Minneapolis leads the resistance to Trump

Last month, businesses, schools, and workplaces across Minnesota in the USA closed in two general strikes to protest President Donald Trump’s violent immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, as well as the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Against backgrounds of massive, nonviolent marches in frigid temperatures through central Minneapolis, the strikes marked an extraordinary example of resistance to the authoritarian behavior of the Washington administration. This resistance was an action deeply rooted in the political culture of the Twin Cities and the now largely forgotten history of the general strike as a tactic for social action and protest in the United States.

Although common in Europe, the last general strike in the United States occurred nearly 80 years ago, in 1946, during the period of labour unrest following World War II. During the first half of the 20th century, however, the general strike was a frequent form of social activism, normally centered around the labor movement. The largest general strikes in US history occurred in Seattle in 1919, in support of striking shipyard workers, and in Oakland, California in 1934, after police shot and killed striking longshoremen. Minneapolis also experienced a series of general strikes in 1934, an event that shaped the city’s political identity and tradition that provided a powerful platform for resistance to the Trump administration and its officials. In 1934 the Brotherhood of Teamsters struck for recognition of their union and increased wages. The Teamsters formed an alliance with other unions, organizing demonstrations and self-help efforts (many by women) that included medical care, provision of food and outreach to the unemployed.

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The alliance shut down the city’s industrial core and achieved the union’s goals, although the police killed two unarmed strikers. Labour organizations in the Twin Cities surged in the aftermath of the general strike, while the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor party emerged as a progressive version of the national Democratic party. Liberal stalwarts such as Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone were products of this tradition. The general strike produced a social attitude in the Twin Cities that still emphasizes community self-reliance, support for neighbours, immigrants, and grassroots organizations. Therefore, Trump’s officials could not have chosen a better location if they wished to incite scenes of protest and conflict. General strikes in the last century usually revolved around labour conflicts in a particular city.

Violence normally came from the local police, and occasionally state-controlled national guard or private security forces, but not directly from the federal government’s representatives. But like the current crisis in Minnesota, these events had a national context and often a connection to the president. The role and rights of labour, for example, remained unsettled during the first half of the century, and until the New Deal (Franklin Roosevelt’s reforms of the 1930s), presidents almost always took the side of management in suppressing unions. For example, the 1919 Seattle general strike followed the Woodrow Wilson administration’s criminalization of dissent during World War I which preceded an aggressive campaign authoritarian suppression, as fearing Bolshevik involvement in any general strike and following a series of anarchist bombings, the Wilson administration conducted raids against labour and leftist organizations and arrested their members, many of whom were immigrants.

In US history, local activism and conflict cannot usually be separated from the actions of the president and such is the case in the Twin Cities. Trump’s policies are driving protests. In that sense, Minneapolis’ general strike was different from its predecessors, and was not a conflict between labour and business. Many small and medium-sized businesses actively participated in the shut-down, and local and state leaders sided with the protestors. It was not primarily an attempt to win changes in federal policy but an expression of solidarity. Although Trump’s targeting of immigrants and killing of citizens echo the authoritarianism of Wilson, the difference is that Trump actively sought and created the conditions for conflict in Minnesota.

Yet, along with that sense of shared struggle, the strike reflected discontent felt by those frustrated with the Trump administration’s abuses and violence through the past year, and anger at the administration’s treatment of minorities and immigrants, regardless of their legal status. It may be a signal as well, to the Trump administration and its supporters, that pushing more will lead to a fundamental fracturing of the country that may not be reconcilable. It also sent a message to those who have sought accommodation: by submitting to the president’s dictates, the university leaders who have capitulated to his demands, and to those who have observed the crisis but remained unmoved to protest.

While the general strike thus represents a fear that the country has been broken beyond repair, it can also be construed as an expression of hope that, just as an exploitative capitalist order could be transformed in the 20th Century, racist authoritarianism might be rolled back in the current one. It reflects optimism that those who still do not recognize the administration’s abuse of the constitution and undermining American democracy might yet shift away from the course of authoritarian destruction in which it is currently headed.

(The writer is India’s former foreign secretary.)