St. Paul voters defy risks to send a message

Something remarkable just happened in St. Paul, Minnesota. If you don't know, St. Paul is the twin city to Minneapolis, the other side of the upper Mississippi River. These are two jurisdictions, yet one city.

The miraculous thing that happened was that on last Tuesday, Meg Luger-Nikolai won a special election to the state legislature. Yes, she's a Democrat. Democrats win here.

I have more than once spent short bits of time in the Twin Cities on various organizing jobs. I've seen a little of this very Democratic city; I've even seen what kind of people show up to the political party nominating caucuses. Here's what some of them looked like in 2006; I doubt Luger-Nikolai's new constituents look much different now: a little cold with a lot of opinions.

But, as David Nir of the Downballot -- a site that analyzes local elections -- writes, St. Paul voters came out in the middle of violent federal repression that might have been expected to reduce turnout. Not so.

On Tuesday night, Meg Luger-Nikolai, a labor lawyer and Democrat, won a special election for her state legislature with 95.3% of the vote.

Like I said, that could never really happen, right? ... what matters above all else is where the race took place: St. Paul, Minnesota.

Like its sibling on the western bank of the Mississippi, the state capital of St. Paul has been just as much a victim of another would-be dictator, Donald Trump.

The smaller of the Twin Cities has been under siege by ICE for months, its new mayor, Kaohly Her, told The Guardian last week. And the savagery unleashed in Minneapolis, which has reverberated throughout the country and worldwide, has been felt especially keenly in its closest of sister cities.

It was Her’s former seat in the state House that Luger-Nikolai ran for and won, a supersized victory that helps answer a grim and difficult question on many minds: What would happen if Trump tried to send troops into cities right before Election Day?

It turns out, as election law expert Justin Levitt put it, voters will “crawl over broken glass to punish the street gangs gassing and disappearing children.” Despite Trump’s terror campaign, the regime’s opponents overcame whatever fears they might have had to turn out en masse—even though, thanks to ICE’s penchant for smashing car windows, the broken glass is all too literal. Its supporters, meanwhile, seem to have stayed home.

It was by no means easy. In fact, Democrats had to toss the usual campaign trail playbook.
“This election took place while our neighbors were, and still are, being terrorized by ICE agents during this federal occupation,” Luger-Nikolai said in a statement to The Downballot. 

“It made it impossible to run a normal campaign. People were afraid to open their doors or talk to someone they didn’t know, and we pulled back from those typical strategies out of respect and care for our neighbors.”

“Yet in the conversations we did have, voters raised the same concern: deep disgust with what they are seeing and fear for families, schools, and small businesses in their communities,” she continued. “Families have been destabilized, students pushed into uncertainty, and livelihoods disrupted.”

But, said Luger-Nikolai, the end result was “not only a win at the ballot box, but a powerful affirmation of community resilience in the face of extraordinary circumstances.” Luger-Nikolai’s new district has long been a deep shade of blue, but that backdrop only heightens her achievement.

In the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris carried it 84-13, offering little room to improve on those numbers. ... Though Harris won by 71 percentage points, Luger-Nikolai won by 91. That 20-point overperformance would be stellar anywhere. In a district like this? Astonishing hardly covers it.

... Recently, my good friend G. Elliott Morris from Strength In Numbers asked me that same question I posed earlier during a livestream: What would happen if Trump deployed troops to intimidate voters just ahead of an election?

It’s a scary thought, made much scarier by ICE’s blithe killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But as I told Elliott, such an attempt could backfire badly, generating even hotter anger with Trump and firing up voters as never before. 

Tuesday’s experience in the Twin Cities is the most vivid evidence we’ve seen of precisely that sort of ballot box backlash. Just as we’ve seen Minnesotans bravely confront Trump’s goon squad despite the grave dangers, they’re not hesitating to make their feelings known at the polling place, too.

If Trump was expecting ordinary Americans to cower at home while his thugs roam the streets, he’s already been proven wrong. And if he imagines that that same army of thugs might save him from electoral catastrophe, voters in St. Paul likewise just showed how very wrong that calculation may be. 

It's gonna be a long year. Meanwhile, let's push Dems to prove that the risks we may have to take to elect them are worth it.

Interesting exchange on organizing against Trump's goons

Juliette Kayyem who worked the disaster management portfolio in the Obama administration (her book here) offered an observation on Blue Sky about how Minneapolis is achieving its level of organized resistance.

Kayyem: I have begun to think that Minnesota pushback to ICE was unique and a model because it gave people something to do. It wasn’t about just going out in streets for rallying purposes. People had a mission: videos, whistles, information and communication flow to communities. They had something to do.

Ezra Levin, cofounder of national Indivisible: 100%. I honestly believe political leaders ask too little of people. The thinking is you need an extraordinarily low bar - so ask people for money or to sign something. People want to be part of something and they're eager to do real meaningful work in defense of their community and their rights.

Levin: The political system largely treats people like small-dollar ATMs that vote every 2 years. Everybody gets deluged with emails asking for money. It feeds cynicism and burnout. Rarely do you get a "help me organize our community" email.

Sherrilyn Ifill: Correct.

Nassim: frankly a lot of politicians see active constituents as a burden rather than an opportunity

Levin: much of the entire party views engaged people as a problem to be solved. ...The smothering out of the obama grassroots energy is my roman empire - I think about it all the time. I was an idealistic recent college grad and I remember a massive celebration call for volunteers after the win with a promise to continue the momentum. Then...nothing. We got the Tea Party instead.

Lydy: There is nothing more bonding than a work party. Collating and stamping a fanzine, setting up chairs in an auditorium, cooking a large meal in a church kitchen ...

And much more ... 

Let's keep doing the work!

Friday cat blogging

  

How would you like to be confronted by that look in the morning? You might think Mio was ferocious, but in fact he's a big lover boy. Substantial for a cat, yes. But mostly rather sweet, if always hungry.

Culture for resistance to tyranny, now and then

Odds are, you have encountered Bruce Springteen's ode to the battle of Minnesota. After all, it's been written up even in the New York Times. But here it is, anyway:

... There were bloody footprints where mercy should have stood ... we'll take our stand for this land and the stranger in our midst ...we'll remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis ...

The song put me in mind of another season when the American state murdered its own. In May of 1970, National Guard soldiers killed four on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio followed shortly after by the killing of two protesting Black students at Jackson State in Mississippi. 

A significant difference between our current moment and that time: in 1970, state and national polls found that majorities of citizens thought the students got what they deserved. 

Polls today, now that nearly everyone has seen the videos of Alex Pritti's execution, run strong against the Trump/Miller occupation of Minneapolis. We've learned a thing or two over the last 55 years.

The popular touring folk singer Holly Near provided a ballad of the Kent and Jackson State era: It's refrain seems highly applicable to our moment: 

It could have been me, but instead it was you
So I'll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were too
I'll be a student of life, a singer of songs
A farmer of food and the righter of wrong
It could have been me, but instead it was you
And it may be me, dear sisters and brothers, before we are through
But if you can die for freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom
If you can die for freedom, I can too

. Seems right. I hope this is not what is demanded of us.

Confirmation they should be scared of their own workers

Last October, it looked as if the San Francisco Bay Area was to be next target of Donald Trump's Rambo/ICE thugs.

And then we weren't. And the thugs were redirected to such unfortunate locations as Memphis and eventually Minnesota's Twin Cities.

Why did Trump/Miller/Noem back off then? San Francisco's mayor, Daniel Lurie, whose promise is to eradicate any vestiges of the historically weird and anti-corporate character of the City by the Bay, claimed to have talked Trump out of it. It may have helped that the federal forces had located on an isolated Coast Guard island where they might have been expected to shoot their way out when protesters inevitably blocked their way.

But I've always suspected that the tech barons who support both Lurie and Trump were the deciders. They don't mind beating up on poor Central American and East Asian migrants, but they didn't want their work force seeing the carnage. And some of their companies depend on immigrants. Lots of tech jobs have moved on from the Bay, partially because the pandemic encouraged remote work, but there are still legions of ambitious, not-yet billionaire techies who locate here for the promise of natural beauty, each other, and hope for start-up riches. 

And if the Bay were a fascist target, these might be confronted by the ugly violence of the state for themselves. They are part of labor; their work still matters to their bosses -- hence our (momentary?) reprieve. 

WIRED has confirmed stirrings among the lower and mid-level tech workers and the response of their oligarch employers. Notably, the rustlings of dissent are within the company what seems to be the fascist Dark Star -- Peter Thiel's Palantir.

After federal agents shot and killed Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday, Palantir workers pressed for answers from leadership on the company’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—and many questioned whether Palantir should be involved with the agency at all. Leadership defended its work as in part improving “ICE’s operational effectiveness.” 

Internal Slack messages reviewed by WIRED reveal growing frustration within Palantir over its relationship with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and in particular, ICE’s enforcement and investigations teams. In response, Palantir’s privacy and civil liberties team published an update to the company’s internal wiki detailing its work on federal immigration enforcement, arguing that the “technology is making a difference in mitigating risks while enabling targeted outcomes.” 

In a Saturday thread on Slack discussing Pretti’s killing, Palantir workers questioned both the ethics and the business logic of continuing the company’s work with ICE. 

“Our involvement with ice has been internally swept under the rug under Trump2 too much. We need an understanding of our involvement here,” one person wrote. 

“Can Palantir put any pressure on ICE at all?” wrote another. “I’ve read stories of folks rounded up who were seeking asylum with no order to leave the country, no criminal record, and consistently check in with authorities. Literally no reason to be rounded up. Surely we aren’t helping do that?” 

The discussion was held in a company-wide Slack channel dedicated to general world news coverage. ... 

... [A corporate] wiki acknowledges “increasing reporting around U.S. Citizens being swept up in enforcement action and held, as well as reports of racial profiling allegedly applied as pretense for the detention of some U.S. Citizens,” but argues that Palantir’s customers at ICE “remain committed to avoiding the unlawful/unnecessary targeting, apprehension, and detention of U.S. Citizens wherever and however possible.”

Yeah -- and where's the evidence for that? Dead civilians?

Here too, among tech workers, is where resistance will rise and must be welcomed by those of us with a more skeptical response to their world. Working techies are people too and they don't like ugly.

We're in this together, trying to save the aspirations of the country from the monsters currently in power.

Even the statues cry out

We can thank COVID for something: during the pandemic, San Franciscans enjoyed the eastern mile and a half of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park closed to cars so as to encourage recreation in fresh air. And we loved it; the wide street became a playground for cyclists, skaters, runners and walkers. In November 2022, over the objections of museums in the area, the voters gave 63 percent support to keeping this section of JFK car-free. And so it remains.

And then Recreation and Parks made JFK Drive a venue for public art. There are dragons and sea monsters and also pianos and pingpong tables.

And among this art stand two human-size bronze critters, a female rabbit and a male hound, dressed in human business attire, going about their bourgeois lives, driving to work and cooking a meal. 

Someone has dressed them for this moment:

Even the statues cry out for justice ... 

We have something MAGA lacks

Ben Lorber is a writer and researcher at Political Research Associates, a long time observer of hate movements in this USofA. To do his work, he reads online right wing and MAGA chat groups. The resistance and resilience of people in the Twin Cities is giving these keyboard fascists fits. From Facebook:

Yesterday a far-right journalist tweeted out screenshots from a public, unvetted ICE Watch Signal group in Minneapolis. It’s gone viral on the online Right. While thousands took the streets, reactionary keyboard warriors stared wide-eyed and aghast at images from chats showing neighbors organizing street-level mutual aid networks and ICE monitoring shifts.

Over and over I see the same refrain - ‘the Right is nowhere near as organized as this.’ They insist folks are getting paid by China or that it’s all coordinated by the deep state. They’re clearly unable to comprehend, or unwilling to admit the organic strength of grassroots movement-building.

The Right is prone, of course, to strategically amplifying the imagined threat of conspiratorial, all-powerful enemies lurking around every corner. Stuff like this is catnip for a movement eager to catch a forbidden glimpse into the hidden heart of Leftist power, whether it’s from Q Drops, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or in this case a public, easily accessible Signal group.

But here they’re glimpsing something real, and it scares them. They can’t help but admit that their side could never pull this off. It reminds them that they don’t really have people power— the kind that makes neighbors show up for each other in the cold, again and again, over the long haul. And they never will, because their project is genuinely unpopular, and that makes it precarious and fragile.

So they cling as tight as they can to the levers of state and institutional power, and the massive funding streams that they do hold. But they can’t dream of the level of grassroots mobilization on display from just one public Signal chat in one city. It terrifies them- and it should.

It’s also hard to miss the note of envy. It reminds me that there’s always been a not-so-subtle thread of envy running through the history of conservatism. Whether it’s the French Revolution, 1917, the 1960s New Left or Minneapolis today, the Right is often jealous that the forces of human emancipation are more numerous and better organized than they are, and having more fun, with a more compelling vision of the future than they can ever dream of. 

... let us strive on to finish the work we are in ... A. Lincoln

Another murder in Minneapolis -- say a prayer and speak the truth

We gathered at the Embarcadero in San Francisco, memorializing Alex Pretti's murder in Minneapolis -- and finding comradeship with each other. The crowd was large, not so much militant as determined.

There was anger -- yes!

Apparently a good nurse, from the accounts of Pretti's life that are coming out. There were many in the San Francisco crowd who looked to be nurses themselves.

This crowd was determined ...

• • •

The Rev. Angela Denker pastors at an Evangelical Lutheran Church not far from the murder site in Minneapolis. She writes:

I write to you so sad - I feel like I cry every few hours - and also so, so mad. At the many who prepared the way for this gratuitous violence and hatred. At the Christians, Christian leaders, and politicians who stubbornly dig in their heels, who refuse to repent, who insist upon more and more bloodshed, sacrifices poured out to the gods of violence, war, and money.

Pray for Minneapolis, for Minnesota. For Alex’s loved ones. For the eyewitnesses. For the press who were teargassed and pepper sprayed. For the children who see it all and wonder, how they can ever possibly become adults in a world like this. For America. For our churches, embattled and exhausted. For neighborhood leaders who again host vigils and light candles. For brave observers. For the VA Hospital, where I served my chaplaincy internship, and where Alex worked in the ICU. For the woman whom Alex tried to help, who was being assaulted by ICE agents, who then turned their attention to Alex. For the ecosystem of lies and those who profit from them. For justice. For truth. For courage. For love.

Amen. 

Amen indeed on this third Sunday in the Christian season of Epiphany -- the season when we repeat stories of the Living God calling forth improbable followers from among the workers of his time and place to witness the Love he spoke.  

• • •

For a more secular reflection, here's the often lucid Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark:

What Can We Do?

For starters, be grateful to the people of Minneapolis. Bearing witness today in America requires physical courage. Every single person who steps out their front door in Minneapolis to observe, document, and protest the actions of our government is taking their lives in their hands.

These men and women are the kind of patriots you would have seen at Lexington and Concord. I am in awe of their valor. They started this resistance to protect their neighbors, but what is happening in Minneapolis now is bigger than that. They are standing against the might of the Trump regime not just for themselves, but for all of us.

 Second, don’t look away. Don’t forget what is happening. Don’t give in to despair or exhaustion.

Third, do not tolerate false equivalence from responsible quarters. Anyone in public life who cannot call things by their right names here should be shamed, swept aside, and ultimately ignored.

Fourth, understand that this moment requires new structures and new thinking. The resistance in Minneapolis is unlike anything we’ve seen in recent American history. The political opposition must think anew as well. And any part of the political opposition that continues to act as though these are still ordinary times should be swept aside, too. ...

Fifth, as we identify ways to give material support to the Minneapolis resistance, be ready to offer whatever you can.

... They want us confused. They want us too exhausted to fight back. You don’t have to go into the streets of Minnesota to fight back. You can simply state plainly that our government is lying to us. Say it somewhere. Online. To a friend or family member. But do not let their lies go unanswered by truth.

Solidarity amid horror

 

Yesterday evening northern Californians marched in downtown San Francisco in support of the besieged people of Minnesota. We're fortunate -- it was more hot than cold!

We know which side we are on.

This was a union crowd with participants from SEIU, organized teachers and nurses, even retirees.

And some who are just forming their union.

 

These folks know which side they are on and it ain't ICE.

 

It was also a civic activist crowd. I saw lots of old friends from Bay Resistance, Indivisible, Swing Left and more. 

 

Like the people of Minnesota, we won't give up our immigrant friends without an organized struggle. 

Friday cat blogging

I won't be the only one who misses the football season when it is finally over. Mio finds the little men below his perch intriguing.

Maybe he can swat them? Apparently not.

Actually, I won't miss football this year. Every team I was interested in was eliminated over the last weekend. The season is so long it breaks the best of them. Will I even watch the finale?

A fascist with a brain bleed

Aaron Rupar is an independent journalist, the pillar of the news site Public Notice. He also happens to live in Minneapolis. 

He writes that yesterday he had other plans for his newsletter, but, as so often is the case, our blubbering bully of a pseudo-president managed to command his attention for his antics. This brief commentary is worth reading in full but here are some summarizing tidbits. 

American embarrassment. Global pariah.

... Donald Trump sounded like a fascist dictator suffering from a brain bleed during his speech yesterday at Davos. It was a national embarrassment even by the lowly standards of modern American politics.

... Put it all together and what we have here is of an out of control wannabe autocrat who’s cognitively impaired, openly racist, and more eager than ever to use force against his perceived foes both at home and abroad. It’s complete madness that this guy has the nuke codes and yet, with the exception of people like [Canadian prime minister] Mark Carney, too few leaders are willing to grapple with it.

... At campaign rallies throughout his political career, Trump has regularly read “The Snake,” a poem about people being taken advantage of because of their credulity.

“‘Oh shut up, silly woman,’ said the reptile with a grin, ‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in,” it goes.

America knew — or should have known — that Trump was a snake before voters committed the world historical blunder of letting him into the White House for a second time. But that’s water under the bridge. Now we have to hope we’re able to survive the venom and endure the unending global humiliation.

... That Trump backed down hours after his Davos speech is a promising sign that financial markets and diplomatic pressure (not to mention the grassroots organizing that’s taking place in the occupied Twin Cities) can still provide something of a check on his desire to carve up the world between strongmen like himself, Putin, and President Xi. But make no mistake — one year in, he and his regime are getting worse.

That’s evident in the streets of Minneapolis, the oil fields of Venezuela, and yesterday on that stage in Davos, which will go down as the site of one of if not the most pathetic presidential speech in history — so far. 

• • •

A friend in the Twin Cities writes from within the occupation:

It’s really impossible to explain to people outside the Cities how dense and aggressive the ICE presence is, in comparison to the metro population. The scale of the violence.

There’s no denying that the cruelty is the point, and that how you feel about what’s happening depends utterly on how you respond to bullying and intimidation. The reason it’s not working here is because Minnesotans really REALLY fucking hate bullies. There is a cultural unity around that, and it may lay dormant most of the time but it sure as hell has been activated now.

We are resisting and obstructing, but it’s awful and scary and heartbreaking and infuriating, and they are targeting our most vulnerable people on purpose. Please make sure that everyone you know knows that.

I should add that I suspect the people of Maine are made of just as tough stuff as the Minnesotans. 

Here's what I know about how the rest of us can help occupied Minnesotans, though there are certainly many other ways. On mutual aid for the people of Minnesota 

There's no point in denying reality. And much harm.

With Donald Trump blustering about at Davos today, my thoughts return to the real international substance of our moment as described by Phillips P. O'Brien, historian and professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. The United States has changed sides in the long struggle for decency and democracy against exploitation and tyranny. We may not have been the pillar of righteousness we liked to think ourselves, but we were once not the declared enemies of humane flourishing for the peoples either.

Says O'Brien:  

The importance of the US changing sides stretches far beyond the Russo-Ukraine War. It is a challenge to the survival of liberal democracy and the rule of law itself around the world. It has left other democratic states leaderless and divided. It has emboldened Russia and China and it has made working with them far more attractive a prospect for others. It has upended the world order more than anything else since 1945, with the possible exception of the collapse of the USSR.

Of course not all is lost. Democratic forces have a chance to fight back. As I wrote in this Foreign Affairs piece published in September, the remaining democratic forces that do not want to go down the dark road that the US is now on, can act now to preserve themselves. They still have important reservoirs of strengths. However, before they can use this strength, they must acknowledge the reality of the new world. 

The US has changed sides, is not their friend and in many ways is out to subvert their futures as the US becomes an ally of authoritarians and dictators.

Acknowledging the reality of the new world is the only way to fight it. For this reason there really is only one story that defines 2025. The USA has changed sides. How the rest of the world reacts to that will define the future.  

Let the Europeans do better than we do. Greenland from the Greenlanders!