Seattle teachers, Los Angeles nurses support general strike to protect children, stop fascism
WSWS Labor Editor Jerry White speaks on lessons of 1934 Minneapolis general strike
WSWS Labor Editor Jerry White delivered the following remarks at the historical marker in Minneapolis honoring the striking workers gunned down by police during the 1934 general strike in the city.
We are standing at the site of Bloody Friday, where on July 20, 1934, police opened fire on striking workers during the Minneapolis general strike, killing Henry Ness and John Belor and wounding dozens more. Their crime was organizing collectively against the dictatorship of the Citizens Alliance and corporate power.
That state violence did not break the strike. It provoked a mass response led by the Trotskyist leadership of Teamsters Local 574. In defiance of the National Guard, 100,000 workers marched in a funeral procession for Ness and workers organized flying pickets that brought Minneapolis to a standstill. The strike forced concessions and helped launch the rise of industrial unionism across the United States.
The lesson of 1934 is not nostalgia. It is a living demonstration of what the working class can accomplish when it acts independently and decisively. That victory was not based on militancy alone. The strike’s leaders rejected subordination to the Democratic Party, the AFL bureaucracy, and reformist forces that sought compromise with big business. They understood that the fight for jobs, wages, and democratic rights could not be separated from the struggle for political power.
What is happening in Minneapolis today demands the same clarity and determination. On January 23, more than 100,000 people marched peacefully against ICE raids, kidnappings, and the federal occupation of this city. The response came the next day. On January 24, VA nurse Alex Pretti was brutally executed by federal agents—beaten, disarmed, pinned down, and shot multiple times in the back—just two miles from where Renée Nicole Good was murdered weeks earlier.
The day before Pretti’s killing, Vice President JD Vance came to Minneapolis to back ICE and green-light escalation, declaring that the agent who killed Good was protected by “absolute immunity.” History shows that when capitalism enters crisis, the ruling class turns to repression and authoritarianism. What we are witnessing is the deliberate unleashing of fascistic methods against workers and youth.
This fight will not be carried forward through the Democratic Party, which is collaborating with Trump and working to bury the truth, nor through union bureaucracies that have blocked strike action despite mass support. To prepare a real general strike, workers must build rank-and-file committees in every workplace, school, and neighborhood, linking up across industries, cities, and states through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
This is how workers fought and won in Minneapolis in 1934. Today, we must do it again—on a national and international scale.
Go to wsws.org/generalstrike and get involved.
Revolutionary leadership and the Minneapolis general strike of 1934
This article was originally published on the 75th anniversary of the 1934 Minneapolis truck drivers’ strike. It is being republished today in light of unfolding events that have once again transformed Minnesota into a frontline in the struggle between the working class and the capitalist state.
The 1934 Minneapolis truck drivers’ strike assumes burning contemporary relevance as President Donald Trump places the same city under occupation by thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs and other federal paramilitary forces, culminating in the cold-blooded murder of Renee Nicole Good.
Then, as now, the capitalist state responds to mounting social opposition with naked violence and repression: in 1934, police and National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed workers on “Bloody Friday,” murdering strikers such as Henry Ness and John Belor whose sole “crime” was organizing collectively against the dictatorship of the Citizens Alliance and corporate power; today, under “Operation Metro Surge,” the same logic of class rule finds expression in mass raids, militarized policing, and the killing of Good, while the Trump administration slanders the victims of state violence as “criminals,” “terrorists,” and “agitators.”
At the same time, the 1934 strike stands as a powerful demonstration that such brutality can be beaten back: the victory in Minneapolis formed part of a broader working-class counteroffensive that helped pave the way for the mass sit-down strikes of 1936–37 and won lasting gains in workplace rights and living standards for millions of workers.
The events in Minneapolis in 1934 show what the working class can accomplish when it fights based on an independent class perspective. Guided by Trotskyist worker-leaders rooted in the rank-and-file, militant truck drivers and warehouse workers transformed a local struggle of impoverished drivers into a general strike that paralyzed Minneapolis, built organs of self-defense—flying pickets, defense guards, a daily strike press, women’s auxiliaries, and strike hospitals—and exposed the real class character of the police, courts, National Guard, and Farmer–Labor politicians who posed as “friends of labor” while defending the capitalist order.
The experience in the Twin Cities in 1934 demonstrates that the working class can defeat even the most ruthless offensive of big business only by breaking from all forms of middle-class reformism and illusions in “progressive” governors and union bureaucrats, and by consciously preparing a unified, independent movement that builds democratic rank-and-file committees in every workplace, forges international solidarity, and fights not to pressure capitalism, but to abolish it through the struggle for workers’ power.
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Thousands of Austin, Texas students join mass protest against immigration police
Students and youth across Austin Independent School District in Texas walked out of class on Friday, January 30 to join the second week of coordinated protests in solidarity with Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Thousands of high school students staged walkouts, with hundreds joining protesters at the Texas Capitol in Austin late Friday afternoon.
While in an embryonic stage, the social anger of youth and students was clearly evident. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas took action Friday against students’ constitutional right to protest by directing Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath to investigate the district. Abbott took to social media to declare that, “AISD gets taxpayer dollars to teach the subjects required by the state, not to help students skip school to protest. Our schools are for educating our children, not political indoctrination.”
Undeterred by Abbott’s threats, one local high school freshman emphasized that the working class must “rise up against our oppressors” and “revolt.” This involves recognizing a “cohesion” between all workers, regardless of race or citizenship status, they said.
Hundreds of Oakland high school students participate in January 30 walkout
Hundreds of high school students walked out of school Friday afternoon in Oakland, California, in the heavily working class, majority Hispanic Fruitvale neighborhood, with roughly 2,000 students, parents, and workers rallying by a nearby transit station.
Students and workers responded warmly to the WSWS reporting team, with a large number taking leaflets and stopping to discuss the fight for a real general strike.
Two ninth grade students spoke powerfully about the need for a general strike to end the ICE reign of terror. “We should go on strike,” one student said. “We should stop all the big corporations, everybody helping ICE, Donald Trump too. I think we should stop.”
Asked what he thought about socialism, they replied, “I agree with that down to the bottom of my heart. I think that we should stop, stop working for the billionaires and to just stop ICE in general, stop Donald Trump and what they stand for.”
Another ninth grade student explained his reasons for protesting: “I’m here to fight for freedom, for the freedom of immigrants, to show that I stand with them. They are my friends, and we’re here to just support the cause, to make sure immigrants receive their dignity and the rights that they deserve.”
Asked about the ICE killing of Alex Pretti and Renée Good, he responded, “I think it’s a violation of human rights. I don’t think it’s fair at all. She was a mother of three. She was just, she was just living her life and she was, she was caught in a horrible time and she lost her life because of it, which isn’t fair at all.”
Appealing to 31,000 striking California Kaiser healthcare workers and 15,000 striking Mt. Sinai nurses in New York, he continued, “There have to be more people contributing to the strike.” He called on strikers to “keep doing what they’re doing.”
Asked about the call to form rank-and-file committees to build for a nationwide general strike, he agreed, saying, “I think it’s necessary. I think we need to show signs of commitment. We need to keep showing and supporting our own cause, what we believe in. And I think whatever is right for the people, there are always going to be people that are going to be there to fight for it. And I think it’s right.”
Asked about socialism, in which workers run society instead of billionaires, he responded, “I think it’s the future. I think it’s what needs to come. Capitalism, we can see the effects right now. We can see how it’s damaging our society, our community. We can see the effects of capitalism. We can see how it’s harming our communities and the people all over the world. And socialism is the future. It’ll take care of everybody. We’ll be better off for socialism. It’s the future.”
20,000 march in New York City to protest immigration raids, murders
Upwards of 20,000 gathered in New York City Friday evening in opposition to the Trump administration’s occupation of Minneapolis and the murder of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. The large number of demonstrators was notable not only because of the bitter cold, dropping to single digits Fahrenheit by the evening, but also because of the large presence of high school and college-age young people.
After gathering in Foley Square, adjacent to a federal building where ICE has been abducting immigrants after check-ins and administrative court hearings, the crowd marched through lower Manhattan to Washington Square Park. There was an outpouring of support for the demonstrators from workers, residents and commuters not taking part in the protest. Motorists stuck in traffic on Canal Street cheered on the march, some getting out of their cars to film, others honking with raised fists. A worker at a veterinarian office on 6th Ave stood in the doorway cheering on protesters and denouncing ICE. A resident on 8th Street banged pots and pans out an open window.
Friday’s protest in New York City followed a vigil for Alex Pretti held at the Veterans Administration Hospital a day earlier, where more than one thousand came to demand justice and an end to ICE terror.
Fort Wayne workers and youth oppose dictatorship
World Socialist Web Site writers spoke to workers throughout Fort Wayne, Indiana about the escalating campaign of repression against Burmese immigrants and refugees. Residents of Fort Wayne denounced the attacks on immigrants and the killing of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. “I heard about ICE being housed in Indianapolis,” a young person said. “Will they be coming up here? What do we do next!? [Minneapolis] shows it’s not about race. It’s an attack on everyone!”
In response to the call for a general strike, a Fort Wayne woman stated, “This administration must be stopped. It’s terrifying what they’re doing to people. We have been protesting, but nothing has really changed. The longer we wait to move, the worse off we will be.”
“It’s a brazen injustice,” a young worker stated. “They’re targeting people that shouldn’t even be targeted. Really! 99.9% of people are here within their rights.”
In response to the killings in Minneapolis, he continued, “The [killing] of the ICU nurses is insane to me. You think it cannot get worse, but it continues to do so.” He added, “We can only do any change if we stand together. I mean, that’s really what the bottom line is, that they’re not going to listen to fractured smaller groups.”
While state lawmakers move to expand cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, residents of Fort Wayne have conducted protests and student walkouts in response to the escalation of attacks on immigrants. Fort Wayne contains the largest Burmese refugee population in the Midwest. Coming from the decades-long military dictatorship in Myanmar, the population has been under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). However, the Trump administration has attempted to terminate TPS for various immigrant populations, which would impact funding for affordable housing.
One resident said, “I housed disabled and senior Burmese immigrants. In one apartment the funding cuts affected the ability to provide maintenance and management of these housing units.”
Two students spoke in opposition to dictatorship, “All of my classmates have been talking about what we need to do in order to fight back against this, and sadly, it won’t come from any of the leaders in charge.”
“I haven’t heard about the attacks on Burmese immigrants, but it’s clear the [Trump administration’s] just beginning their attack, this will continue to spread from city to city. I think the idea of a general strike is a good one. We’re stronger together!”
Tens of thousands march in Minneapolis against federal occupation, fascist dictatorship
Tens of thousands of workers, students and residents poured into the streets of Minneapolis on Friday January 30, in the second-largest demonstration yet against the federal occupation of the city and the murderous operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Inspired by last week’s mass protest and the nationwide outrage over the murders of Minneapolis residents Alex Pretti and Renée Good by ICE and federal Border Patrol agents, the mass mobilization marked a deepening revolt from below against escalating state repression.
Students from campuses across the country joined the thousands of workers and community members in Minneapolis in coordinated mass protests against the immigration police. From New York City to California, walkouts and assemblies brought together young people, teachers, and healthcare workers in solidarity with those disappeared and killed by the immigration police. These demonstrations are not isolated outbursts but part of a broader rising mass movement from below demanding an end to the immigration Gestapo and the federal forces occupying working class communities.
The protests are increasingly intertwined with striking healthcare workers in New York City and California, whose walkouts over labor conditions and patient care have exposed the limits of appealing to corporations while leaving the conduct of the struggle in the hands of trade union bureaucrats who are more concerned with legal niceties and protecting their ill-gotten assets under conditions where the Trump administration is establishing a presidential dictatorship.
Reporters for the World Socialist Web Site intervened at protests across the country and distributed thousands of copies of the statement, “Stop ICE murders and dictatorship! Build a rank-and-file movement of the working class for a general strike!” The statement made clear that the drive toward dictatorship is inseparable from the staggering levels of social inequality gripping the United States and the rotting capitalist system that both parties defend.
It called for the formation of rank-and-file committees independent of the trade union bureaucracies, which have failed to support this week’s or last Friday’s strike actions, as the basis for uniting the working class. These committees would coordinate demands that include the removal and disbanding of all immigration police, an end to the persecution of immigrants, the release of all those detained by ICE and CBP, and the prosecution and removal from power of all those responsible in the Trump administration for violating constitutional rights.
The explosive growth of protest activity underscores the potential for a mass general strike to end the federal occupation and drive the fascists from Washington.
Students throughout Detroit participate in “National Shutdown” protests against ICE
On January 30, numerous protests took place across the Detroit metropolitan region in support of the National Shutdown against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including student walkouts at Cass Technical High School, a sit-in at Royal Oak High School, and rallies in Dearborn, Novi, Hazel Park, and Superior Charter Township. United in protest against the murders in Minneapolis of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, small business closures also took place in the 7 Mile Livernois area where last summer the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) held a hearing to investigate the death of Ronald Adams Sr.
Somewhere around 500 students at Detroit’s Cass Tech High School walked out of school and rallied as part of the National Shutdown, with students waving signs saying, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal,” “No decent Human has a heart made of ICE,” and “ICE murders innocents.”
Brizait Gonzalez Rivera said, “I am protesting because immigrants are suffering at this moment. I’m Mexican American. Look at all the tragedies that have happened. I have read the stories, I have read the news, I’m informed, and it is obvious we are being tortured. They are taking random citizens. It is not fair, it is not just, it is not right. As students, as the next generation, let’s lead this movement. It is a movement.”
Other students across Metro Detroit walked out, including at Groves High School in Birmingham. They marched demanding, “No fear, no hate, no ICE in our state.” Other high school protests or walkouts occurred in Berkley, Rochester, Novi, and Dearborn, with hundreds marching on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing.
About 100 Royal Oak High School students organized a sit-in to protest ICE and held a discussion about what they expect from their school to keep them safe. One told the WSWS, “Young people are enraged because we were raised learning to love everyone, no matter what, with movies like Pocahontas, to understand people who are different from us.”
Several hundred workers and young people also marched down Telegraph Road, shouting “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” Palestinian flags were visible, as marchers held signs which included, “Stop U.S.-Backed Genocide in Gaza” and “Protest NOW!! or Bow Down Later!”
Hundreds of high school students in Knox County, Tennessee walk out to protest immigration police
Knox County Schools (KCS) high school students staged a walkout on Friday, January 30 against ICE and KCS’s policy to “follow the law” when it comes to ICE entering public schools.
Despite the district’s warning to students of disciplinary action if they walk out, over 300 students gathered in downtown Knoxville for a rally and march to the City County Building. Many students were accompanied by their parents. Students from the University of Tennessee also participated.
High school students delivered speeches in front of life-sized drawings of Renée Good, Alex Pretti and other victims of ICE brutality. Participants carried handmade signs in opposition to the immigration police along with references to the American Revolution of 1776.
Students who spoke to the WSWS described fear for classmates and their parents who entered the United States without papers.
“I don’t want ICE here. I don’t want to go to school and be scared,” one student said. Another told the WSWS, “It’s kind of like the US is turning into a dictatorship. Some of my friends are immigrants too so I am worried for them and I don’t want them to be taken.”
They also described conditions of poverty and oppression in the countries they fled for a better life in the US. Other participants blamed the corruption of government and US imperialism for ICE and the descent into fascism and barbarism. Students agreed that a general strike, led by the working class, is central to abolishing ICE and toppling the Trump administration.
As Trump’s border czar vows to continue kidnappings, students and workers denounced Democratic Party collaborators
On Thursday reporters with the World Socialist Web Site spoke to students at the University of Minnesota about the ongoing federal occupation of the state by some 3,000 federal agents and the murders of Minneapolis residents Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Earlier in the day, Trump’s White House “border czar” Tom Homan held a press conference in Minneapolis in which he pledged to continue immigration kidnapping operations while simultaneously blaming “protesters” and “agitators” for their own deaths at the barrels of immigration police.
Prior to Thursday’s press conference, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz praised Homan as a “law enforcement professional” and pledged that local police would assist federal agents in kidnapping residents. He said that Homan “understands if you really want to enforce immigration, if you really want to get the worst of the worst, you coordinate with local folks, you coordinate with our [Bureau of Criminal Apprehension] and you pick these people up when they are not suspecting it, in the middle of the night where no shots are fired.”
A former substitute teacher and public health major at the University of Minnesota told the WSWS, “I think that Waltz and Trump talked on the phone and made some agreement, but we aren’t aware what it was. Trump is saying that he de-escalated but he just sent Bovino home and then brought somebody else in. They think that is going to make people scatter and think things are going to be better when in reality they’re going to continue doing the same things. It’s all just optics. Minneapolis is the spotlight right now, so they hope they can send a thousand other ICE agents to different cities without the press following it.”
Commenting on the escalating attack on the jobs and living standards of workers, she said, “I remember when they first started talking about AI it was like this would allow humans to do the jobs they really want to do. Now they’re just firing people. It’s not just the Republicans that defend all this wealth it’s the Democrats too. They’re not investing in education because they want people to be dumber. They’re not using funds to make us healthier. They just want control over people.
“COVID showed us how important workers really are to the world. Even people working in restaurants were essential workers. People needed teachers to send their kids somewhere. If teachers, service and other workers come together and refuse to work there could be a lot of power. The rich are taking money from education and privatizing everything to make more money, when we should be funding public services to make our communities better.”
A University of Minnesota electrical engineer student said, “We should completely defund ICE, and we should not have federal agents targeting immigrants like this. They’re not targeting criminals like they say, they are targeting innocent people and even kids. Even US citizens like me are carrying our passports because we think we’re going to get questioned by ICE or that we are going to be detained and not be able to talk to our family. We’re living in America in the 21st century and it’s just not something that should be happening. It’s just crazy to say we’re living in a first world country.
“I don’t believe Trump is telling the truth. He’s only saying he’s deescalating and there’s nothing to worry about so people don’t panic. But it’s already too late for that. And even if they remove some ICE agents from Minneapolis, it won’t be long until this happens in another city.
“I saw videos of people saying they’re going out wearing scarves because ICE is using facial recognition and they’re scared they’re going to get tracked and ICE is going to show up at the door. It’s so crazy that we’re being monitored 24-7. I think that Alex Pretti was targeted.”
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