A “no work, no school, no shopping” blackout day of protest was kicked off by community leaders, faith leaders and labor unions on Friday in protest against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surge in the state.
The “Day of Truth & Freedom” protest comes in the wake of the killing of Renee Good, the unarmed woman killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.
Their demands include that ICE leave Minnesota, that the ICE officer who killed Good be legally held accountable, an end to additional federal funding for ICE, and for the agency to be investigated for human rights and constitutional violations.
Hundreds of local businesses in Minnesota have announced closures in solidarity. Thousands of people are expected to call out from work to join the action, while others will participate by not shopping on Friday. The Minneapolis city council endorsed the day of action and the general strike.
The state’s cultural institutions – including the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Science Museum of Minnesota and the Minnesota Children’s Museum – will be closed on Friday as well.
The day of action culminates with a march in downtown Minneapolis at 2pm local time. The march will end with a rally inside the Target Center, an arena downtown.
“We are going to be having dangerously cold weather on Friday – -10F with wind chills. Like the high is going to be -10F with wind chills of up to -20F,” Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, president of the Minnesota Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, told the Guardian.
“We are a northern state, and we are built for the cold, and we are going to show up, but folks are going to need to pay attention to not just the march, but what people are doing, the individual stories of solidarity that people are going to be doing.”
The Minnesota AFL-CIO, the state’s federation of more than 1,000 affiliated local unions, has endorsed the day of action, along with dozens of local labor unions.
“I think what generated the idea for this action comes out of the need to figure out what we can meaningfully do to stop it,” Kieran Knutson, the president of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7250 in Minneapolis, told the Guardian last week of the action. “The government in the state of Minnesota has not offered any path towards stopping these attacks, this violence.”
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A childcare worker in Minneapolis, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation toward the immigrant families they serve, explained they were shutting down for the day after consulting and receiving immense support from the families of the children they care for.
“We had time to ask the families that we serve if they would be on board with shutting down and we got a hugely positive response,” they said. “We serve families that are on childcare assistance, families that pay out of pocket. So they were all in agreement, even ones that have been trying to go to work, even during this time where they were fearful of being out of their houses. So it was really the families. They all stood up for it too.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed to have made 3,000 arrests in Minnesota over the past six weeks.
The US army put 1,500 soldiers on standby for possible deployment to Minnesota, as 3,000 immigration officers have been dispatched to the state by the Trump administration.
“This is beyond insane. Why would these labor bosses not want these public safety threats out of their communities?” a DHS spokesperson said in an email in response to the economic blackout. “These are the criminals these labor bosses are trying to protect,” the spokesperson added, citing 23 uncaptioned photos of claimed undocumented immigrants with criminal records who have been arrested by ICE.
Nationwide, immigrants with no criminal record continue to make up the largest group in US immigration detention, which is at record levels.
