In South Carolina, a May Day Picket of Israeli Weapons Company Supplying Munitions Used in Lebanon
The International Workers’ Day protest targets Elbit America, a subsidiary of the largest weapons company in Israel.
International
International
Killing Kids in Iran While Kids in the U.S. Go Hungry
For the money the U.S. is spending on war with Iran, it could be covering food stamps for 41 million people or Medicaid for 16 million people.
Minnesota
Terrorized By ICE, Unable to Pay Rent, Minnesotans Are Getting Ready for a Rent Strike
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. First, she started checking for suspicious cars each day before leaving the house for work. Then, she began skipping work whenever she saw Facebook posts about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents nearby. By the end of December, she wasn’t working at all. And since the first week of January, Anain, who declined to use her last name, has barely left the home she shares with her spouse and two young daughters in South Minneapolis, the neighborhood where she’s lived for more than 20 years.
To pay their rent, Anain and her spouse have had to dip into their savings.
Organizador de Trabajadores secuestrado por agentes federales en Minnesota
Agentes federales de inmigración han secuestrado a Eustaquio Orozco Verdusco, un organizador de derechos de los trabajadores muy conocido en Minnesota por luchar contra el robo de salarios y la trata laboral.
Su abogada y su hijo dicen que actualmente está detenido en el Centro Correccional del Condado de Cibola en Nuevo México, dirigido por CoreCivic, una de las mayores compañías privadas de prisiones en los Estados Unidos. Por primera vez, su familia va a la prensa mientras el apoyo de la comunidad para su liberación está aumentando. −Lo único que nos importa es tenerlo de vuelta con nosotros, en casa en Minnesota −me dijo su hijo, Gerardo Orozco Guzmán−. Eso es lo único que queremos. Nuestra entrevista se produjo tras el fallo de un juez en el Tribunal de Distrito de Minnesota el miércoles que negó y desestimó la petición de hábeas corpus de Orozco Verdusco, petición que pretendía impugnar su detención ilegal.
Minnesota
Worker Organizer Abducted By Federal Agents in Minnesota
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Federal immigration agents have abducted Eustaquio Orozco Verdusco, a workers’ rights organizer well known in Minnesota for fighting wage theft and labor trafficking.
His attorney and son say he is currently held at the Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico, run by CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison companies in the United States. For the first time, his family is going to the press as community support for his release is swelling. “All we care about is having him back with us, at home in Minnesota,” his son, Gerardo Orozco Guzman, told me. “That’s all we want.”
Our interview followed a judge’s ruling in the District Court of Minnesota on Wednesday that denied and dismissed Orozco Verdusco’s habeas corpus petition challenging his unlawful detention.
Minnesota
The Minnesota Target Workers Who Walked Out Against ICE
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The American Prospect. Rob doesn’t want anyone else to experience what his co-workers at the Target store in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield went through. On January 8, federal immigration agents violently tackled and detained two Target workers during their shift. Rob was on the clock that day, and while he did not see the abductions, he did witness the aftermath. “We had a lot of people who were scared,” says Rob, who is using a pseudonym to protect him from retaliation.
Workers
The U.S. Workers Who Went on Strike for Gaza
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. The most significant U.S. labor strike in the past two years in solidarity with Palestinians started with a simple premise. According to Nate Edenhofer, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, “Everybody has some sort of vision of how they think the society we live in should be — most of them don’t think of it as being a genocide.” Edenhofer was part of organizing that strike, the only major strike so far from U.S. labor to defend the Gaza protest encampments and oppose the mass killing of Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023. It included thousands of academic workers across the University of California system, echoing recent tactics of dockworkers — from Spain to Greece to France to Morocco—who have refused to handle military equipment and items they believe will be used against Palestinians.
The strike rolled through one of the largest public university systems in the United States, with 19,780 workers voting to authorize the work action. The University of California campuses became sites of a pitched labor battle and a broader student struggle to stand with Palestinians.
For nearly two years, Palestinian trade unionists have been urging workers — especially American workers, given the role of the United States in arming, funding and politically supporting Israel’s military actions — to take workplace action to stop the onslaught.
Minnesota
Alex Pretti’s Killer May Be Part of His Union
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and Jewish Currents. On January 24th, Border Patrol agents shot and killed Veterans Affairs ICU nurse and ICE observer Alex Pretti in Minneapolis—firing at least 10 shots within five seconds while Pretti was pinned to the ground. About six hours later, Pretti’s labor union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), released a statement about his murder. “We have received confirmation that a member of AFGE Local 3669, Alex J. Pretti, was the man killed during the incident,” it read. But while referring to Pretti’s killing as a “tragedy,” the statement fell short of condemning the federal immigration agents behind the shooting.
Minnesota
“Everybody Showed Up”: Stunning Crowds at Minnesota Day of Strike and Shutdown Against ICE
Some 100 faith leaders are braving freezing temperatures to block a key road outside of the Minneapolis–St. Paul Airport to protest ICE.
Minnesota
How One Minnesota Union Is Helping Members Survive the Federal Siege
This article is a publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.—When Feben Ghilagaber delivers food to fellow union members hiding from the thousands of federal immigration agents swarming Minnesota, the lights to their homes are often off when she gets there.
“People are scared for their lives,” she tells me as we drive to UNITE HERE Local 17 office in Minneapolis, a labor union representing more than 6,000 workers in hotels, stadiums and convention centers in the Twin Cities metro area. It also represents many of the workers at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport and Ghilagaber, an airport food service worker and steward for the union, says the people she delivers food to “are sitting in the dark.”
“ICE,” she says, “is attacking everybody.”
The majority of Local 17’s members are immigrants and/or people of color, which puts them at risk of being detained for merely being in public where border patrol and ICE are present. And they’re present everywhere.
Under its so-called Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration has deployed thousands of federal agents to Minnesota, where they have raided homes, schools and daycares, detaining school-aged children and violently attacking many of those resisting their presence. An ICE agent shot and killed poet and mother, Renee Good, on January 7 and she has become a rallying cry for the efforts to push ICE out of the area.