streets in broad daylight light or in the cover of the detention camps they are sent to in Texas.
The Democratic-Farmer-Labor government that runs the State of Minnesota and most of our cities and big towns [this is the state’s section the Democratic Party, with a different name because of a particular history in Minnesota] has no program on how to confront this crisis and protect our people.
So it’s up to us, the regular working-class people of Minnesota. We have organized ourselves in networks of tens of thousands, in neighborhood anti-ICE rapid response groups, militant confrontations at ICE HQ and on the streets, and now in an unprecedented call for “No Work, No School, and No Shopping” on Friday January 23rd.
These actions strengthen our communities now and build our power for the future.
If and when the military is deployed, as has been threatened, it is imperative that the struggle be spread across the US, and internationally. The US is a declining, but dangerous empire.
Solidarity with all those who struggle for freedom from Gaza to Ukraine, Myanmar to Sudan, Minneapolis to Leeds!
Solidarity Forever!
Kieran F. Knutson
President, Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 7250
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (Кампанія Солідарності з Україною) 