Trillbilly Worker's Party - **UNLOCKED** Be Loud, Form A Crowd (w/ special guests Brooke Bartholomew, David Gilbert-Pederson, and Aisha Gomez)

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Unlocked premium episode in which we're joined by a panel of guests from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to talk about what's going on in their city: Operation Metro Surge, the execution of Renee Good, how locals are fighting back, and the long lineage of resistance in Minneapolis. Links to support: Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee: https://www.miracmn.com/ Minnesota Immigrant Movement: https://www.instagram.com/mim_mnimmigrantmovement/?hl=en Mutual aid: https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

Okay, welcome to the show this week, everybody. It is January 20th, 20th, 2006. We were joined by a panel of very special guests from Minneapolis, Minnesota. We had sort of teased this on the free episode late last week that we were going to have some people on from Minneapolis to talk about what's going on there. But before we really get into it, I kind of wanted to sort of fit this into the context of a few other things we've covered. We've covered the operation, I think it was Midway Blitz in Chicago. We covered what was going on in Portland. The L.A. occupation of ice, I think it was called like Highway Sentinel or something. The names they have for these things are completely absurd. But now we're pivoting to Minneapolis. And the name that ice has chosen for Minneapolis is Metro Surge, which is a interesting choice. It doesn't really like pack the punch you would really expect.

But I, you know, there's all kinds of different places we could begin with this. But before we really get into it, I want to introduce our guests. We have Brooke Bartholomew, who is the co-chair of Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America. We have David Gilbert Peterson, who's a local activist and organizer, and Ayesha Gomez, who is a Minnesota state representative. So thanks all of you for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much for having us, huh?

Thank you. And so I think like where I wanted to begin with this, what can you all tell me about when and how Operation Metro Surge began? And I guess maybe to kind of put it into context, how have you seen it change over time since it first began in December? And, you know, maybe we can just kind of take the rounds and whoever wants to start, you know, just kind of like set it up. And if any of you feel compelled to jump in and add a little bit, feel free. So I kind of want to back up to the summer a little bit prior to the official operation mentor surge.

There were a couple of big raids that happened over the summer. One in June that was on the Minneapolis side and then another, I believe in August that was on the St. Paul side. And, you know, ice has kind of always been here, like they have a field office in St. Paul. But as we were watching things that were happening in L.A., and Chicago, Portland, we had those two big raids. And community came out and supported very quickly, came out in big numbers to, you know, confront ice in those situations. And then Operation Metro Surge officially began the beginning of December. there were like two to three hundred ice agents who were brought here to the federal building at Whipple, which is kind of on the south side of Minneapolis next to the airport.

And we kind of initially noticed that their tactics started to change pretty quickly. Like they weren't doing as many of the large scale raids with lots of agents and vehicles and things. They were kind of doing more mobile raids, two to three vehicles of ice agents going around and just kind of grabbing people at random from various places. And that's when, you know, community response really ramped up. And then on January 6th, they brought in 2,000 more agents, a lot of them from CBP, the Border Patrol guys. They were a lot more heavily militarized.

And that's when we really started to see a lot more of the aggressive tactics. And they spread out, you know, all across the metro area, Minneapolis, St. Paul, out into the suburbs out into greater Minnesota. And I'll get, I'm sure we'll talk more about the murder of Renee Good, but that happened the day after on January 7th. And really since then, we've had like a even bigger swarm of community members getting organized to fight this incursion. And after that, they brought in a thousand more agents. So now we have maybe roughly between two to three thousand. agents who are here in the cities.

But I'll let David and Ayesha maybe fill in a little bit more of the details. So that's kind of my broad overview of what Operation Metro Surge has been like so far. I didn't know that this started on January 6th. It's kind of a weird sort of synchronicity with the, you know, maybe inverted event from five years ago. And then that like René Good was murdered just the next day. I don't know, David, Iisha, do you all have anything you want to add maybe to that timeline to kind of flesh some of that out a little bit? Yeah, I mean, I think that when, you know, over the summer, like I'm glad that Brooke brought up sort of the, you know, in previous years we've seen raids of meat processing plants in the southern part of our state. And I think when we were thinking about what this would look like from the federal government that we were more imagining those kind of scenes and what we were.

we had over the summer were more of those like like Brooke was saying these sort of big site specific rounding a bunch of people up um sort of sort of actions like at first it seemed very much like they were looking for people with active probation orders right they had people's names they were going to specific addresses we would find them kind of like you know people would call and be like there's there's vehicles circling the neighborhood at this time a day and then at some point they come in and they take a specific person from a lot of times from their car or like, you know, because it's obviously more fraught for them to go into the house because none of these people have any, they don't have judicial warrants to enter like private homes, private spaces.

And so we saw a lot of like, you know, trying to kind of intercept folks on their way to doing their normal life. And, you know, obviously like, I mean, there's, what do we have, 450,000 people live in Minneapolis. The metro area is like a couple million overall, I would say. And so there's just a lot of, there's a lot of ICE agents here related to the population and related to the sort of people with active deportation orders, which seemed to be the first round of folks they were going for.

And so we're just seeing a lot more, you know, race-based, accent-based, discriminatory rounding up of people like, you know, pulling people off the streets, going to bus stops. I mean, they're, like, menacing our schools. They rounded up a bunch of native people. We have a, you know, we have a large urban Native American population in Minneapolis. And so it just, like, kind of reveals it's like we're actually not, like, working off a list anymore if that was ever happening, which it kind of seemed like it was. I mean, what we're in now is really, you know,

The only way to think about it, I mean, after they, like, executed our neighbor in the street extrajudicially, they have literally been using her death to threaten observers over and over again. They're like, didn't you see what we did two days ago? Haven't you learned your lesson? You know, one of our neighbors was, she was kind of brutally taken into custody an observer. They sprayed pepper spray into the vents of her car. They broke both her windows, pulled them out, take them to the federal detention facility for eight hours or whatever

because they can't really hold them because there's no actual crime being committed. So there are no charges. So it's really just about intimidation. And on the way to transporting her to the federal building, one of them turns to her and says, you know, you guys have got to stop. interfering with us. That's why that lesbian bitch is dead.

So they're like, we've seen just this acceleration of the brutality of their tactics against people engaging in constitutionally protected observation. Since they murdered Renee Good and since, you know, as Brooke talked about, that surge of personnel and especially, you know, the Customs and Border Patrol, which we'd heard from other cities. They're like, you know, because we kind of have been in touch with folks from around the country, of course, as we're all working through this together. And they're like, watch out, y'all.

When CBP comes, like, that's when it gets serious. So we're kind of in that mode of this operation now. Yeah. There's a few things there. I wanted to kind of point out. David, did you have anything that you wanted to add to any of that? Okay. There's an article in In Plus One magazine.

by Aaron West that kind of gets into like what they've seen in Minneapolis so far. And one thing that the author pointed out was there's two things that differentiate this from what they've seen in Chicago and L.A. so far, they write, what's new in Minneapolis are the extreme tactics that federal agents are using to repress organized resistance. And what also, the number, the second thing is what also feels new is the frequent candor with which ICE agents are displaying hateful ideology. Two days after Good was murdered, DHS overtly referenced a neo-Nazi anthem in a nationwide recruitment post. This is interesting, like, you know, obviously we've kind of like seen this aspect of it coming for a while.

And then obviously it's echoed in statements from Stephen Miller where they're talking about openly going after leftist agitators. And I think you just mentioned Aisha, the woman that was being held by them and called Renee a good at lesbian bitch. This is kind of like, this is all, to my mind, this is all kind of like a deliberate recruitment strategy to enlist a very specific type of American to go after specific types of other people in this country.

You know, 60 minutes got into some hot water a few weeks ago because they were going to run a story about Seacot, this prison colony in Central America, I think El Salvador, and they wound up not running it, but then they wound up running it last night or two nights ago for some reason. And it quotes ICE Associate Director Marcus Charles. He says that any individual that ICE agents encounter in around or en route to a, quote, target is fair game for interrogation.

I kind of wanted to ask you all, is that basically what you've seen in Minneapolis so far? Is it just them essentially going after anyone and everyone who not only fits their description of who they would be rounding up, but anyone who even remotely questions that? That's correct. We have seen that kind of approach here. I think like Marcia Howard, who's the president of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, who helped hold down George Floyd Square during the uprising and after the killing of George Floyd said, of the Minneapolis Police Department's tactics during the uprising, that the cruelty was the point. And I think that that quote sort of is very relevant to this moment because, you know, I think Brooke and Representative Gomez have talked about sort of their approach, how they're

taking people. But I think, like, we also have to understand that a piece of their stress, is to come in with maximum force as loud as they can, to take as many observers or people in the periphery as they can, to knock on neighbors' doors and intimidate them. So I think like both they're going after people to deport them, to detain them, but they're also purposefully causing chaos in our streets and purposely causing harm to neighbors in the area to intimidate our community and not just to intimidate immigrants or observers, but to intimidate anyone who might want to come out of their house and say, why are all of these

people with guns and masks in our community tear gassing our houses, taking our neighbors? And so, like, we're not just talking about a targeted campaign against immigrants and observers. we're talking about a targeted campaign aimed at the people who live here and the people who work here. And so, yeah, we are seeing a campaign that is maximizing cruelty, maximizing chaos, maximizing harm. And just to your point about recruitment, right, it's like, I mean, you had the vice president get up and say, these people have absolute immunity, right? after they murdered somebody. And they tried to, you know, they tried to get up and smear her as a domestic terrorist.

We all know, you know, I mean, me and David are like old heads. We were around in 2008 for the, for the RNC in Minnesota. And some of our friends were charged at that time with riot in furtherance of terrorism. So we're not, you know, and that's a tactic that's been used against our movements

over generations, obviously. So you have this kind of like dual thing happening. The other thing, the woman who I told you about who was taken to Whipple, who they called Renee Good a lesbian bitch to, the other thing that happened while she was there was that her, the guy she was observing with who was Latino, he was offered money in exchange for information about organizers. Right.

So we have this like dual thing where that we're like the brutality and cruelty of the campaign is both, as David said, a tactic to attack our movements, repress us, and not even just people involved in movements, right? Because this is bigger than that now. This is like tens of thousands of people across the metro area coming out and responding to the sound of whistles and engaging in mutual aid efforts, even though they probably have never even heard of the idea of mutual aid before, right? And so it's like, it's bigger than that.

So it's both like a repression tactic in a U.S. city that has shown like a spark of resistance against an authoritarian regime. And they're also using sort of like using it as a as a as a recruitment tool to your point. Like come be cruel. You got absolute immunity. Come play out your like nastiest impulses on the streets of the city. Like there's an opportunity for you here. I mean, it's kind of wild.

That could jump in on that too. To the point of recruitment, sometimes they'll have. like a press team or a camera guy along with them while they're going out and snatching people. So they are definitely using this as an opportunity to grab footage to make themselves look cool and put it on their social media or wherever they're trying to recruit more people from around the country to join this effort. And also just to maybe give a finer example of just some of the random grabs that they're doing, I live out in like the first ring suburbs. and the situation there, there's been tons of activity out there.

And when I go and patrol this area, it's a little bit different of a situation than inside of Minneapolis or St. Paul, where, you know, you have people looking out for ice and immediately you can get dozens of people showing up because they're all, like, it's more dense. There's more people around. There's more people who are activated. But I go out on patrol out here and, you know, maybe there's one or two people. and I had a situation where it was me and one other observer and seven vehicles with two ice agents of them apiece. They noticed we were watching them taking photos, things like that.

And they just jumped out of their car, snatched somebody from the parking lot of a grocery store and then booked it. And is that targeted? Nope. They would just grab somebody maybe out of spite because they knew that we were watching them. and they just wanted to grab somebody and kind of make a point that they can do this. So out in the suburbs too and even farther outside of the metro, there's, there are a lot of people who are activated, but there's definitely, they feel like they can act with more impunity where there's fear of people watching. You know, y'all had mentioned that, you know, there's 3,000 ice agents there. And there's already that stark contrast of Minneapolis being a mid-sized city.

and then you just put 3,000, you know, roving thugs hot on the street, just harassing people and everything. Like, how much of this do you think is tied to sort of trying to bring Minneapolis to heal because, you know, Minneapolis was ground zero in 2020 for the George Floyd protest? Y'all burnt down the police precinct all that stuff. Showing basically Minneapolis's not going to put up with this shit over the long haul. How much of that do you think is just like putting this like sort of undue force on there? I'm sure part of it too is because, like, you know, Tim Walts challenged him for the presidency or whatever.

And that's like kind of a side issue, you know, but, you know, how much of this do you think is like sort of, you know, you are not going to put off with too much? And so we probably need to like get in there and dip this in the bud really quick and sort of a draconian fashion, you know. I think the fact that Governor Walls was a opponent in the presidential election in 20, 24 played a small role in this, but I think Minneapolis is sort of a sleepy place. You don't hear about it a ton in national news, but I think a thing to remember about Minnesota is that we have a long, decades, centuries long history of deep resistance in our state that started with our Dakota relatives who were the original inhabitants of this land. had a fierce, fierce resistance to the U.S. government's incursions into their sovereign territory. Through western Minnesota, the Dakota's Montana was the heart of Dakota land and was the heart of the Dakota resistance against the United States government's incursion

into the west. And so that's where that started. We had strong opposition to the Vietnam War, strong support for the civil rights movement in our city. More recently into the 20th century, the American Indian movement patrols started as a community protection. Here in the black community, we had the Seoul Patrol on the north side, which was started after the police mistreatment on the north side of black residents, aimed patrols started because of government repression of the Native American community. In 2015, the police killed a man named Jamar Clark in North Minneapolis, and our neighbors occupied their police precinct for damn near 20 days.

When Philando Castile was killed here, Minnesotans marched onto the highway, and there were incredible, incredible actions that have taken place here in 1934. One of the instances of a general strike in the United States was here when the Teamsters went on strike in 34. I also want to talk about the fact that we have a number of immigrants in Minnesota who are from Africa and that this is about anti-Black racism as well. We have an immigrant community here, and a lot of the immigrants here are black, and that a big part of this is about anti-black racism, but it's also about our history of struggle and our history of resistance and our trend of progressive politics. In 2006, during the height of the Iraq War, we sent the first Muslim to Congress when Keith Ellison was elected as an anti-war Democrat. So Minnesota has a history of progressivism, a history of leftism. The Farmer Labor Party in

Minneapolis, in Minnesota, the Democratic Party is called the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. And that's because we had three parties here for a while, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and what was a party that was controlled mostly by members of the CP and some of the Finnish anarchists, which was the farmer labor party, and that was a merger of farm workers, sort of American peasants as well as proletarians in inner city areas. And so we do. We have a history of left-wing resistance. We have a history of people of color resisting. And we have this big factor of anti-black racism. Yeah, to your point, David, I'm reminded of even perhaps the city's most famous resident

and a young prince, that little video that was going around a few years ago of him out with the teacher strikes when he was like probably grade school age. So it seems like there's a rich tradition, say the least. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I want to say, too, there was a, like, I think David went over the history of Minnesota Resistance so well, so I won't touch on that anymore.

But, you know, they originally sent agents like around December 1st, and there were only a couple hundred and I'm I don't know if they didn't read up on Minnesota history before they came here but I think honestly they underestimated us initially. Yeah. Because we were slowing them down and I think that's why they had to then turn this into the largest operation that they've ever done because Minnesotans came out immediately and were like slowing down their efforts when they only had a, you know, a couple hundred agents who were here throughout December. Yeah. I, you know, there's a lot of theories going around as to why they have chosen Minneapolis. You know, obviously we just touched on a lot of them. It's the history of the resistance.

And also, though, like the context of this leading up to this, this administration is, you know, a bunch of, you know, neo-Confederate neo-Nazis. Like, they're essentially, like, they do the whole neo-Confederate, neo-Confederate. KKK playbook. They focus on a very specific group within America. And like, you know, I think during the election, they were talking about Haitians in Ohio.

And, but, you know, in the weeks leading up to January 6th, to Metro Surge, they had honed in on this issue of fraud in, I think, daycares or something in the greater

Minneapolis area, which obviously in hindsight it was just probably some astro-turfed campaign to sort of like get American sort of, you know, ginned up for this kind of violence and repression. But like, you know, I, um, something that one of you mentioned earlier is the methods with which they're doing this. I kind of like, if you're listening to this program, obviously like you are, you know, probably like me have spent a lot of time like just looking at a lot of the images coming out of Minneapolis just on tweets or TikTok or YouTube or whatever and so you're probably no stranger to it

but um but maybe like just for our listeners who aren't familiar with Minneapolis and who aren't as online as I am like what is the general vibe like in Minneapolis like you talk about how they're targeting specific communities and specific people like what impact has that had on the general day-to-day functioning of this city that is, you know, one of the most important cities in North America, no doubt. Like, what kind of impact has that had on the day-to-day functioning of the city? It's a good question. And to me, it's like there's two parts to it.

There's the fact that, like, we are a city that is basically, like, experiencing an invasion by masked, unaccountable, unidentified. brutally violent, heavily armed secret police. They're operating with impunity in our streets. They've been told by their leadership that there will be no consequences for their actions, for their violations of people's civil rights, for acting, you know, and that creates,

like it's fascinating to me that they're like, oh, we have to quell the insurrection, right, in Minnesota. And it's like, the only people like, so in disorder in our community right now, now are, you know, the secret police sent by the fascist regime, right? It's like, it's not mystery. And, and, you know, and so there's something about, like, like, the vibe is tense, you know, there's, there's tension, there's tension among and between people to some extent.

You know, like, I've noticed people are just like agro driving around kind of because these assholes have been like, you know, just driving aggressively, rolling the wrong way down one ways. We're all kind of looking at each other a little crazy, right? Like, who's that guy in a big black SUV on my block? And so, like, there's that aspect of it, right? Like, that you can just be, you know, somebody who's, like, totally disconnected from all of the response that's happening, going about your day, getting your kids to school, going to work. And you see, like, masked men abducting somebody at the bus stop.

Like, that is an incredibly disruptive experience. You know, I'm a parent. I mean, it's, like, wild on our kids. their psychology, like, as we're just trying to move about our, about our days. But there's like this other thing also that's happening, which is like that roll through an immigrant community right now and you will see, you know, mostly young people, I'm like old enough to be the mama, most of the people who are out guarding the corners, right? But like people out on the corners with bright whistles keeping an eye out for their communities.

Like, you know, people are just showing up for each other. We are, there is just this, this beauty and togetherness and meeting of the moment that's happening. In our communities, there are people involved in this, like I said, doing mutual aid who never, who don't know what mutual aid is, doing community defense when they have no context for it. Just because, like, we have an impulse, I believe, you know, that what is true about us as humans, right, is that we have evolved in cooperation with one another. Like this lie at the center of capitalism about all humans being ruthless utility maximizers is bullshit. And what is actually true about us is that we only find meaning and we only find, like, a way forward, like, when we're in relationship with one another. And we're seeing that in action every day in our streets.

And it's like one of the most beautiful things that I've ever seen in my life. Like I said, like me and David have been like organizing in this town for decades. We've never seen anything like this. You know, they executed one of our neighbors in the street to try to get us to go inside. And our response was like tens of thousands of people are coming out. And so like at the same time that it's like there is this story happening in Minneapolis. right, about repression, about what like an authoritarian regime looks like in its actual day-to-day operation. But to me, there's also a story about what the human response is to that. And like,

and that is a thing of beauty. And that's like, I'm so fucking proud of my city right now. I just can't even express it. Yeah, just to build on that, I think we're seeing cross-community connections, too, that we didn't, that we haven't seen in the city. You know, I did a ton of mutual aid in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd. And we ran a relief site out of Pimento Jamaican Kitchen. And it was a site that was primarily run by black leaders in the city. And we mostly served black folks during, it just happened to be the demographics of who was served. But we're now seeing Somali grandmothers bringing trays of sambusa to the Latino community on Lake Street.

We're seeing like we're seeing tacos at protests in southwest Minneapolis at little Lutheran churches. You know, I think we're seeing people who don't usually like who live in this city together, who pass each other on the street every day. but who have not had the opportunity to connect, really connecting. I think we saw a lot of during the uprising in 2020, a lot of white people holding signs about the uprising, holding signs about why Black Lives Matter. But I think like what we're seeing right now is white people in Somali coffee shops, white people in Latin businesses.

We're seeing our Native American relatives on Franklin Avenue, defending newcomers to this country. And so, you know, really people who have never connected before are connecting people who wept their way through the 2020 uprising because of the horrors that they were seeing are now riding around in cars with whistles, blowing whistles at ice agents. And these are people who agreed with us, who were horrified by what they saw when George Floyd was killed. But they couldn't overcome their grief and their fear to make.

something happen and I've seen a ton of those people out doing rapid response, outdoing mutual aid. And so people have found a way, even those of us who were horrified but scared during 2020, have found a way to move past the scared, to the proactive, to the, and instead of turning inwards and thinking about how we can internally deal with racism within ourselves and things, people are turning outwards and saying, how can we create the community we want to live in. How can we create a city where immigrants really feel welcome, not just that like we have a sanctuary policy, but where immigrants feel like the white people who live near them will say, hello, we'll come to their businesses. So we are. We're seeing a real coming together in the city

that we haven't before, even in times of crisis. Yeah, that's an interesting point. So basically what you're saying is that you have seen a kind of qualitative shift in how, communities are responding to this as opposed to 2020. Like you've seen it not just an escalation, but almost a shift in kind of theorizing it. Absolutely. You know, I think we talk a lot about the shift from quantity to quality in our movements. And, you know, I think we did. I think over the period of time between the time George Floyd was killed and the time that

Metro Surge began, we've seen quantitative increases in people coming out to the movement, coming into the movement, coming to spaces. But I think now we are seeing qualitative change in the way in which people are showing up, in the analysis that people are bringing with them and the analysis that people are taking away. And so, yeah, I would describe this as a shift from quantity and equality. Yeah, and my perspective from the suburbs too. Like I lived in uptown during the George Floyd uprisings and I moved to the suburbs. And, you know, I think during that time, a lot of people from the suburbs were not involved around George Floyd.

And now you see, you know, for whatever reason, I don't know. But now, you know, I live kind of on the border between two cities and the suburbs. And in both of those groups, there's 400 people apiece from each city who are like, they're scared. They've never organized before. Maybe they have no experience doing any of this, but they are like, hey, I want to sign up for trainings. I want to get out there. I want to learn how to patrol. I want to learn how to do this stuff.

And I want to get involved. I want to do mutual aid, school watch, like all these kinds of things. So definitely seeing, yeah, both the quantitative and qualitative ship. out here in the suburbs as well. Like I have some of my neighbors talking to me for the first time because they're like, hey, like, you're plugged in, like, how do I get involved? And that is a really beautiful thing to see happen.

Yeah, something that's interesting. And, you know, I guess you can go on several different tangents with this. Something that you brought up a second ago, Brooke, was that it's almost like they didn't do their homework on Minneapolis before they kind of like went in. and that's interesting because it does show you like Tom and I were involved in this effort to stop a federal prison from being constructed in our community in eastern Kentucky and it was similarly eastern Kentucky like the community we lived in was kind of a had this very long tradition of anti strip mine activism you know coal mine coal union activism health care union activism and and it's like they didn't do their homework on any of that when they before they went in and so like when they met this wall of resistance they kind of started flailing a little bit and so i don't know it kind of it's this weird thing where it's like you know they have all the resources at their disposal all the money all the weapons and whatnot but at the end of the day there are also people too who have to make decisions and like you can kind of once that veil kind of falls like i don't know about you all but that video of trump getting called a pedophile protector at the Detroit auto worker at the Ford assembly plant.

Like that kind of like, it was an interesting moment. It's just kind of like the veil falls away and you just kind of see this like petulant, pathetic guy just like giving this auto worker the bird. It's like, I mean, he's just another motherfucker, just like the rest of us. But I don't know, but it's something that we were something that we were kind of like circling around a minute ago that's interesting. is like you pointed out to like the long history of resistance in Minneapolis and I've been thinking about this a lot. We've talked about this a lot on the show. It's almost like, you know,

our, you know, neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate KKK government is like running the, it's like they're trying to settle scores from like 50, 100 years ago, like Cuba, Venezuela, but then like it's going back even farther than that. Like you said, like General Strike 1934, like the whole history of Minneapolis. The Dakota Sioux, you know what I mean? Like that being an area where the westward expansion of the United States like hit a major

flashpoint in the 19th century. And it's it's like, I don't know, it's like if they are neo-Confederates, it's like they are kind of trying to I don't know, like I said sort of like settle these old scores and you can see it in some of the places that they've

picked and some of the, you know, battles that they're trying to fight. We're in Kentucky. They're not, ICE is in here in, is here in Lexington, Kentucky, but they're not like patrolling the streets and shooting at protesters and whatnot in the same way they are in Minneapolis. So it feels very much like that's a political choice that's been made, that they're trying to break up certain constituencies, break up certain, um, groups of people to that they can make

them weaker. But what you're saying is that by doing so, they have actually brought into existence a constituency of people that are like very strong actually they like are resisting and are actually talking to each other and as you said david they're exploding outwards rather than like inwards it's this force that it's actually assembling in real time i don't know i just think that's a very interesting illustration and a very uh inspiring one for me and i think probably for our listeners as well um so i don't know i mean um you know i is there a anything else I wanted to say about like what some of the resistance to this has looked like

like obviously like we're recording this in the wake of rene good's murder right like this is a very serious thing and a very dark and bleak thing but um at the same time like we are engaged in a struggle here and it it's you know not never over until it's over so it's like what what are um are there any like concrete examples or organizations that like maybe some of our listeners could support or or plug into if they would like to you know help you all help you guys out? I think Iean, David, might be able to speak more to like some of the mutual aid networks that people could help like support. My organization, Twin Cities, GSA has been doing like rapid response data collection,

We do have a wing of our chapter that is doing mutual aid stuff. They're going to do their own fundraisers around that. So I would direct any support towards any other the orgs that are doing mutual aid that David and Naisha bring up. We've also been doing like canvassing for businesses, like know your rights, trainings and things like that. We do have an active fundraiser going on right now to help us with printing materials for immigrant businesses to give out to their core. their employees, whistles, we're doing trainings on dispatch and, you know, data collection, things like that. So I'll put the link in, I'll share the link with y'all for our organization,

but I will just preface it with, like, there's no single organization that is leading any of this. This has been like a spontaneous, like, maybe not spontaneous, but it's been a beautiful collaboration of many different organizations from all across the metro from people of all different backgrounds. And DSA is just one part of that. We were fitting in where we can with the skills that some of our organizers have. But there are so many other organizations that are doing amazing work right now and also deserve a support. And there's some, yeah, different areas where people are plugging in. So I would love to hear some of those shattered out as well. Yeah, thank you.

So first thing I want to say is that, you know, you guys talked about the resistance against mining in Western Kentucky and the decades and hundreds of years of resistance against like corporate exploitation in your community. And David is like our best local radical historian. So he gave us a real quick kind of jaunt through that. But like, I suspect that every corner of this country, every community in this country has a similar story of resistance. Because the fact of the matter is that, like, people like us have always done the work that we are doing. We have always done the work that your communities did when there was an incursion from a big mind. Like, we are a part of a history of resistance in this country and around the world that has existed long. before we were here and will persist after us.

And so, I mean, one of the biggest things. And, like, you know, I, I had never done, like, a TV news interview until two weeks ago. And now I'm, like, on fucking MSNBC four times a day. And one of the things I say is, like, yes, we're being made an example of, but we're not special. We're not special in our history of resistance. And we're not special in, like, you know, being targeted. Like, this could be coming for you. this exact same thing, like, these guys have tens of billions of dollars done.

They're not going to like, they're not going to like mess around with Minneapolis and be like, okay, cool, we're done. Like, so in every city, in every community across like this country, people have to get organized in anticipation of this coming for them. And so that's like, get to know your neighbors, get people connected, like build up networks of solidarity, work with people you trust to start to build because like what we did have here, right, was like, like I said, people like me and David who've been organizing together for decades. And so we trust each other.

We already have a relationship. We have insights from, you know, from our own experiences and movement elders like ahead of us who can like point us toward whatever, like pitfalls, how to organize shit, how to not allow your movement to like descend into chaos when everybody gets real suspicious that everyone else is a Fed or whatever, right? Whatever the, whatever the lesson is. And so that's one thing is like if you're if you're in this work, if you're in this struggle, organize it's time.

Do it. The more local, the better because like the more blocks that are organized to have eyes on the street when secret police come into your community, the better. And that's like that's the number one thing that people who, are aligned with us in their hearts and values need to be doing in anticipation of this marching across the country. They started with LA, Chicago, D.C., Portland, Minneapolis, but you might not be behind. The other thing is our friend has put together a little website, standwithminnesota.com. And what this is, is it's not like organizations, it's really

focused on like mutual aid, helping people with rent, helping people with food, like how to get, you know, support to, mostly to impacted communities because like what we have are, you know, immigrant families who are afraid to take their kids to school, to go do their laundry at the laundromat, to go to the grocery store. And so this is just a good like resource for people who want to try to support from around the country, stand with Minnesota. Yeah, and I echo and unite with what Gomez and with what Brooks said. First, I'll say like some spots that I think could use some love in terms of donations and things.

And then I'll just share some other guidance around some of the things Gomez said about the moment that we're in. So I just want to lift up that we have some incredible nonprofits that are doing. work here that have done great work who have gotten a lot of a ton of exposure about the work they're doing. And we have like three organizations, though, that have been doing immigrants rights work in our city for years, who are grassroots orgs, who have not gotten a lot of attention. And I just want to shout those out. First of all is the Minnesota Immigrant Movement, MIM. It's a group of mostly young folks who are doing immigration organizing on the south side.

I'll link that here in a second. The other group is Assemblya, Civilis, oh my God, Gomez, Assemblya Civilis deitos, which I will. Yeah, which I will also get a link for. And then the last one I want to talk about, I've been a member of Mirac for 20 years.

We're celebrating our 20-year anniversary this year. The Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee is an incredible organization that for 20 years has been doing grassroots work in our immigrant communities. And so Mirak in particular, happy, happy 20 year birthday. And I know that they could use the love and exposure. So those three organizations. And then, yeah, just to follow up on what Gomez was saying about the moment that we're in, Minnesota isn't special. We have this history of resistance. But we're just the testing ground. We are, we are, there's nothing that sets us apart other than we are where they are right now. And that they are using this, they are using

our city as a way to test their tactics, to test their weaponry, to test their rhetoric. And that this is coming to where you live. It might not be. tomorrow it might not look the same as it looks in Minneapolis, but they are honing and refining their skills in the streets of our city. And that in this moment, we don't just have to come together with people who we've done organizing with for years. We have to build a united front in this moment. We just went through a pretty bruising municipal election cycle in our city. And And I've been at a couple neighborhood rapid response trainings where I've seen people who I was, you know, who our movements were locked in pretty pitched battle with just a couple months ago, who we now share this goal of kicking ice out of our city. And so in this moment, we have to push ourselves not just to do things that we're uncomfortable with, but to work with people who we don't necessarily ideologically align with at all times.

This is a moment when we have to move where we have to not just organize within the class. We also have to organize some of our sort of petty bourgeois forces, some of the sort of like government entities in the cities that we have as targets sometimes. We're going to have to work with organizations that we have differences with line on on certain things or difference in tactic. And the reality is all of that needs to happen. Everybody needs to get engaged. We need to work across lines of differences and across lines of ideology in this moment. We share the goal that this occupation and invasion of our state can't continue and that this can't happen in other cities. And in this moment, we need to build the broadest movement against this authoritarian creep.

And we can figure out all of the other shit later. But in this moment, we need to unite and we need to unite against this enemy of Border Patrol and the Trump administration. On January 23rd, on this Friday, we will be having a statewide shutdown against ICE unions, elected officials, nonprofits are participating. This is sort of a choose-your-own for organizations. know there is an organ, we have a couple unions that are in existing contract fights with, with employers, and they'll be holding tickets on that day. A bunch of local businesses have said they'll be shut down that day. Some workers who have these kind of benefits are taking personal days or days off. And so on the 23rd, we're going to see this state shut down. I know

So yeah, some people are calling it a day of truth and freedom. I've seen it referred to as a general strike. I personally, we don't, there's never been a general strike called in the U.S. General strikes are something that happen upon summation. You don't say general strike and then it's a general strike. You say we're going to take an action together. And in summation, you can say enough people participated in that, that was a general strike.

But some people are calling this the day of truth and freedom. Some are saying it's the ice shutdown. Some are saying it's a strike against ice. But I think what we need to consider the 23rd as is this is a united day of action where everyone in our city, in our state, and we're seeing solidarity actions pop off across the country. And so on the 23rd, we will be holding a shutdown in this state against ice. Again, some people are choosing to do work stoppages. Some people are closing their businesses.

So it'll look in tons of different ways, but this is the kind of thing. We need united action. We need these days where we all come together and can find how we fit in. It's a very good way to put it, David. You know, something about like if you're on the left, there's been many jokes made about how much we like to sort of bicker and disagree and split off in splinter groups and sex and whatnot. But it's another thing that like they perhaps did not consider.

in doing something like this is that it would have the effect of uniting people, bringing people together across a lot of different lines of perhaps disagreement, both ideological material. And that in and of itself changes the playing field. That rearranges what the playing board looks like and forces open a whole new set of contradictions that then you can navigate.

And, you know, something like, and we need to close up here, We're almost at an hour. But like something I've asked myself over and over in all this is that like if we were trying to scale this up to maybe something like a larger movement, like obviously this is not the place really to talk about like party and all this. But something that I have really wondered about is that like what can a local politician or state level politician do at this point in time? because it seems like to me part of what the aim of this is, not just settling old scores, not just trying to go after certain groups

for racist ideological reasons, but it also seems to me that part of this is trying to force the contradiction of local and state municipal governance and to essentially wear down any kind of autonomy or authority like a local municipality would have over, I don't know, various, you know, developments, whatnot. So I was like, I'm wondering, like, what would a person like the mayor be able to do? What would, like, a state governor or, like, a legislative assembly be able to do?

Like, do you have any demands for your leaders, I guess, is maybe the most explicit way of asking that question? And if so, can they act on them? What are we to expect in other places? Representative Gomez? I'll shout out real quick that we are trying to push the governor to do a statewide eviction moratorium. There are a lot of people who aren't able to go to work and pay their rent. And that would be something so simple for him to do to help people be able to stay in their homes and kind of ride through this. at the same time, we would love for the city officials to stop sleeping unhoused encampments

and to let them have a little bit of dignity. They're also being targeted right now. But I'll let Aisha maybe step in with more of what other things we could expect from elected officials. Well, yeah, I mean, you guys are supposed to make demands of me. I think that was the question. what are you demanded of yourself i so it's sort of like one of the weird things right about this moment and being in this position and i know that like we have a lot of other just like you know i mean six weeks like i've been

out in the streets i mean i haven't been to the capital six weeks i don't know like like that is what what's called what we're called to do right now as people who our community has asked in a lot of cases to step forward as elected leaders is every fucking thing we possibly can, right? And so that's what I'm doing. I'm trying to do everything that I possibly can. And but I mean, you know, like I, it's sort of like it's like a compromise of my kind of ideological beliefs to be in public office in a lot of ways and to be complicit in a system that I have this like really kind of profound criticism of. And the reason that I did that is because like I actually believe.

over some time of observing it that, you know, like that state level public policy is a powerful tool for improving the material conditions of people's lives. I'm the chair of the committee on taxes. It's like one of the most powerful committees in the state. In 2023, like we were able to do policy that cut child poverty by a third that got 120,000 renters cash in their pockets, that established support for local governments or tribal communities for the first time. And I've down a whole list of things that we've been able to do that have actually made a difference. And I think that my, you know, the people who've stepped up, you know, who share values with me to lead to the city level with say similar things.

That like, you know, we know that the system is perfect. We know that the system has all these flaws baked into it. But we can see that this is a powerful tool in people's lives. part of the challenge of this time is that like the the tools of state and local policymaking are completely inadequate to meet a federal government that is like an authoritarian regime on the march right like that's just a that's a total mismatch um that being said you know and and we're in this like we're dealing with somebody who's not only like uh you know a sort of authoritarian and tyrant, he's also kind of like a mercurial weirdo.

Like, you never know what's going to happen, right? He's a chaos agent. And so I think a lot of people, you know, especially those like higher profile people are walking this line of like, how do we like, how do we do everything that we can do to protect our communities and to resist what we see is happening and not attract 1,500 airborne Alaska troops or whatever they activated the other day to our state. And how do we get them to not be using live ammunition rounds in the streets? Because that is a real possibility that is looming.

You know, that being said, it's like I, you know, my friend, my friend asked me as we were leaving each other, he's like, he's like, what would you do if you were mayor like today? Like, what would you do if you're mayor? So I haven't like kind of thinking about it. I'm like, there's some things you could do if you're. you were mayor. You know, he's like, like, you could do a lot on this eviction moratorium. You could do, you can use some, you could declare a public health crisis and that puts certain things into here. You could really beef up the immigration, like legal immigration support that's funded by the

city. You could use your, uh, you know, snow plows to block ways into the city that we know they're taking. You could send a five whistles to every address. in the city, you could, you know, they could step up in like a lot of different ways to support and amplify and legitimize the resistance that's happening in the streets that I think they've been a little bit like hesitant and a little hands off and have been like, don't take the bait. We want to kind of like police and putting the focus on the behavior of protesters and how that has to like happen within a certain kind of like bounded frame. So, I mean, there are a lot of things.

And there's also just like, I want to acknowledge that there is this, this danger in, like, making ourselves more of a target for a more heavily militarized response. And so, you know, yeah, there's kind of, it's nuanced, I would say. Yeah. And I don't, I think Gomez has spoke very eloquently about steps that could be taken and that we would love to see taken. But I want to step back sort of from the elected executive level and just say having people like Representative Gomez, like council member Jason Chavez, like council president Elliot Payne, like council member Oring Chowdry, representatives like Sam Sensor Mura, Senator Zane of Muhammad. you know, having those elected officials out in the streets watching when ICE is present, making sure that they're using their title as a way to bear witness to what's happening at times to ask agents what's going on.

to just have them out in the streets with us standing up and showing that, like, they're not celebrities. These are like, these are our community members. We elected them to serve us. And that like Representative Gomez, council member Chavez, like, they're the ones who are serving us right now. And whatever statements or policies, mayors and governors can be moving, the thing that's heartening to the masses and to the people in the streets is seeing the people who they know that they elected, the people who are moving policy closest to them out in the streets as members of our community. So while there are all of these things that our mayors and our governors can be moving on, I do just want to say that the steps our legislative bodies are

taking to stand with the people is profound and important and impactful. Well, I am. Thanks for mentioning all that, you all. I mean, I think that's kind of what I was trying to get at with the question. Is it like there are, obviously there is the kind of morale question of like seeing people, right, like your elected officials out, seeing them with you on the barricades or the picket lines or whatever, realizing that like this is something we're all involved in. But something all I also kind of wanted to get at was that like, it seems like someone who's been on the left for Christ

almost 20 years now it's like you kind of if you have been on the left especially in the last 10 15 years you've kind of had this idea of like beating over your head that there are really no alternatives that were kind of like all trapped in this like realist hellscape where our options or resources available to us

are minuscule and we have to play within a certain, a certain, like, bounded set of parameters. And I think that, like, your answer, Aisha was, like, very good in the sense that, like, there are creative ways to do this. Like, especially, like, as you said, like, the snow plows, for example. Like, in eastern Kentucky, there's this guy named Joe Begley, who was an anti-strip mining activist. and the way that he in his community group

stopped their community from being a strip mine was that they ran for the local sheriff and once they won local sheriffs and deputies positions they would just go park their deputies and sheriff's cars on the train tracks so that the mine coal could not get out of the community. And so it's like, you know, there are creative ways to sort of push the contradiction

that is being forced upon a community. And I think that, like, that's kind of what I'm looking at. Like, I don't know Jacob Frye. I don't know the mayor. I know I see him do kind of Beto-Ourok routine where he says a curse word. He'll say the F word to look cool, you know. Yeah, right. But, like, I, to me, like, that's fine.

But I want to see some creative solutions, right? Like, I want to see them sort of forcing the contradiction. But you're right, though, it's also a very fine line. You have to walk without trying to also, you know, incur upon you the, the full force of your opponent. So it's like, yeah, it's like you are walking a very fine line. But I, you know, I just, I think that like, what we're getting at here is like everybody is learning some, some how to show grace with each other, how to show some patience and

nimbleness. And so I think that like, I think just in having you all on, I kind of wanted to show the audience that, like, you know, we in our community, experienced the devastating flood a few years ago. And the way I saw people respond to that was it opened up for me like this whole other new field of like what was possible in political action and community building. And I guess I kind of wanted you all on because I wanted to show the audience that like such a thing is not only possible, but it's necessary in the face of big crises like this.

And so I don't know. Thank you all. I mean, I don't know if there's anything else you want to add on that front, but I just wanted to thank you all not only for coming on to the show and talking to us, but just for what you do, just for showing up for your community every day. Like, that's a very, you know, that can be very taxing, emotionally draining, physically draining thing. And, you know, it's thankless. It can be thankless work, obviously.

But, you know, I want to thank you all for the work that you do. And I'm going to put some of these links in the show notes. people can go and support your work. Yeah, I don't know if you have any words on that, anything you wanted to add. If not, we'll leave it there. Or Tom, if you had anything else you wanted to ask. Heart and mind's clear. No, I just appreciate y'all being on, and this is really great.

And yeah, yeah, we're just always thinking about y'all. Yeah, stay. Yeah, stay. Go ahead, David. Thank you so much for having us on, for having this opportunity for us to have this, conversation about what's happening in our city. I'm the child of the martial law years in the Philippines, and I grew up hearing a lot of stories from my aunts and uncles about what the resistance to Marcos look like.

And I just, in closing, I just want to say, we're in a dire situation in our city. And this moment calls us to step outside of our comfort zones. it calls on us to get uncomfortable. It calls on us to connect with people that we don't always see eye to eye with. The one thing, there was this video of me getting surrounded and screamed at by ICE agents

and I was super, super self-conscious about it. And like, ego doesn't, survival revolution. Like, we have to let go of the pieces of us that are driven by ego, by clout. We have to let go of the pieces of us that need control. We have to let go of the pieces of us that always need to follow. We have to step out of our comfort zones. We have to do things that are new to us. And that the only, only way we are going to weather this and beat this is that bit by bit, we move our neighbors to places where they're more comfortable taking action, where they're feeling supported enough to take action.

And that, like, our movement is not based on our hatred of ICE agents. It's based on our love for our community. It's based on our belief that we together can create a future that doesn't have deportations, where people have liberation and where we're struggling. for the good of all people, not just the accumulation of money. And it's, I really appreciate the opportunity to come here and talk about what's happening in the streets. And I just want to invite everyone, no matter where you are.

Find if there's a rapid response network near you, join it. Get yourself a whistle. If you see these motherfuckers, blow it, be loud, form a crowd. And we will get through this. Our movements will weather this storm and we will create the world we want to see. Very well put, David. Thank you very much. Aisha, Brooke, anything I want to add?

You want to leave it there? All right. Well, thank you so much, you all. If you're listening to this, you're listening to this on our Patreon, but I'm going to unlock this in a few days. Maybe even tomorrow. So, you know, please, I would encourage all of our listeners to please also just keep up with what's going on in Minneapolis.

As we're recording this, they are still talking of sending in federal troops. They're talking about sending in federal troops to Greenland as well. This is a situation. These things are all linked together in myriad ways. But thank you for listening to our audience. And once again, please go support these Minneapolisans. What are you called?

Are you Minneapolisans? What is the... Are you Mishapalans? what is the name that's awkward it's minipolitans oh that's that's that's not so

yeah it fighters though that's how we identify I think yeah at least for being Gomez we just say we're Southsiders so well please support these mini apolitans they um

so that's very refined you know you sound sounds like a very tasty ice cream though um all right well thank Thank you so much, everybody, and we'll see you next time and have a great rest of your week. Adios.