This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Wiseman. On today's program, we look at Minneapolis,

the epicenter of Trump's escalating war on immigrants and blue cities. He deployed thousands of

ICE and Border Patrol federal agents

to terrorize immigrant communities and to commit street executions of people standing up for their

neighbors. Renee Good and Alex Pretty were gunned down by government agents who proclaim

absolute immunity for these murders that were caught on video and watched frame by frame by tens of millions of horrified viewers.

But the Twin City residents have also shown the world what popular resistance looks like, engaging in good trouble, in freezing sub-zero temperatures,

mobilizing, organizing mutual aid, protecting new neighbors targeted by ICE,

and confronting federal agents at every turn. On January 23 and again on January 30th, the no work,

no school, no shopping action saw some 70,000 take to the streets in Minneapolis and even more

around the country.

Organizers and labor analysts say this wasn't a formal general strike, but it demonstrated the conditions under which one could develop

a clear example of how outrage can be translated into collective action.

Activists, unions, clergy, and community formed the organizing infrastructure of collective refusal,

prompting a national conversation about what it means to resist authoritarian overreach.

We explore how that happened and what organizers believe comes next with our guests.

First, labor journalist Luis Felice Leon, who was in Minneapolis.

We'll get his stories and ask him to situate this moment in the history and theory of mass strikes.

Then we speak with Kieran Knutzen, president of communication workers of America or CWA Local 7250 in Minneapolis,

to get the story of how unions, community networks, and ordinary people organized democratically, vanquished fear and turn moral shock into collective power.

All this when our program returns in just a moment.

This is Jacobin Radio.

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