We Need a General Strike to Stop ICE Terror

Trump’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is terrorizing American cities. Thousands of immigrant working and poor people are being grabbed off the streets by masked and warrantless ICE agents traveling in unmarked cars.

In early January, the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge, beginning with the Minneapolis area as the test case. Over 3,000 ICE agents were sent to Minneapolis to conduct aggressive and violent immigration enforcement in the largest deployment of immigration officers to any city in American history.

On January 7th, 37-year old peaceful activist and mother, Renee Good, was murdered by an ICE agent with multiple gunshots while courageously and peacefully documenting ICE activities, just a few blocks away from where George Floyd was brutally murdered by police in 2020.

In response, faith, labor, and social movement leaders announced a “Day of no work. No school. No shopping,” for January 23rd. This call to action led to a historic protest of over a hundred thousand people in Minneapolis, joined by hundreds of thousands nationally.

The January 23rd day of action has been widely described as a “general strike.” Certainly, the protests were resounding and the conditions for organizing a mass strike were present. The series of protests that have rocked cities nationally have put pressure on the Trump administration.

Unfortunately, as inspiring as the day of protest action was in Minneapolis, it was not a general strike. Many small businesses across the Twin Cities metro and Minnesota state did close their doors for part or all of January 23rd. But overwhelmingly the large corporations that constitute most of the city’s economy, including Target, IBM, 3M, UnitedHealth Group, all remained open. Most importantly, rather than taking the lead in shutting down the city’s economy, the leadership of the labor movement remained mostly absent, refused to mobilize rank-and-file members to a strike, and even actively discouraged members from striking.

Working people do urgently need to organize a general strike. However, to succeed in that, we need to understand the conditions that make any worker strike successful, what a general strike is and what it is not, why we need one, and the historical lessons on how we can make it happen. We have to be clear that mass rank-and-file militancy will be necessary to overcome the obstacles presented by most of the current labor leadership who oppose such action. This is also why we are building Workers Strike Back nationally and why working people should join us — because we need a reckoning in the labor movement to take it forward.

We can’t afford to be lulled by Trump’s recent announcement that he is ending Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. Undoubtedly, the protest movement and cratering public approval ratings of ICE and Trump himself have forced him to make this temporary concession. However, as Trump’s border czar Tom Homan indicated, they are also declaring the “success” of Operation Metro Surge in having arrested, detained, and deported thousands. It is also telling that Homan publicly thanked prominent Democratic Party figures in Minnesota, like Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara for their cooperation with the Trump administration. All of this is a reminder that the movement to shut down ICE needs to be independent from both parties of the billionaires — not only Trump and the Republicans, but also the Democratic Party which has supported ICE and the anti-immigrant agenda for decades.

Strikes Are Work Stoppages That Shut Down Profits

So if what took place in Minneapolis was not a general strike, then what is? First, a strike action is not a protest, but an action in which workers at a workplace collectively withhold their labor in order to force the bosses to concede to demands, often related to wages and workplace conditions but also most impactfully for political demands that affect the working class as a whole.

Strikes are based on the fundamental reality of global capitalism that the economic engine of profits of the billionaires and multimillionaires is derived directly from the labor of billions of workers. Wages represent a fraction of the production and wealth that workers generate from their labor. The rest is taken from them by the capitalists. However, because all wealth is derived from our labor, workers have the ability to shut down profits for the bosses by shutting down production.

These basic ideas apply to public-sector workers, as well. Even though public agencies don’t generate profits for the capitalist class, they require our labor to allow the capitalist state to function on a day-to-day basis. When workers in public schools, transportation, social services, or other public agencies under capitalism carry out strikes and bring the public sector to a grinding halt, they defy the control of Democratic or Republican politicians and also hamper private profits. When public-sector strikes succeed in winning concrete demands, they can threaten the credibility of the two parties and the stability of the capitalist system by setting an emboldening example for other workers.

The capitalist class viciously exploits workers the world over. Organizing collectively, going on strike, and withholding our labor to stop the bosses from making profits or to prevent their system from otherwise functioning smoothly, is the most powerful weapon, short of revolution itself, that we have as workers against the capitalists. Throughout the history of capitalism, it was by organizing mass strikes that workers won any measure of improvement in their wages, working conditions, and living standards.

Strikes (and General Strikes) Need Class Struggle Unionism

A general strike is when workers carry out a work stoppage and shut down the profits across workplaces, sectors, and industries in an entire city, region, or nation. A general strike can be a potent tool in the hands of the working class. By shutting down the business of an entire city, region, or nation, a general strike has the potential power to bring the capitalist machine to its knees. For those same reasons, organizing a general strike and making it successful by winning the strike’s demands is far from straightforward.

Successful strike actions, and especially general strikes, need leaders who are crystal clear about the class antagonisms between bosses and workers under capitalism, and that the needs of workers and the greed of bosses are irreconcilable. To win anything, workers must wrest it from the bosses through strong organization and militant action. This is class struggle unionism.

Leaders who agree with class struggle unionism will arm the rank and file with a formidable fighting strategy capable of overcoming the arsenal of strike-breaking weapons of the bosses. For example, bosses routinely employ replacement workers (also called scab workers) in a divide-and-conquer tactic to undermine a strike. Class struggle unionist leaders develop responses to win over the scab workers by convincing them that the divide-and-conquer trap of the bosses is a race to the bottom for all workers including themselves, and that all workers must stand in solidarity with the strike. Class struggle unionists also fight to prevent scab workers from being able to break the strike by organizing community-wide working-class solidarity campaigns. They urge members of other unions to stand with the strike and also carry out solidarity strikes.

Crucially, class struggle unionist leaders also recognize that the political parties of capitalism represent the capitalist state and exist to defend the interests of the capitalist class. In the United States, that means understanding that both the Democratic and Republican parties are hostile to the interests of workers. It means having a strategy to defeat the repression and even violence that the Democrats and Republicans will use, and have historically used again and again, in order to break a strike.

Class struggle unionism means recognizing that the actual purpose of “progressives” in the Democratic Party is to try to whitewash the party’s pro-capitalist agenda. New York City hospital bosses have spent upwards of $100 million in hiring out-of-state scab nurses in an attempt to undercut the current historic strike of nurses. New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul signed, and repeatedly renewed, an executive order making it easier for the bosses to hire the scabs. NYC’s Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is a prominent leader of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), visited the picket line of the nurses but has also, at the same time, shamefully endorsed anti-worker, corporate Democrat Hochul in her re-election bid.

The vast majority of current American labor leaders subscribe to the ideas of business unionism. In contrast to class struggle unionism, business unionism means believing that the role of a labor leader is to mediate between the bosses and the workers. Business unionist leaders avoid any militant confrontation with the bosses, focus on the so-called “bargaining table,” and discourage strike actions or any kind of fighting approach. Business unionists do sometimes use strike threats, but as abstract leverage to be used at the bargaining table rather than actually building worker power, which signals to the bosses that any talk of a strike is an empty threat. Business unionism is the single biggest obstacle today to rebuilding a fighting labor movement that can turn the tide against the billionaires.

Most American union leaders today, with the partnership of progressive Democrats and many leaders of organizations like the DSA, are in reality helping the bosses by acting as gatekeepers against working-class struggle. Building a general strike will require us to learn historical lessons of how to defeat the gatekeepers both inside the labor movement and within the wider progressive establishment, including progressive Democrats.

Lessons of the 1934 Minneapolis General Strike

In 1934, Teamsters Local 574 in Minneapolis led a citywide general strike. The strike was led by Marxist rank-and-file Teamster worker leaders who demonstrated a brilliant example of class struggle unionism that opened the door for a resurgent labor movement. In the lead-up to the strike, the Marxist leaders began organizing coal drivers, a sector of workers that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters leadership refused to organize. This broadened worker solidarity beyond their immediate workplace, which was essential groundwork for mass strike action.

The historic strike began in May of 1934, and because the Marxists within the rank and file of the Teamsters successfully organized the coal drivers, the strike completely shut down commerce in the city of Minneapolis. In response, the police brutally murdered workers on the picket line. Governor Floyd Olson (of the Farmer-Labor Party which merged with the Democratic Party in 1944), a supposedly progressive, “pro-worker” governor, declared martial law and broke the strike.

Despite Olson breaking the strike, workers won big because of the threat they posed to the capitalist state including with the general strike they carried out. Massive pay increases were won, the anti-union Citizens Alliance was defeated and thousands of workers joined unions. Along with general strikes in Toledo and San Francisco and other cities around the country, the Minneapolis general strike fired off one of the most dynamic periods of class struggle in U.S. history, forcing Democratic President Roosevelt (FDR) to pass the New Deal, among other victories. None of these were won because FDR wanted to support workers. They were wrenched as concessions from FDR and the capitalist state he represented, because these general strikes and subsequent militant organizing of the auto industry presented the possibility of revolutionary upheaval and threatened the stability of the capitalist system.

The higher-up Teamster leadership did everything they could to undermine the 1934 Minneapolis strike as part of a business unionist strategy, seeking rotten compromises with major city industrialists and capitalist politicians whenever they saw an opening. It was only because of the contrasting strategy and political education provided by the rank-and-file Marxist leaders that the negative role of the official labor leadership became clear to the workers.

Prior to the Minneapolis strike, a general strike happened in Seattle in 1919. There were other notable strikes as well in San Francisco in 1934 and the Flint Sit-Down Strikes in 1936-1937. The last citywide general strike in the United States was in Oakland in 1946 (there has never been a nationwide general strike in the United States). Major strikes in the 20th-century United States always threatened the profits of the bosses and the stability of the capitalist system itself. It was only under this kind of pressure that the capitalists conceded to working-class demands, though not before using every possible trick and tactic, including the repressive and violent apparatus of the state, to try to crush every strike.

Most recently, Italian dock workers carried out a general strike to stop the shipment of arms to Israel, in solidarity with the Palestinian people who are being subjected to a genocide. The strike was organized in response to Israel blocking a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. The strike openly defied the right-wing reactionary pro-Trump government of Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni. The dock workers said, “If, even for twenty minutes, we lose contact with our comrades on the flotilla, we will block all of Europe: from Genoa’s docks, not a single nail will leave, it will be a global strike.”

This general strike by the Italian working class was a key reason Trump felt forced to pressure Israel into establishing the existing, though very limited, “ceasefire” in Gaza. It is a modern-day example of what we need in this country to end all U.S. military aid to Israel and shut down ICE and the detention centers.

The working class, both union and non-union workers, needs to organize and shut down the profit-making machine to actually defeat Trump and the Democrats and Republicans. We need to urgently begin building for a general strike now! This means that we have to fight for class struggle unionism and against the gatekeeping role of union leaders and progressive Democrats.

The Rank and File Made January 23rd Happen, Not Union Leaders

The week leading up to the January 23rd mass protests was an egregious display of misleadership by both the labor leadership and other leaders on the left.

The leaders of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE), Saint Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1005, and many other unions did everything in their power to avoid organizing a strike. Instead, the leaders advised union members that if they wanted to take the day off, they should request their boss to “look the other way.” A top leader of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation even strongly discouraged the idea of a mass sick-out.

Despite all of this, hundreds of progressive organizations and unions signed on to the day of action under intense pressure from rank-and-file members. Hundreds of small businesses across the Twin Cities metro and across the state agreed to close their doors on January 23rd in solidarity. Solidarity actions were also organized around the country.

Still, there was a section of the labor leadership that did not agree with even these limited steps. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 65, which represents 14,000 public-sector workers across Minnesota, South Dakota & North Dakota, shamefully refused to endorse the day of action, stating publicly that they are “…not calling for a work stoppage, walkout, or any action that would violate labor agreements or workplace policies.”

Business Unionism and No-Strike ClausesThroughout history, many of the most important strikes were in defiance of the law. That’s because it is the capitalists who write the laws and they want to tie our hands in every way possible.

This is also why bosses insist on no-strike clauses, and why workers and unions need to fight ferociously against them. One of the most scandalous outcomes of the hollowing out of the militancy from the American labor movement and the loss of class struggle unionism is how no-strike clauses have become almost ubiquitous in American labor union contracts.

The bosses at Transdev, the largest private-sector transit corporation in North America which runs the public buses in Rochester, Minnesota and bus mechanics in the Twin Cities, sent a letter on January 21st to all employees reminding them of the no-strike language in their union contract. In the letter, the Transdev bosses said that the leaders of the drivers’ union, ATU 1005, had “confirmed that the Union is not calling for any strike, slowdown, or work stoppage, and that employees are encouraged to participate in any activities only outside of scheduled work hours or on approved time off.”

Some of the no-strike clauses are even more outrageously restrictive and draconian than others. For example, the contract between AFSCME (the public-sector workers’ union) and the City of Rochester says, “The City may terminate the employment or otherwise discipline any employee, who foments, instigates, incites, calls, supports, or participates in….any strike, walk-out, work stoppage, curtailment or slowdown or impeding of work, boycott, picketing of City premises, or other action which may interrupt or interfere with any of the operations of the City for any reason whatever.”

It is a massive historical irony that as ICE and Trump are murdering workers and are in defiance even of the laws of the capitalist state, these labor leaders are fretting over no-strike clauses.

Of course, what the labor leaders should have done is mobilize the rank and file to a strike in defiance of the no-strike clauses. Unions that go on strike to fight back against ICE terror will undoubtedly receive an outpouring of working-class support. But the business unionist logic of accepting no-strike clauses is the same as refusing to go on strike despite the no-strike clauses. For the business unionist leader, legal agreements and relationships with workplace management and the state matter more than the interests of the rank and file. This is endemic among the vast majority of labor leaders today.

Workers must get organized to reject these no-strike clauses and challenge their own union leadership if necessary to go on strike. This is what unionized teachers in West Virginia did in 2018, when they shut down all 55 counties in the state, organized mass rallies, and forced a reactionary Republican-controlled state legislature to give raises to not just teachers but to all public-sector workers in the state. In order to carry out their historic strike, the teachers had to defy the state’s right-to-work laws that prohibit public-sector strikes and had to get organized to overcome opposition from their own union leadership.

The Democratic Party’s Bloody History with ICE

While elected Democrats have been dropping f-bombs and crying on TikTok to show their alleged opposition to ICE, the Democratic Party’s history and present-day actions show that they are in no way on the side of immigrants or working people. In fact, the Democratic Party is equally responsible for today’s crisis as are the Republicans.

Republican President George W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed with the votes of 88 House Democrats and 41 Senate Democrats. The creation of ICE was bipartisan, and so are its operations today. Among those voting to create and continually fund ICE is Democratic Congressman Adam Smith of Washington’s 9th Congressional District, the 29-year warmongering Democrat that revolutionary socialist and former Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant is running to defeat this year.

Since establishing ICE, the Democratic Party has a long history of supporting, funding, and using ICE for its own political motives. Funding for ICE has increased significantly since its establishment, including under Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Under Obama, over three million immigrants were deported, earning him the title “Deporter in Chief.” Under Biden, over four million immigrants were deported, beating Obama’s own horrific record. The deportation machine that is terrorizing Minneapolis and cities around the country is the culmination of a bipartisan project. Working people should not put one ounce of faith in the Democratic Party to shut down ICE; instead, we need to destroy the Democratic Party in order to be able to bring down Trump and ICE.

The very first bill passed under Trump 2.0 in January 2025 was the Laken Riley Act. This bill stripped immigrants of due process if they are accused of certain crimes and required that the federal government detain them. In 2025 alone, just under 18,000 immigrants were detained as a result of provisions in the Laken Riley Act. Forty-six Democrats shamefully joined Republicans in the House and Senate to vote for the Laken Riley Act.

Later in 2025, 75 Democrats voted for a resolution that praised ICE. This awful resolution, which was disguised as a resolution to combat alleged anti-Semitism (and which was in reality an attack on the antiwar, anti-genocide movement), also snuck in language that praised the work of ICE at the time in Los Angeles.

Among the Democrats who voted for the Laken Riley Act and the resolution to praise ICE is Democratic Congresswoman Angie Craig from Minnesota. Craig, who is now running for the U.S. Senate to replace Democratic Senator Tina Smith, is now posing as anti-ICE. She has been seen getting into tense confrontations with Republican Congressmembers, attempting to oversee operations inside the Whipple Building where detained immigrants are being held, and calling for the impeachment of Trump’s Homeland Secretary, Kristi Noem. However, these deceptive gestures by Craig and those like her must not be misunderstood as anything other than a theatrical attempt to whitewash their own bloodstained record.

Angie Craig and Adam Smith have both taken disastrous and despicable votes that have resulted in the brutal murder of working-class people and immigrants within the United States and hundreds of thousands internationally. Both have voted for tens of billions of dollars for the genocide in Gaza and to fund ICE year after year. But Craig and Smith are not outliers in the Democratic Party. Throughout the party’s history, elected Democrats have zigzagged between political positions whenever it is convenient for them, to protect their careers, to keep working people trapped between two parties that are both pro-capitalist and to direct workers AWAY from fighting for what we need and deserve.

What Really Happened on January 23rd?

On the morning of January 23rd, over five thousand activists arrived at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to protest the thousands of deportation flights that had taken place at MSP. During this demonstration, many clergy members were arrested for committing an act of civil disobedience. But contrary to the demonstration’s goal, some lead organizers worked with state agencies in advance to ensure the airport would not be shut down.

This is the exact opposite of the mass civil disobedience actions that are needed alongside strike actions. During Trump’s first term, Kshama Sawant used her then Seattle City Council office to organize working people to fully shut down SeaTac Airport fightback against Trump’s Muslim travel ban. In stark contrast to the demonstration at MSP, Sawant led thousands of protesters to block all the security checkpoints at SeaTac, effectively shutting down the airport and air travel — a move that the Democratic Party was furious about. Because of this action, detainees at the airport were able to receive legal action, and the movement declared victory. Multiple airports being shut down like SeaTac forced Trump to retract his Muslim travel ban. Unsurprisingly, the demonstration at MSP on January 23rd did not result in stopping a single deportation.

Following the morning demonstration at the airport, a march was organized in downtown Minneapolis for 2 PM. Over 50,000 people attended this mass demonstration, despite the dangerously cold temperatures. The energy was electric. But an energetic march is not enough to shut down the profit machine and ultimately shut down ICE. In fact, nothing came to a grinding halt because of the mass protest, and despite mounting working-class pressure, ICE is continuing its vicious assault.

Response of Business Unionists to the Murder of Alex Pretti

On January 24th, the morning after the mass protests, ICE agents brutally murdered a peaceful activist, Alex Pretti. Pretti was an ICU nurse at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) and a member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a union representing 820,000 federal workers. Pretti, like Renee Good, was a dedicated activist, using his personal time to monitor ICE activity. Just prior to his brutal murder, he was filming ICE agents and standing between the agents and a woman they had shoved to the ground.

In a total abdication of their responsibility to their own members and the wider working class, AFGE leaders shamefully had refused to endorse the mass protests the day before. Pretti, a rank-and-file union member, still courageously showed up because he understood the historic role that rank-and-file union members need to play in fighting ICE terror.

Even now, union leaders are still refusing to lead mass strike action. In response to the murder of Alex Pretti, the national leadership of AFGE issued a statement mourning Pretti’s loss but completely failing to present any steps whatsoever for a fightback by the union. The Minnesota Nurses Association President, Chris Rubesch, shamefully told his members that the union “cannot officially endorse a general strike while our contracts’ ‘no strike’ clauses are in effect.” ICE is murdering ordinary working people in the streets, and union leaders are busy reciting no-strike clauses. History will judge the cowardly response of labor leaders in response to the right-wing assault. Rank-and-file union members need to challenge these leaders, forcing them to bring the full weight of the labor movement against ICE, Trump, and also the Democrats, or else throwing them out of leadership if they refuse.

As the idea of strikes and a general strike has become increasingly popular among rank-and-file workers, some labor leaders are now peppering their speeches with the “strike” word, but as an empty gesture, with no announcements of any actual strike organizing.

Workers Strike Back is co-hosting a mass meeting to fight for a general strike, where we will discuss the concrete strategy of how union members and non-unionized workers can begin to push for strike actions. We will have petitions and resolutions workers can use in their unions to bring maximum pressure to bear against resistant union leaders.

Workers Strike Back is also demanding an independent investigation into the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, conducted by a democratically elected committee of working people and union members. To win this, workers will need to flex our strength as workers and shut down the profit making machine, shut down City Council meetings like Workers Strike Back members have done in Seattle, and disrupt the political status quo.

Workers and Immigrants Need to Break From the Democratic Party

The mass protests in Minneapolis and around the country on January 23rd were historic. “General strike” is now a popular call to win working-class demands. Around the country, workers, both union and non-union, are asking, “Why can’t we go on strike?” The openness among millions of workers for a real general strike is now greater than it has been in decades.

To be successful in shutting down ICE, ending military aid to Israel, and winning things like free healthcare by taxing the rich, we need to rebuild a militant labor movement. We also need to break from the Democratic Party. We need to build a new mass party for working people, one that combines the power of the organized labor movement with the power of the wider working class and embraces mass strike action, mass movements in the streets, and disruption of business-as-usual.

All of this will require us to first overcome the business unionist leadership of the labor movement. Rank-and-file union members everywhere need to pass resolutions in their unions to revoke the endorsement of Democratic Party politicians like Angie Craig and Adam Smith.

The political situation today is intense and volatile, but the potential for winning massive gains is also greater than it has been for decades, if we can get organized around a class struggle strategy. Working people globally increasingly understand just how rotten the capitalist system is and are showing how willing they are to fight back. The capitalist state has only just begun to suppress this anger through violence, but this has convinced working-class people of the need to escalate the struggle in order to win what we need: the end of ICE and closure of the detention centers, free healthcare for all and national rent control to combat the cost-of-living crisis, and ultimately an end to this capitalist system which has driven us from one crisis to the next and towards total disaster for human civilization and the planet.

That is why we are building Workers Strike Back, the organization Kshama Sawant founded to expand nationally the fighting methods of her Seattle City Council office, which won many historic victories for working people. Workers Strike Back’s members are organizing nationally on this basis to turn the tables against Trump and both parties of the billionaires. We have enormous potential power to do so, because when we fight, we win.

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