Even before a third shooting involving a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis resulted in the death of Alex Pretti, 37, US Vice President JD Vance had been emphasizing how different this city was.
While visiting the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul on Thursday, Vance wondered aloud why there didn’t seem to be the “same level of chaos” in other cities that have faced crackdowns by immigration enforcement agents.
“Maybe the problem is unique to Minneapolis,” said Vance, who also urged local authorities to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
Part of the answer may lie in Minnesota’s strong history of protest dating back to the 1890s and the pivotal moments the Twin Cities played in the labor and civil rights movements.
Consider the brutal Teamsters strike in which two protesters died in a hail of bullets on July 20, 1934, a day that became known as Bloody Friday and ultimately led Congress to pass the National Labor Relations Act a year later.
Local historians see echoes of the past in what is happening on their streets today.
“Tragically, there’s quite a parallel,” said Peter Rachleff, a retired labor history professor in St. Paul.
“It certainly seems like we’re in a historical moment right now where the repercussions of what’s happening…are similar in their consequences,” he said.
The death of the Teamsters, a rallying cry
Minnesota’s pro-union roots were evident Friday as 20,000 people defied warnings of extreme cold to march against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), shouting, “Get up! Get down! Minneapolis is a union town.”
Those roots go back at least as far as the Great Northern Railroad strike of 1894, where Minnesota was the starting point of a successful 18-day union action that reversed months of consecutive wage cuts, Rachleff said.
This led to a nationwide railroad boycott known as the Pullman Strike, Rachleff said, and ultimately led to the establishment of Labor Day signed into law by President Grover Cleveland in the fall of 1894 as a national holiday in the United States.
In May 1934, Minneapolis – a major truck distribution center in the Midwest at the time – was nearly paralyzed in May when truckers walked off the job to demand fairer wages and working hours.
In July of that year, at the height of the Teamsters strike, police opened fire, injuring 67 strikers and killing two: Henry Ness and John Belor.
“These deaths were a turning point,” said Chantel Rodrigeuz, senior public historian for the Minnesota Historical Society.
“This led to increasingly broad support for the Teamsters named after Henry Ness, who was himself a veteran of World War I. His name became a rallying cry for this strike and this movement.”
Following the shooting, the governor declared martial law and mobilized 4,000 members of the National Guard.
“Meanwhile, the National Guard is raiding the strikers’ headquarters, arresting union leaders and placing them in a stockade at the St. Paul Fairgrounds,” Rodriguez said.
“Despite all of this violence, the two deaths, the many injuries and increasingly broad support for these Teamsters and for unionization, the Teamsters are in fact getting all of their demands.”
Integrated community organization
The Twin Cities also played a leading role in the civil rights movement, organizing in a way that closely resembles today’s integrated community approach to anti-ICE protests, Rodriguez said.
Currently, a broad base of interconnected volunteers from religious and community organizations have set up ICE neighborhood watches, grocery deliveries for immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes, and observer groups from schools and faith-based institutions that attempt to protect students and churchgoers from ICE raids.
In the late 1960s, Rodriguez said an interracial coalition began to form in some quarters, including the Black Power Movement; the Brown Berets, part of the Chicano movement that sought to empower Mexican Americans; and the American Indian Movement (AIM), whose roots lie in north Minneapolis.
The groups organized neighborhood patrols for marginalized neighborhoods.
“You can see that kind of organizing of saying ‘hey, the system is failing us, so I guess we need to come together and find ways to protect our neighbors,’ which is what they were doing,” Rodriguez said.
“Some of those patrols were armed, some of them weren’t, but it was a way of controlling the police in community interactions, right? And so you kind of find that level of organization in the 1960s.”
Rodriguez drew parallels between this story and community surveillance today, particularly in residential neighborhoods and around schools.
George Floyd and 2020
And then there is the more recent history of protests in Minneapolis when George Floyd, a black man, was killed by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer in 2020. It was the epicenter of a wave of protests for racial justice across the United States.
“I feel like this moment was a very important catalyst to create the opportunity to develop an even stronger grassroots organization and networks,” Rodriguez said.
“The year 2020 has passed, but these organizations are still here. These networks are still here. And … in many ways you can see that people today are relying on some of these networks and many others to respond in this moment,” she said.
Rachleff says there is also a new generation organizing for the first time and drawing inspiration from what public activism achieved in 2020 using strikes, boycotts, protests, marches and rallies.
What fascinates him most is the diversity of the people who make up the movement. He emphasized that regardless of a person’s age, physical ability or political ideology, there are many ways to participate, depending on the actions they are comfortable with.
“Do you want to come face to face with ICE? Do you want to go to a workshop to learn what to do if you are pepper sprayed or tear gassed? Do you want to police outside of schools and protect children? Do you want to raise money for resources?” he said.
“In doing so, you’re going to meet people you didn’t know before. And maybe you’re going to learn new ideas from them, or they’re going to learn new ideas from you. That’s really what a movement is. And what we’re seeing today in Minnesota is an expression of that movement.”
