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By: Stanley Fogg
This report is based on the transcript of Notes from Inside the Siege: A Report from Frontline Resisters in the Twin Cities. It has been rewritten and condensed for clarity, while remaining true to its substance and content, standing as a testament to the texture and experience of the eve of the general strike. The piece uses alias names and places to preserve the anonymity of those on the frontline in Minneapolis.
Facilitator:
… We’re going to kick it off with a conversation with a few members that are out there in the streets fighting directly, rapid response activists that are keeping their ear to the ground, paying attention to what’s going on and getting there as quickly as possible.
Why don’t we start by having people introduce themselves—who you are, and what brings you to the call tonight?
Former Baggage Handler:
I’ve been in Minneapolis for about thirty-five years. Thirty of those I spent as a baggage handler—Northwest Airlines first, then Delta. We lost our union back in 2000, and I’ve been trying to build it back ever since. That work never really stopped. I’ve been involved in the union movement for a long time, and more recently in the workers actions around January 23rd.
Alongside that, I’ve been doing rapid response—showing up where needed, protecting churches where people go to get food, places ICE has been targeting. It’s all connected. Labor. Survival. Defense.
Teachers Unionist
We’re organizing because we believe capitalism is the root problem. Not one of the problems—the problem. It’s what’s producing the conditions we’re living under right now. And we believe another system is possible. But that doesn’t happen without workers resisting. The front line has to be the multiracial working class—hourly workers, regular people, the ones who actually keep everything running. They don’t just need to be included in this fight. They need to be leading it.
I’m an Educational Support Professional in Saint Paul Public Schools. I’m part of a fighting union. We signed on to the strike actions—not school walkouts, but coordinated resistance: don’t work, don’t shop. And I’m proud of that. I’m proud to be in that union. A lot of my siblings are in the room tonight, and that matters to me. It really does.
Facilitator:
I want to pause on something you said—about being excited. Because it’s important that people on this call hear this clearly: even in the middle of despair, there is a thread of hope running through this moment. What we’re seeing is people gathering, choosing solidarity, showing up for each other in real ways. And that matters—not just here, but across the country. Yes, this is serious. Yes, the stakes are high. But there is also love here. There is community being built in real time. People are recognizing a shared struggle and choosing to face it together. That kind of solidarity is rare, and it’s powerful. And the response we’re seeing—the speed, the care, the courage—is inspiring people far beyond Minnesota. There is real power coming out of this state right now. Real energy. And it’s having an impact nationally.I want to name that. And I want to thank you for it.
Parent Organizer
My name is — and I’m the sanctuary school team lead for Moonlight Palace High School through Minneapolis Families for Public Schools. It’s a parent organization, and it’s grown fast. At this point, we’re talking about two to three thousand parents across the district, connected to roughly fifty schools. What began as a loose network is now a structure.
We run patrols. We have a mutual aid arm that’s active now—food support, rent support, and other forms of direct assistance. I’ll speak more about that as the night goes on. Outside of this work, I’m also a professor and a writer. But here, I’m speaking as a parent. And as a parent, it’s terrifying. I have a ninth grader and a second grader. The idea of ICE engaging with your children—or anyone’s children—at school or near a school is something that sits in your body. It doesn’t leave. That fear is what pushed us to move quickly.
We built a rapid response patrol group. We use encrypted communication—secure platforms—because safety matters at every level. This isn’t symbolic. It’s operational.
When she speaks, there’s a pause before each sentence, as if she’s confirming that what she’s about to say is real. As if she’s still checking whether this is all a nightmare. And then, as she continues, her voice steadies. The picture sharpens.
The groups are large—really large. Some focus on commuting, others on dispatching, coordination, logistics. It’s layered. Distributed. Intentional. And it’s happening because it must.
The patrols around the schools were the first thing to move. Once the surge hit in December, that was where the energy went immediately. Teachers stepped in, families stepped in, and the reason it worked is because the relationships were already there. Minneapolis Families for Public Schools had been aligned with educators through the contract negotiations that had just wrapped—smaller class sizes, stronger support for ESPs, special education resources, the real material conditions that make schools function. We had stood together then, deliberately, and that mattered. Because when this new reality arrived—this crisis—we weren’t starting from zero. We weren’t introducing ourselves. We were already in a relationship, already trusted, already moving together.
The work doesn’t announce itself. It starts with noticing patterns—where time opens and closes, where people linger because they have no choice. Lunch periods. Bell changes. Crosswalks. Bus shelters. The ordinary choreography of a school day becomes a map of risk. ICE doesn’t need spectacle anymore. During a surge, they adjust. They pass slowly. They wait. They take. That knowledge changes how you look at a street. It turns attention into responsibility.
Sound became our language. The whistle is small, almost ridiculous, until you hear it echo. Until one becomes three, then ten. Until car horns answer. It’s not panic—it’s presence. A code that says: you are not alone, and you are not unseen. At that moment, the neighborhood wakes up. Windows open. Doors unlock. Fear loosens just enough to move.
The school became the spine of the response. It already held trust. It already held relationships. It already belonged to everyone. From there, everything branched out—patrols, calls, deliveries, rides. Mutual aid didn’t appear as an idea; it appeared as a necessity. Families stopped leaving their homes. Children stopped showing up. Silence became a signal.
The phone calls mattered. Someone asking, without judgment, what was needed. Food was the first answer. Always food. Then rent. Then utilities. Then transportation. The needs stacked faster than the resources, but the asking itself cracked something open. Two hundred families said yes—not because they wanted help, but because there was no other option left.
Pairing people changed everything. Ally families matched with families under threat. Not institutions helping clients, but neighbors helping neighbors. Hyper-local. A block away. A knock at the door. Bags of food carried by hand. Frequency mattered more than quantity. Showing up once wasn’t enough. This was about continuity. About proving that help wasn’t temporary.
Money complicates things. It always does. Protecting teachers meant rerouting responsibility. Parents stepping forward. Funds moved carefully, deliberately. Food first, because hunger can’t wait. Rent next, because eviction erases everything else. The numbers sounded large until they met reality. Ninety thousand dollars barely dents the need. Systems weren’t built for people without paperwork. Aid requires time. Time is the one thing people don’t have.
Transportation became another frontline. Parents were being taken at pickup and drop-off—moments meant to be safe. So rides were organized. Names were logged. Trust was formalized. In some schools, parents walked children who weren’t theirs, because safety had become communal. In buildings where most families are targeted, attendance itself became an act of resistance.
None of this is clean. None of it is finished. There are rules we’re still learning, barriers we’re still hitting, nights when the math doesn’t work. But there is movement. There is coordination. There is care that refuses to be abstract. What holds it together isn’t ideology—it’s proximity. The fact that we live here. That these are our children. That disappearance is not theoretical.
This is what it looks like when people accept that no one is coming—and decide to stay anyway.
That just gives you sort of the window into what’s going on here.
Facilitator:
You mentioned witnessing people being taken—kidnapped. For many of us, this is something we only see on a screen. Can you speak to the emotional terror of witnessing that in your own community? Not even being the one taken, but seeing it happen to your neighbors. What does that do to a person? What kind of insecurity does it introduce into your life?
Parent Organizer:
Last Saturday morning, my dog woke me up. She heard a noise outside. I live in what’s now the epicenter of ICE activity in the Twin Cities, it’s 6:40 a.m. I looked out my window. I heard them before I saw them—two agents, laughing. Then, I saw them handcuffing two of my neighbors.
I couldn’t see who they were. There were two cars parked outside. And immediately I knew—because by then I understood how fast they work—that they had already been there too long. I wasn’t fully awake. I was in my pajamas. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, grabbed my phone, and told myself: don’t stop, don’t think, don’t put on a jacket. It was freezing. I just put on my slippers and ran out into the snow and ice because I knew I had to document whatever I could—photos, video, anything.
The second they saw me, they shoved the people into the car and sped off. I thought I hadn’t gotten anything useful, but I did catch the license plate on one of the cars. I sent it immediately to the large rapid response group in my area.
At any given time, there are probably eight hundred to a thousand people on that thread. And they’re serious. Within two minutes, they responded. They confirmed it: this was an abduction. These were the details. They ran the plates—because they have a database—and told me those agents had been terrorizing the neighborhood since 6 a.m. They were already gone. They were now in another neighborhood.
Because I posted, two neighbors came to my house about an hour later. I hadn’t met them before. We talked. I had to be honest—I’m tapped out. I have a full-time job. I’m already organizing at multiple levels. I can’t take on block organizing too. But just knowing each other mattered. Being on the same page mattered. Knowing where each other lives mattered.
More than a week later, those same neighbors contacted me again. They asked if I had any new information. They still didn’t know who had been taken or where they were. That’s another layer of terror. The disappearance doesn’t end when the car drives away. It lingers. It expands.
The other case—I don’t know. I hope they’re okay. I truly don’t know where they are. With how fast people are being moved, they could already be out of the country. And then just yesterday we learned that a man from Minnesota died in a detention center in Texas. So this isn’t theoretical. It’s fatal.
In early December, I witnessed my first abduction just sitting at a traffic light near a transit stop. It completely shattered me. I was crying. I was a mess. I remember telling people that day: I’m just going to be a mess today because I can’t process this yet.
That’s what it does. It breaks your sense of safety instantly. And once that breaks, it never fully comes back.
She continued:
It is like this uh, this sense of reality that we have just has got to be just instantly shattered and then you move into this new world where things that you took for granted,like “you don’t have to watch your back” are no longer true any more.
Facilitator:
You mentioned politicians trying to help, and in doing so putting themselves in positions of heightened risk. One of the things we do as a working class is something different: we take that risk and distribute it. We spread it across the population so no single person is fully exposed, and so the most vulnerable people carry no risk at all. We hold that risk together. And there’s no other way to do this. That’s the power of working people.
That’s where the inspiration comes from. That’s where the solidarity comes from. That’s where the positive energy you spoke about at the beginning of the call actually lives—seeing that power in motion. It’s the power that’s been taken away from us. Sometimes it’s power we’ve given up willingly.
But it’s also the power that can save us, if we stay on this path—if we keep unlocking these connections, building these networks, learning how to communicate securely, and spreading information through decentralized systems. You’re right: nobody is coming to save us. But we do have the power to save each other.
[The Facilitator turned to the Teachers Unionist] You mentioned that one of the things that inspired you most through all of this was watching different groups come together—coalescing, overlapping, taking action in ways no one person, no one organization, and no single group could have accomplished alone. Can you talk about what you’ve seen and experienced in that cross-group solidarity?
Teachers Unionist:
Thank you so much for that description, because honestly, one of the most inspiring things I’ve experienced in the last couple of weeks is how fast everything has shifted. Renée Good was murdered less than two weeks ago, and it feels like the city has completely changed.
Minneapolis remembers the uprising. We learned a lot then—about what worked, and about what we needed to do better. When the uprising happened after the murder of George Floyd, the infrastructure we’re relying on now simply didn’t exist yet. And I think one reason it does exist now, and why it’s developing so quickly, is because we’ve already been through COVID and the uprising together.
That collective experience changed people.
After George Floyd was murdered, a lot of folks felt the energy disappeared. I spent time at Floyd Square, and there was real disappointment. People would say, Where did everyone go? Hobbyist protesters showed up at the beginning, but then there was this sense of abandonment. But the truth is—they didn’t disappear. They’re here now. They learned how to recommit. They learned how to stay with the work.
The night Renée Good was killed, people walked. Everyone walked. In droves. Thousands and thousands of people moved toward the place where she died. There were probably ten thousand people standing in the streets. It was freezing cold. People were holding candles. There were speeches. The crowd was so large that someone could speak on one side of the space and a chant would rise somewhere else and ripple across in waves. It was enormous.
As a socialist, that moment mattered to me. We need a mass movement. People had been comfortable for a long time. Now we’re not. That’s a terrible thing. It’s painful and destabilizing. But it’s also what pulled us together.
The Saturday after Renée was killed, there was another march that lasted for hours. I don’t even know how many thousands of people were there. The only thing that felt comparable was the march to the Third Precinct the day after George Floyd was killed.
After that march, we were invited to a rapid response and patrol meeting at [Teacher Unionist]’s house. Thirty people showed up—people we had never met before. What we shared was geography, a deep hatred of ICE, and a commitment to decency for everyone in this city. That mattered.
Her voice glimmered with hope:
What inspires me most is seeing how all these different networks are forming and overlapping. There’s a rapid response network tracking license plates. A mutual aid network delivering food. Patrol groups. Parent networks. All these pods coming together into a larger ecosystem. It makes me believe we can actually do this—because we’re drawing on everyone’s intelligence and solving real problems together.
At my school, we’re trying to replicate what Minneapolis Public Schools built with their parent network. That network was instrumental in winning the contract—parent pressure really matters. As [Teachers Unionist] said, schools are the heart and soul of our communities. Even though they aren’t always open gathering spaces, they still anchor everything.
Another crucial part of this emerging ecosystem—especially around the day of action on the 23rd, the no school, no work, no shopping action—has been faith communities. They’ve stepped into a central role. Faith spaces can open their doors. People can gather there. You don’t have to worship. You don’t have to agree. But the space itself matters, and many of these communities want to lend themselves to the movement.
So yes—I feel inspired. It’s horrifying, as she said. It feels like living in a war zone. You can’t carry on as usual. The holidays happened during an ICE occupation. It was surreal to be celebrating under those conditions.
It’s inspiring. It’s scary. But if it weren’t this scary, we wouldn’t be where we are now. And we’re learning—fast—how to organize for the long fight, how to take on something this big together.
And to your point about being able to pick up organizing tactics that we’re working with another group of teachers in terms of establishing the parent network, that’s what we’re organizing and that’s what connects.
That’s the power that it unlocks. It allows a good idea to spread and it allows a bad idea to get squashed really fast and move amongst a lot of people. And, you know, do you mention dealing with the George Floyd protests and, you know, these things are all things that have prime to the population of Minnesota to be more prepared for these events than, say, members in my community, where for us this is an event that’s occurring on TV. You know, it’s not something that’s directly impacted our lives, but I know that there’s many members in my community that care and that want to be ready.
Being able to access this information and being able to build these networks, it gives working people, it gives people all across the country a fighting chance. When ICE comes to their city, they will have heard from the people of Minnesota about what works and what doesn’t work, about the things that they need to do to get ready.
Facilitator:
For a lot of people, January 7th—the day Renée Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis—was the first time they really started paying attention to what’s happening here. That killing was captured on video, spread quickly nationwide, and became a flashpoint—drawing comparisons to past police violence in this city and igniting protests locally and across the country.
What many people don’t realize is that you all were already deep in this fight long before that date. You weren’t reacting to a headline—you were living it: raids, rapid escalation of enforcement, daily intimidation in neighborhoods, schools, transit stops, churches, workplaces. The assault on immigrant communities in the Twin Cities had been intensifying since December, weeks before the killing drew national attention.
So when people started to see that tragic shooting and then saw a large call for mass action emerge out of Minnesota—marches, rallies, neighborhood patrols, mutual aid networks—that was not spontaneous from nowhere. It was the culmination of weeks of ground work, community boundary-setting, relationship building, and existing networks already in motion. You had already been organizing patrols, rapid response groups, support circles, union connections, parent groups, educators, neighbors checking on each other’s blocks, legal observers on the ground. That infrastructure made it possible for a broader moment to take shape.
That’s what people are trying to understand now: how a community under assault turned around, found voice and structure, and began to claim some measure of its own defense—not as an abstract idea but as actual living practice in the midst of fear, danger, and loss.
Can you talk a little bit more about what the process of transformation for the people was like?
Former Baggage Handler:
That’s a massive question—how people come together around mass action. How all these groups decide, publicly, that they’re going to do something together. For a lot of us, that’s new. It’s not how things usually happen.
Karen is here now—my comrade, my brother, a brilliant political and union leader—and we’ll bring him in soon. But honestly, if I’m being real about what’s driving this, it’s hatred. Not abstract hatred. Lived hatred.
I’m older. People my age—many of whom wouldn’t consider themselves radical—are out in the streets day after day chasing ICE vehicles, doing community patrols, protecting neighbors, existing in conditions where any one of those actions could get you killed. And if not killed, then pepper-sprayed, dragged out of your car, your window smashed, taken to the Whipple Federal Building, held for eight hours, humiliated, threatened. If you’re a citizen, you’re released. If not—who knows. That kind of intimidation is not rare. And people are still doing it.
Carl was the one who got me connected to marshaling in Saint Paul, when all nine high schools walked out. I used to be a school bus driver there. Those students synchronized their marches and met at the state capitol. There was almost no adult involvement. Just an enormous spirit.
The school I marshaled for had about a thousand students. Most of them were completely underdressed for the weather—but when you’re young, you don’t care. I tried to give gloves to a couple of them. One kid said, What do you think, you’re my dad? I said, No, I’m your granddad. Put the gloves on. And they did.
We marched through Main Street, shutting down major intersections. People stopped their cars. They cheered. They helped block traffic so no one could hurt the kids. I’ve never seen anything like it.
It’s the same thing she talked about with the whistles. You hear one, you run outside. Within a minute, thirty neighbors are there. Ten minutes later, if there’s a confrontation, two hundred people have shown up. It’s wild. Completely wild.
All of that pressure—all that anger, fear, frustration, and hatred—has fed into the unions, into the working class, into the broader population of the Twin Cities. As January 23rd gets closer, this is the conversation everywhere.
He continued:
People talk about structure tests—well, there are a million structure tests happening every day, in every way imaginable.
At some schools, it’s constant discussion among educators. At the airport, where I’m still connected to people, half the workforce is immigrant. They’re being harassed just trying to go to work. ICE has abducted people there. Some of these workers aren’t union. They’re calling in sick. And I want to name something important here: in Minnesota, we have the Earned Sick and Safe Time law. You can call in for one day without documentation. You can use it for mental health. And if you’re not stressed living in the Twin Cities right now, you’re not paying attention.
People should use it.
This is going to be successful. Because like any strike, you build up. You test. You climb the ladder. But this ladder has been steep—and nobody planned it. It’s like a car that started rolling on its own.
And that pressure has cracked open institutions that usually don’t move. The Minnesota State AFL-CIO—a pretty conservative operation—has endorsed January 23rd as a no work, no school, no shopping day. Teamsters Local 638—UPS drivers and warehouse workers—have endorsed it too. Their leadership is conservative. That tells you something.
ICE and Trump’s pressure on this region has fractured old relationships and forced people to connect horizontally. To build networks from the ground up. We’re still figuring out how to strengthen them, how to make them more effective—but they exist now.
We were talking earlier about the Insurrection Act, about martial law—not good things. But the reality is this: the Twin Cities now has a network that can withstand a lot.
That’s the bottom line.
We’re going to win.
Stanley Fogg, who reported on the Notes, is a contributing writer to Working Mass.
The post Inside Minneapolis: General Strike Tactics Under Siege appeared first on Working Mass.
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