Democracy is being tested in our communities. Cities from Charlotte to Memphis face escalating threats from the deployment of military troops and immigration raids. States like Maryland and Vermont are being denied federal funding for disaster recovery and response. However, there are also many signs that resistance is building.
Federal courts have become an important tool to protect against federal overreach, and Americans are increasingly getting activated — and yes, radicalized, in the best sense of the word. They’re recognizing that business as usual is no longer an option and that they have a role to play in protecting our communities and political systems.
This is a time of great urgency, and the strategies being used against us are meant to overwhelm us, instill fear and confusion, and make us feel helpless. Authoritarians like to present the oppressive reality as a fait accompli, one that cannot be undone, thus undermining the will to resist.
In America, however, resistance is widespread and growing, and there’s an urge to act quickly. Recent research out of Harvard shows that protests this year have reached “a wider swath of the United States than at any other point on record.” This is an important development, but how we act also matters. Now, the goal should be to use tactics and strategies that will increase our effectiveness in the short term, while ensuring our achievements are durable.
What’s happening in America closely follows an authoritarian playbook common throughout history and around the globe today. But we have a playbook too — one that offers frameworks and lessons from people who have successfully resisted invasions, occupations and authoritarianism.
These four steps enable us to think holistically about nonviolent resistance — a powerful tool in the fight for democracy and human rights — and ensure that all pieces of the puzzle are put in place.
1. Assess the situation to understand the conflict landscape
Movements often jump into action without a clear picture of the terrain they’re navigating. We must resist the impulse to respond to every outrage with immediate mobilization. Instead, we should pause to assess the situation, our objectives and the capabilities of the groups we are mobilizing against, as well as those of our movements.
This kind of strategic assessment is a necessary prerequisite to action. We need to know what harm is being done or planned and who is doing it. And we need to know what systems and institutions enable this harm through their cooperation and obedience, and which are vulnerable to persuasion or pressure. It’s at that point that we can assess our movement’s numbers, capabilities, resources and people’s level of training and discipline.
This kind of analysis, carried out before mobilizing people, has been crucial in past movements. It’s revealed untapped power and enabled groups to target their actions in a way that makes success more likely. For example, the Otpor movement in Serbia which was successful in removing the Slobodan Milosevic dictatorship from power in October 2000 relied on strategic assessments to prepare actions. One of its key objectives was to convince police to shift their allegiance to the resistance, which seemed impossible. However, the movement realized that appealing to and recruiting police officers’ family members could prove effective given their proximity and influence. At the final showdown, when hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Belgrade, most police officers simply refused orders to open fire on the crowd.
It’s this kind of clear-eyed, strategic assessment that comes first. Then we build, and not just power in numbers, but also in skills, strategy and infrastructure.
2. Build the power to carry out effective action
Once we understand the strengths and weaknesses of the groups we’re mobilizing against, as well as those of our movement, we need to build power.
This means developing a strategy to recruit and train people beyond the usual suspects. And ensuring that they have nonviolent discipline so that our response to repression is strategic, not reactive, and we’re not provoked into violence and other counterproductive behavior. It also means building parallel institutions to meet our needs as existing systems weaken, collapse or are used for repression.
Sudan’s neighborhood committees, which emerged in the 2019 resistance and helped bring down Omar al-Bashir’s regime, were decentralized, grassroots structures that coordinated protests, disseminated information and organized mutual aid — creating parallel centers of power grounded in local legitimacy and trust. In Lithuania, during the final years of Soviet rule, citizens built alternative communication networks, coordinated economic resistance and prepared for civilian-based nonviolent defense. And during the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, street committees and people’s courts played a crucial role in both resisting apartheid policies and building new forms of democratic participation, effectively undermining the regime’s authority and replacing it with localized self-governance.
In the U.S., faith groups, garden clubs and tenants’ unions could be similarly utilized as pockets of power and organizing hubs. Supported by a decentralized training infrastructure, any group in America, anywhere, could design and carry out action, even if centralized leadership doesn’t emerge or is disrupted.
When these alternative capacities are built and integrated into resistance struggles and movement work, they become potent tools in our nonviolent arsenal and can better facilitate the next step: carrying out powerful actions.
3. Act to shift power
Our default, too often, are marches and rallies. Yes, these can be symbolically powerful, but unless they’re part of a broader strategy to shift power — by withdrawing cooperation, applying economic pressure and disrupting key functions — they rarely force change on their own. Actions must not only express outrage, but help bring about specific shifts in power.
There’s a reason why the list of 198 methods of nonviolent action created by Gene Sharp is organized in three strategic buckets: protest, noncooperation and intervention. The most effective movements sequence these methods deliberately. That’s why timing, sequencing and clarity of objective are key.
In Chile, civil resistance against Augusto Pinochet’s regime involved student boycotts, labor strikes and underground media, all of which were working in concert. In Israel, antiwar protesters recently moved from street protests, involving military reservists, to a general strike that carried the potential to create substantial economic and political pressure.
Effective action builds momentum by involving a growing cross-section of society and increasing costs for the regime or institution. In the U.S., similar actions could include a coordinated tax resistance, sustained student walkouts, rent strikes or labor disruptions — all tied to specific demands, sequenced and scaled over time.
Any of these actions will need defending, which is the final step.
4. Defend our wins to ensure long-term resilience.
Every movement that wins a policy change, campaign or struggle must ask how it’ll be defended. Without the capacity for defense, every gain can be reversed.
This is where civilian-based defense is essential. It involves preparing society for decentralized nonviolent resistance in the face of attacks against our communities, institutions and political systems. It means building the muscle not just to mobilize once, but to sustain mobilization.
In Latvia and Lithuania, for example, while declaring independence from the USSR, leaders prepared their entire societies, including neighborhood committees, for civilian-based defense. They trained people how to resist occupation without taking up arms. And it worked. During Bangladesh’s recent nonviolent student uprising that removed their authoritarian leader, when police vacated the streets, students took over many of their functions, such as directing traffic and providing security.
In the U.S., this means embedding resistance training in civil society groups, civic education, labor unions and professional associations. It means preparing city councils, schools and unions to reject unconstitutional directives, and establishing watchdog groups to monitor and respond to democratic backsliding. And it means preparing for what comes after victory, so we’re not left scrambling during the transition.
This is how decentralized, disciplined and strategic resistance can topple oppressive regimes, prevent coups and transform societies. Civil society in the U.S. is waking up: the No Kings protests on Oct. 18 brought 7 million Americans into the streets, making it one of the largest mobilizations in U.S. history. Now we need to act with both urgency and strategy. A decentralized and empowered civil society is one of the most resilient forms of democratic defense. This moment calls for us to assess wisely, build steadily, act strategically and defend relentlessly. The time is now.
Roger Waters This is Not a Drill Live From Prague – The Movie Saturday, November 15, 2025, 1:00 pm- 3:45 pm 4:00 pm: Roger Waters LIVE with Q and A: He will join us live via Zoom after the screening for a Q and A session.
Holy Trinity Church: 2730 E. 31st Street Minneapolis MN 55406. Enter on East side of the building. The parking lot entrance off Lake Street is between 28th and 29th Avenues – next to the “Trinity on Lake” building.
Cosponsored by Veterans for Peace
Chapter 27 Minneapolis
This is Not a Drill: Live From Prague is a 2023 concert film by Pink Floyd cofounder Roger Waters, featuring a live performance by Roger and the band. The film combines songs from his 60-year career with Pink Floyd and his solo work, and is described as a stunning “cinematic extravaganza” with political commentary that includes elaborate staging and visual effects.
The show is an indictment of the militarism, perpetual war, imperialism, settler colonialism, and the “corporate dystopia” we all struggle to survive and a call to action to love, protect and share our precious and precarious planet home.
This is Not A Drill, with a message of love, hope and unity, is “dedicated to brothers and sisters all over the world who are engaged in the existential battle for the soul of humanity.”
Roger is known worldwide for not only his music, but his work for justice and peace. In 2025 he won the Artistic War Abolisher of 2025 Awardfrom World Beyond War for his “incredibly powerful combination of songwriting, singing, speaking and performing against the horrors of war,” in the words of David Swanson, World Beyond War executive director.
Directors: Roger Waters, Sean Evans / Distributed by Trafalgar, Released 2025 / 2 h 24 m
Film cosponsors are Women Against Military Madness and Veterans For Peace Chapter 27, with thanks to Holy Trinity Church for their support.
The Cancer Plague: Nuclear Power and Waste / Original to Wings of Change By Susu Jeffrey / August 18, 2025
“Sometimes before I give a speech, I ask the audience to stand up if they or someone in their family has had cancer,” says John LaForge of Nukewatch. “Eighty percent of the audience gets up.”
The Monticello nuclear power reactor is on the Mississippi River about 35-miles northwest of Minneapolis. Xcel’s twin Prairie Island reactors, plus about 50 giant dry casks storing waste reactor fuel, are all in the floodplain of the Mississippi. This waste is sited 44 to 51 miles southeast of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
There are no plans to move the waste off-island because there is no alternative destination. In fact, 34 more concrete encased steel casks are planned. There is no national hot radioactive waste repository. Think of these waste container sites as permanent radioactive waste dumps.
The greater Twin Cities’ 3.7 million people are in the nuclear “shadow” (within 50 miles) of all three nukes. The Mississippi River serves 20 million people with drinking water, way beyond the Minnesota state population of 5.7 million. Minnesota’s aging nukes are a national threat. For approximately the next six generations, radioactive tritium will be a part of the drinking water wherever those molecules wander.
The Monticello nuke was licensed in 1970 for 40 years, and went online in 1971, a year it had two radioactive cesium spills. In 2010, the license was renewed for another 20 years until 2030. Xcel Energy has even been granted an extension for another 20 years until 2050. It is a corporate financial security move not yet approved by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission which holds the final consent. Paperwork is one thing, pipes are another.
In November 2022, a 50-year-old underground pipe leaked 829,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated wastewater that reached the Mississippi River, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Xcel failed to make public the radioactive spill for four months. After a May 15, 2024 public hearing in Monticello where citizens testified “We don’t trust you. You lie,” an NRC executive “clarified” Xcel’s “miscommunication.”
The trumpeter swan gets its name from its loud sonorous call — and the spot on the Mississippi River near the Monticello nuclear power plant is often filled with them in winter. Tim Post | MPR News file*
No telling where Xcel’s radioactive molecules will land. Men have a one in two chance of being diagnosed with cancer during their lifetimes; for women the chance is one in three (National Cancer Institute, 2/9/2022). There is tremendous popular, fear-driven support for the oncology industry.
The good news is that while cancer numbers are up so is the cancer survival rate. However, at nuke weapons, nuke reactors, and the virtually forever waste sites, “accidents” happen along with on-going radioactive decay. Radioactivity cannot be contained. When I was a newspaper reporter in Brevard County, Florida, where Cape Canaveral is located, I learned that nuclear waste cannot be rocketed off into space because it’s too hot, too heavy, and the rockets too faulty.
Nuclear Safety Regulations Changing
Among Pres. Trump’s cost-cutting moves is a weakening of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s exposure standards. Staff would be cut and regulations “revised” virtually cutting off the commission’s independent status. The Monticello nuke was licensed for 40 years and was rubber stamped to work for 80. Octogenarian nukes are considered “safe enough” now by the nuclear/government consortium.
Piecemeal fix-it parts for geriatric machinery or people are a lucrative business. Locating a leaking tritium pipe underground, between buildings, removing and replacing it is a non-negotiable emergency at nuclear reactors with miles and miles of piping. Upkeep expenses figure in utility rate hikes.
Joseph Mangano and Ernest Sternglass did a study of eight downwind U.S. communities in the two years after a nuclear reactor closure. A remarkable 17.4 percent drop in infant mortality was found. “We finally have peer-reviewed accurate data attaching nuclear power reactors to death and injury in the host communities,” New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky said of the 2002 report in the Archives of Environmental Health.
Monopoly capitalism or public service?
Clearly the Monticello reactor was designed to make money. In November 2024, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison wrote that Xcel has “aggressively” pursued multi-year rate hikes while earning large profits. In 2024 Xcel reported $1.94-billion net earnings, a profit margin up 14% from 2023.
According to Xcel propaganda, the nuke is “the biggest employer and largest local taxpayer” in Monticello, MN, and generates an estimated $550 million in economic activity each year in the region. And like profits, cancer rates are up notably among people under 50 and rising faster among women than men the American Cancer Society reports.
Repeatedly, the Xcel corporation wins its rate hike and re-licensing “asks.” These asks get rewritten and resubmitted until a “compromise” is reached. In 2025, residential customers will pay $5.39 more per month, down from the original ask of $9.89, according to Minnesota Public Radio, which also noted that greater increases are on the horizon for EVs and data center capital improvements.
Cancer
St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital advertises heavily with videos of big-eyed, bald children cancer patients. In a review of published studies of 136 nuclear reactor sites in the European Journal of Cancer Care in 2007, elevated leukemia disease rates in children were documented in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Canada. This is not a new story.
The danger of mental retardation of fetuses exposed in the womb was reported in The New York Times (page A1 on 12/20/1989). Tritium crosses the placenta. In addition to the health costs of breathing and ingesting exhausts from nuclear power reactors, there is the problem of what to do with and how to contain its long-lived waste. The nuclear profit god is a once and future terrorist.
Please sign now: A petition calling for the closure of the Monticello nuclear reactor! Here is the link:
* The Trumpeter Swans have been a tourist attraction at the Monticello nuclear reactor plant in the past. With the discovering of the tritium poison leak they can no longer gather in the poisoned water.
Susu Jeffrey is a poet and writer living in Minneapolis. She has opposed nuclear weapons/nuclear power since before her arrest at Seabrook, New Hampshire in 1977.
By Glenn Greenwald / System Update / June 10, 2025
This is a clip from the show SYSTEM UPDATE, now airing every weeknight at 7pm ET on Rumble. You can watch the full episode for FREE here: https://rumble.com/v6ujj1n-system-upd…
Democracy Now! “Purge Palantir”: Day of Action Protests Firm’s Role in Gov’t Surveillance, ICE & Genocide in Gaza
Protesters across the United States targeted Palantir Monday [7/14/25] in a day of action focused on the technology company’s work with ICE, facilitating President Trump’s expanding immigration crackdown, and work with the Israeli military. New York police arrested at least four people Monday after demonstrators blocked the entrance to the company’s Manhattan offices. Democracy Now! spoke to protesters, including some who work in the technology sector, about the “Purge Palantir” campaign and how Palantir’s data mining, surveillance and automation tools are being weaponized against vulnerable communities. We speak with Wired senior writer Makena Kelly, who has been covering Palantir and says many Silicon Valley firms are “trying to find opportunity in this chaos” as the Trump administration slashes government services and pursues mass deportations.
Guests Makena Kelly Wired Senior Writer focused on the intersection of politics, power and technology.
Please check back to Democracy now later for full transcript.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
If Roosevelt had lived what was his vision for the country and for the world?
The Unraveling of the New Deal, FDR’s Vision, Part 4
By Sue Ann Martinson / Wings of Change / June 30, 2025
FDR: The Four Freedoms
FDR, besides the New Deal, left this legacy of a New Bill of Rights as well. He had been elected for a fourth term and these were his promises. What America would be like now if he had been able to carry them out we can only speculate. But certainly as a nation we would not have been in the autocratic state we in now and people would have been more secure economically and with the comfort of being who the are without outside definitions created by others that are derogatory.
Having corporate overmasters is unconstitutional and yet another way to deconstruct a democracy that is “of the people, for the people and by the people.” Idealistic? Yes. But FDR more than any other president attempted to make a people’s government.
National and International Intentions After the War
On January 6, 1941 ─ after the invasion of Poland in 1939 when England declared war on Germany ─ FDR was focusing on the state of the world. He gave a State of the Union address in which he named the Four Freedoms for the world. In this speech he addressed the need to achieve world peace and peace for America.
This speech is 80 years to the day when on January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., was attacked by a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump in an attempted self-coup, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
The Four Freedoms:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others:
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it
The ending of special privilege for the few
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement. As examples:
We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.
We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.
We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.
FDR also outlined U.S. foreign policy at that time:
Just as our national policy in internal affairs has been based upon a decent respect for the rights and the dignity of all our fellow men within our gates, so our national policy in foreign affairs has been based on a decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations, large and small. And the justice of morality must and will win in the end.
Our national policy is this:
First, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to all-inclusive national defense.
Second, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship,we are committed to full support of all those resolute peoples, everywhere, who are resisting aggression and are thereby keeping war away from our Hemisphere. By this support, we express our determination that the democratic cause shall prevail; and we strengthen the defense and the security of our own nation.
Third, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom.
In the recent national election there was no substantial difference between the two great parties in respect to that national policy. No issue was fought out on this line before the American electorate. Today it is abundantly evident that American citizens everywhere are demanding and supporting speedy and complete action in recognition of obvious danger.
No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion ─ or even good business.
Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.
In a later State of the Union speech on January 11, 1944, FDR explained his vision of a New Bill of Rights:
FDR’s New Deal and his “Four Freedoms” speech outlined a broader “New Bill of Rights” that included economic security, a concept distinct from the traditional Bill of Rights which focused on individual liberties. The “New Bill of Rights” encompassed the right to a job, adequate living standards, healthcare, education, and protection from economic hardship, as outlined in FDR’s “Second Bill of Rights.”
The Four Freedoms are the foundation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. After the death of FDR Eleanor carried the torch forward as chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights that created the document.
Although the war was not yet over, in his State of the Union address on January 11, 1944 FDR, planning ahead for the war-end, reiterated a commitment to a New Bill of Rights for the American people.
On June 11, 1944 FDR repeated the full text of the speech in one of his Fireside Chats for the nation to hear.
Perhaps FDR had been reading Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience that calls for an even more perfect Union in the United States than existed in the Constitution. Thoreau said:
The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to — for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well — is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.
The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual…. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government?
Thoreau goes on to say:
Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men.
First Thoreau is taking about himself as a good neighbor. We tend to think of neighborhoods as small units. But what if it were another country? What if all countries considered themselves a good neighbor to the countries next to them? He goes from the microcosm to the macrocosm. That interpretation seems to fit with FDR’s idea of the Four Freedoms as he expresses it in relation to Russia and Great Britain, remembering that settler colonialism was still prevalent and Western European countries held empires, including the British Empire, which was dominant.
Here is how Thoreau concludes:
A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
State of the Union, January 11, 1944
“Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
FDR, in the January 11, 1944, State of the Union Speech addressed his vision for a second Bill of Rights and explains that these rights are true security and that “The best interests of each Nation, large and small, demand that all freedom-loving Nations shall join together in a just and durable system of peace.”
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure..
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.
One of the great American industrialists of our day, a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920’s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
I ask the Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic bill of rights ─ for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress so to do.
Flash Forward
Los Angeles (LA) June 2025
From the Brennan Foundation: A panel discussion re the sending in the military to LA. Is it legal? What are the ramifications for the future?
The deployment of Marines and federalized National Guard members to police protests in Los Angeles poses a serious threat to American democracy. The president’s memorandum appears to preemptively allow the deployment of federal forces anywhere there are protests against immigration raids nationwide, regardless of whether or not they are peaceful. This broad authorization suggests that the troop deployments go beyond protecting federal property or law enforcement — they are about suppressing disagreement against the government.
— Elizabeth Goitein in a Just Security expert panel discussion.
Note FDR words above:
…the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation.
…we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
Yet now Congress has fallen under thrall to that “rightist reaction” under the influence of those forces of fascism daily are that being forced upon us that is the opposite of “a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.” Instead social welfare programs that support that vision are being slashed with support for money for corporate needs growing and for the military while the rest of the citizenry is ignored, funds for social programs decimated. Thousands have lost their jobs, their retirement savings, even their homes while the New Bill of Rights is decimated. Education, a core of democracy, is being defunded.
Yet FDR is very clear: these are the rights worldwide that bring true security, not the building up of the military:
In the plain down-to-earth talks that I had with the Generalissimo Chiang Kai Chek and Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill, it was abundantly clear that they are all most deeply interested in the resumption of peaceful progress by their own peoples—progress toward a better life. All our allies want freedom to develop their lands and resources, to build up industry, to increase education and individual opportunity, and to raise standards of living.
All our allies have learned by bitter experience that real development will not be possible if they are to be diverted from their purpose by repeated wars—or even threats of war.
Those leaders of primary world powers are now dead and the lessons learned from WWI and WWII have faded from consciousness. Endless War prevails. The monies taken from the social programs is instead to be used to increase the military might of America with Trump’s proposed Golden Dome, similar to the Iron Dome in Israel only four times larger to somehow protect the whole of the United States. But did the Iron Dome protect Israel from attack by Hamas?
Instead we now have a government that has embraced the “rightest reaction” and taken much of the nation with it through propaganda and lies. Our so-called president (not my president) becomes more autocratic every day. He blatantly declares his racism by word and deed. He is as he has always been basically a misogynist. The women he has appointed to positions are women who just do what they are told, yes-women. He openly flaunts the Constitution and tries to silence anyone who attempts to defy him. He calls himself a king. He allows his “flock” of fundamentalists to worship him as if he were divine. The “divine right of kings.” That went out in the Middle Ages.
“The law stands high above the king.” Magna Carta, 1215
The lords of England issued a writ that they would no longer be subservient to the king. The “divine right of kings” absolute authority was challenged. It included the right to a speedy trial, now known as habeas corpus.
A wise person once observed that it takes the support of the middle class for a revolution to succeed. Although it was the nobility of England who rebelled, they were in the middle, as the king with his divine right was above them and the peasants below them..
The Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities, Lord Denning describing it in 1956 as “the greatest constitutional document of all times—the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”
Back to the Law
U.S. judges, have often, if not consistently, challenged Trump’s edicts, that is, executive orders, as being unconstitutional or breaking established laws. Trump has attempted to go after them of course, but different judges keep cropping up to challenge his often anti-Constitutional and law-breaking declarations. So far the idea of law above the king is functioning, resembling some semblance of law and order, not with guns, but with THE LAW as judges nationwide intervene against many of Trump’s edicts as unconstitutional or otherwise illegal. Most recent as I write this is a judge ruling the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the student from Columbia arrested for his pro-Palestinian activities although he has a green card and is married to a U.S. citizen.
Flash Forward, June 27, 2025
To stop the lower courts from challenging his unconstitutional executive orders Trump and his pro-fascist cohorts has had their allies in the U.S. Supreme Court state that the lower courts can no longer challenge Trump’s executive orders that undermine the Constitution although it will not go into effect immediately. As reported in Reuters, “The ruling also did not address the legality of the policy, part of Trump’s hardline approach toward immigration.”
Relevant Diversion
The U.S. system of law, while it was heavily influenced by French philosophers of the Enlightenment, is still based on English common law. The most predominant French influencers were Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. But in turn Locke and Montesquieu were heavily influenced by English law in their contributions to the structure of the Constitution and the shaping of the U.S. government as it still stands today.
Rousseau’s primary contribution was the idea of laws created directly by the vote of the people. He also introduced the idea of “neighborhoods,” an idea that Thoreau elaborated on in his essay on civil disobedience. The idea of neighborhoods still exists in many cities, including Minneapolis which is divided into neighborhoods that have governing bodies that create and manage programs that deal with neighborhood-specific issues.
Locke believed in what he called a social contract and influenced Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration of Independence. Locke favored a representative government. Montesquieu advocated for the separation of powers.
The Senate is debating the “Big Beautiful Bill” that further destroys the Pillars of Democracy and Violates FDR’s Four Freedoms.
If I remember my civics class correctly (that was ninth grade ─ do they teach it anymore?) the executive, legislative, and judicial sections of government were meant to balance each other. The legislative branch today is often impotent on many issues, controlled by Trump’s and the GOP’s yes-men and women. As noted, by one vote on May 22, 2025, the House passed the “Big Ugly Budget” that steals money from the people of the United States.
These cuts, if they are allowed, will cause significantly more struggling to survive for millions of Americans. In some cases they will cause preventable deaths because of the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. In the case of Social Security, cuts that are a lifeline for many Americans could be seriously cut down.
But not for corporate America: They are being pampered with money for investments and new laws are allowing them to develop fossil fuel that will further pollute the planet and hasten the global crisis. (There is no Planet B!)
Will the Senate show any backbone in accepting this Big Ugly Budget or not? That is not hopeful as they are controlled by the GOP. Sad, but true. That is the real fraud against the American people. We cannot go back (MAGA), even if we wanted to, and millions of us do not want to, as evidenced by the Hands Off and No Kings demonstrations. Many of us joined in the demonstrations not because we are Democrats (or Republicans either), but because we are antiwar and anti-genocide in Gaza because of its obvious inhumanity. We are also opposed to the illegal DOGE actions by Elon Musk and approved by Trump after creating DOGE as a government department by a presidential executive order not approved by Congress.
Elon Musk has left of DOGE and has actually criticized Trump’s platform and fascistic plans. In part this may be because the sales of his Tesla have greatly decreased, although it is only one way he makes money. He has been pilloried for the cuts he is responsible for, including USAid which affects millions worldwide.
Most members of Congress are supporters of Israel. Because so many of us support Palestine and are adamantly opposed the the genocide being perpetrated by Israel on Palestine, we are accused of being supporters of Hamas. We are what we say we are: antiwar and pro-Palestine. Having been involved in support of Palestine in educational programs and demonstrations, I can honestly say that we do not support Hamas per se. It has not come up in 20 years of pro-Palestine activities, not even since October 7, 2023. No chants I know of glorify or support Hamas.
Those who have worked on Middle East issues for 20 years or more such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and the WAMM Middle East Committee see Hamas as part of the very complicated geopolitics in the Middle East. What is not complicated is that genocide is a crime against humanity and no amount of Israel’s denial, even with the support of the U.S., can change the moral outrage at the wholesale death of a people. That was also true of the Holocaust, of course, but what Israel has become in its zealous Zionism backed by the U.S. is NOW, not then.
What About Now?
Shame hangs over the U.S. like a shroud.
As I write this the Senate is still deliberating about the Big ‘Beautiful’ Budget Bill and has not yet voted. Once they do settle on a version it has to go back to the House where members may wish to make changes. A final version of the bill may still take some time to be decided.
Trump, Congress, and the Supreme Court and 2025 supporters attack the Pillars of Democracy
Trump’s ravaging of the Constitution and American values in the Constitution and as they have developed in Constitutional additions over the years is a denial and attempt to crush democracy. These additions have become laws, such as the right of people of color to vote, of women to vote, laws against child labor, and union rights like collective bargaining. Many became law over the years of our existence since 1787 when the U.S. Constitution went into effect after being approved by the individual states. Some of these laws were created under the influence of socialism, such as the eight-hour work day, social security, the minimum wage, better working conditions, rights and healthcare for veterans, even Obama’s more recent healthcare law, and more. It’s how a democracy works.
These amendments to the Constitution and these laws have also improved our democracy over the years.
These additions and changes did not happen automatically but were fought for with much sacrifice by many Americans of all races, colors, and religions. Not the least are the laws against discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, age, gender, disabilities, etc., in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and related legislation.
MAGA is an unachievable myth, at least the way Trump and project 2025 define it. The U.S. Empire is losing hold, as all empires in the history of the world do. We can dance out gracefully and still be who our best selves are.
We can choose to be what and who we would like to be in our most positive forms, created by the original Constitution and by the laws and Constitutional amendments added over the years of our country’s existence that were chosen by the people, not by corporate rule or some ruling elite that consider themselves superior; but they are not. Many Americans who came from poor circumstances have distinguished themselves in their areas of expertise while many of the “elite” have been lackluster or incompetent, as evidenced by many current public officials. On the other side are those who still have moral fiber and refuse to go along with the destruction of democracy that the Trump administration is engaged in. They include but are not limited to the current Supreme Court judges who wrote the dissenting opinions regarding Trump’s most recent efforts as he and his cohorts continue to attack democracy.
We can become an utter failure as a people and as a nation, or we can protest and actively fight for our rights against legislation like the Big Beautiful Budget that is really a Big Ugly Budget that does the opposite of what we strive for in equality, that is, it robs from the poor and gives to the rich. We can protest the obscene build-up of the military and the constant endless wars that support the oil industry and the war industry machine. We can continue to protest and fight the corporate entities that defile our planet with pollution and cause death in other parts of the world and in ours unusually severe weather patterns of storms, tornados, hurricanes. Our planet as a living organism strives to survive our mistreatment and desperately continues to need our help, which we can continue to offer in as many ways possible.
In spite of the shameful actions of our collective governments, that is, both Republicans and Democrats, we can especially protest in regard to what is clearly a genocide in Gaza/Palestine and a weaponization of anti-Semitism that is an insult to the ancient religion of Judaism and to those who died and those who survived the Holocaust. We can protest and actively defy the recent executive orders and autocracy of our current president and those he represents in cruel and anti-democratic actions that lean into fascism. Instead we can support those values that reflect our better selves in the Constitution. the amendments to the Constitution, and the laws created around equal rights and civil liberties that support those American democratic values.
In these most perilous times support independent media. Wings of Change gets no funding except from our readers.
Oh, sacred world
now wounded,
we pledge to make you free,
of hate, of war,
and selfish cruelty,
and here in our small corner
we plant a tiny seed,
and it will grow to beauty
to shame the face of greed.
The protests highlighted the overwhelming popularity and the dire need for a massive, independent movement against Trumpism.
Demonstrators take part in the “No Kings” protest on June 14, 2025, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
The ‘No Kings’ Protests Were Historic. We Can’t Stop There
The huge decentralized turnout for No Kings Day has shown that grassroots power can be a major force against the momentum of the Trump regime. The protests were auspicious, with 5 million people participating in 2,100 gatherings nationwide. Activists are doing what the national Democratic Party leadership has failed to do — organize effectively and inspire mass action.
What we don’t need now is for newly activated people to catch a ride on plodding Democratic donkeys. The party’s top leadership and a large majority of its elected officials are just too conformist and traditional to creatively confront the magnitude of the unprecedented Trumpist threat to what remains of democracy in the United States.
Two key realities are contradictions that fully coexist in the real world: The Democratic Party, led by the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, is in well-earned disrepute, having scant credibility even with most people who detest President Donald Trump. And yet, Democratic Party candidates will be the only way possible to end Republican control of Congress via midterm elections next year.
Few congressional Democrats have been able to articulate and fight for a truly progressive populist agenda — to directly challenge the pseudo-populism of MAGA Republicans. Instead, what implicitly comes across is a chorus of calls for a return to the incremental politics of the Joe Biden era.
Activists are doing what the national Democratic Party leadership has failed to do.
Awash in corporate cash and milquetoast rhetoric, most Democratic incumbents sound inauthentic while posturing as champions of the working class. For activists to simply cheer them on is hardly the best way to end GOP rule.
With top-ranking Democrats in Washington exuding mediocrity if not hackery, more and more progressive organizers are taking matters into their own creative hands, mindful that vocal reframing of public discourse can go a long way toward transforming public consciousness and the electoral terrain. The Occupy movement did it early in the 2010s. The Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns did it later in the decade. The Black Lives Matter movement did it several years ago.
In contrast, playing follow-the-leader by deferring to the party hierarchy is a trip on a political train to further disaster. The kind of leadership now exemplified by Schumer and Jeffries amounts to the kind of often devious partisan maneuvering that dragged this country into its current abyss, after protracted mendacity claiming that Biden was fit to run for re-election.
Today, realism tells us that the future will get worse before it might get better — and it can only get better if we reject fatalism and get on with organizing. Republicans are sure to maintain control over the federal government’s executive branch for another 43 months and to retain full control over Congress for the next year and a half. While lawsuits and the like are vital tools, people who anticipate that the court system will rescue democracy are mistaken.
The current siege against democracy by Trump forces will be prolonged, and a united front against them will be essential to mitigate the damage as much as possible. The need is to engage in day-to-day pushback against those forces, while doing methodical groundwork to oust Trump’s party from the congressional majority in 2026 and then the White House in 2028.
But the need for a united front against Trump should not blind us to the political character of aspiring politicians. Widely touted as the Democratic Party’s next presidential nominee, Gov. Gavin Newsom is a cautionary case in point. Outside of California, few are aware that he has repeatedly vetoed state legislation that would have helped domestic workers, farm workers, undocumented immigrants and striking workers.
Last weekend, under the breathless headline “Newsom Becomes a Fighter, and Democrats Beyond California Are Cheering,” The Hill senior political correspondent Amie Parnes wrote that he “is meeting the moment, Democrats say” — “he’s punching back, and he’s going on offense.”
Newsom provided clarity when he said in a June 10 speech, “If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant — based only on suspicion or skin color — then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves, but they do not stop there.”
Yet touting Newsom as a working-class hero would be a tough sell. He signaled his elitist proclivities months ago when he sent prepaid phones to 100 heads of major corporations along with notes inviting them to use the speed-dial programming to reach him directly. “If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away,” Newsom wrote to a tech firm CEO. No such solicitude has gone to advocates for the millions of Californians in desperate economic straits while he pushes to slash the state’s social safety net.
People can unite to lead so that leaders will follow and justice can prevail.
The Democratic Party will need a very different orientation to regain support from the millions of working-class voters whose non-voting or defection to Trump last fall put him back in the White House.
Progressive populist agendas — such as enhanced Medicare for all, increases in Social Security benefits, higher taxes on the wealthy, free public college tuition and measures against price-gouging — appeal to big majorities of working people and retirees. But the Democratic Party is mostly run by people who want to remain on the neoliberal pathway that led to Trump’s electoral triumphs. The same approach still dominates in mass-media debates over how the party might revive itself.
In effect, the Democratic establishment keeps insisting that the way to get out of the current terrible situation is the same way that we got into it in the first place — with the party catering to corporate America while fueling wars with an ever-bigger military budget and refusing to really fight for people being crushed by modern capitalism.
But people can unite to lead so that leaders will follow and justice can prevail. The imperative is to work together and make such possibilities come true. ♥
The Unraveling of the New Deal: the Legacies and MLK, Part 3
Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Call to Action
The streets and other public gathering areas rang with cries of freedom across the nation in the protest called by Indivisible they named Hands Off. In Minnesota about 20 separate demonstrations took place, not including the major one in St. Paul at the state capitol that thousands of Minnesotans.
Nationwide it was a reaction to Trump’s and Elon Musk’s riding roughshod over the American people in attempting to destroy the Constitution and reverse many of the programs for the people initially created by FDR’s New Deal as well as other important social programs.
This huge outpouring of people across the country taking to the streets in mass demonstrations like Hands Off are holding Trump accountable for attacks on civil rights and civil liberties. His racist statements are blatant; his deportation tactics are cruel and inhuman punishment. And saddest of all is the support he has in Congress from the GOP and by too many Democrats who have betrayed their party’s traditional base of the working people of America and supported book bans instituted by Republicans, union busting, denying voter rights, accepting white supremacy as the order of the day, and more.
Civil Rights and Liberties
The civil rights movement for Black people, and affecting other people of color as well, was led by Martin Luther King and so many others, too many to enumerate here. This legacy of voting rights and laws to stop so many racist practices were part of the New Deal in spirit and very much a part of the work of Eleanor Roosevelt, although many barriers were put in place to obstruct those rights, especially in southern states. After the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation most southern states created the Jim Crow laws that blocked people of color from voting. They found excuses to arrest especially Black men and put them on chain gangs for forced labor to get around the 13th Amendment that prohibited “involuntary servitude” except as punishment for a crime. Also, certain questions were posed that if they could not answer correctly they could not vote. Poll taxes were often used to prevent African Americans from voting as well.
In more recent years other methods were sought as documented in the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. And as noted in Part 1, a federal law against lynching was not signed until March 29, 2022 by then President Biden
In 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd, large demonstrations starting in Minneapolis spread first nationwide and then worldwide. Now millions of people worldwide have protested the genocide against Palestinians in Palestine/Gaza, which under Israel leads in the Middle East while Trump targets Muslim people inside the United States along with the deportation of people of Hispanic origins from Central and South America and others.
But my writing here is not reminiscence. It is a call to action, as so many of the good things about American values are being not just threatened but eviscerated by greedy men and women who have no problem, for example, sacrificing the people of Gaza/Palestine in genocide. They have now turned on the people of all colors in their own country.
The U.S.A. does not have a good record when it comes to treatment of people of color in America, as evidenced by the treatment of Black people and Native Americans and of Hispanic workers in the fields and even of the Chinese who built the railroads of the west over the mountains or the Japanese who built the northern route that joined east and west by rail.
During WWII camps were created for people of Japanese heritage who were forced to survive under difficult living conditions because it was feared that they would be spies; although not stated, revenge for the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese was most likely a factor. FDR approved these camps and initially so did Eleanor Roosevelt. But she visited the camps and saw that the only determining factor was race and therefore later opposed them. (Ken Burns: The Roosevelts, Episode 6, PBS.)
It needs to be noted that during WWII while people of German heritage were often disparaged or even shunned. they were not put into camps even though the source and execution of the war was from Germany. Their whiteness protected them.
The Targets Now
Bernie Sanders has named some targets of the Trump camp’s attacks as he has traveled the country giving talks, now joined by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). He says Trump, Musk and company want to privatize, and therefore make profitable for corporations: the USPS, the Veterans Administration, NASA, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. SNAP is also under attack. Formerly called Food Stamps, SNAP provides food to many families, most especially children and elders.
In contrast, FDR ended his acceptance of the nomination for his second term with these words:
It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, Philadelphia, Pa. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project
Today it is a fight to defend democracy, but it is even more. We are fighting the specters of nuclear war and of a climate crisis that could destroy our planet. These are both worldwide struggles against pernicious forces.
In many ways these struggles are encapsulated by what is happening on college campuses in the U.S. where young people are having face-offs about the genocide in Gaza. The sides are not Muslim vs. Jew. Students of many religions and backgrounds are involved, including young Jews who disagree with Israel’s genocide and with the aggressive empire-building imperialistic policies of Zionism.
These young protesters are the future, along with the many young people who are taking to the streets. The protesters on campuses who focus on the Palestine/Israel issues are also representing the future of education, and along with the faculty members who support them, the struggle for academic freedom. The administrations of these academic institutions, with some exceptions, are aggressively on the wrong side of these issues. In many cases they are firmly against free speech and academic freedom where the Palestine/Israel issues are involved.
Dozens of pro-Palestine protesters occupied a patch of grass in front of the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard. Photo by Frank S. Zhou, The Harvard Crimson
Harvard, one of the most elite colleges in the country and endowed with billions of dollars, has challenged Trump’s actions against the students. The administrations of other colleges have for the most part folded, placing strict penalties on students for pro-Palestine demonstrations, and in some cases firing professors for their support of the students and insistence on academic freedom. Some colleges, a few, refused to go along with the punishment of the protesters. Carlton College in Northfield Minnesota is an exception, although they did not agree to divest.
Chris Hedges has pointed out that Trump’s true target is the destruction of liberalism, replacing it with an autocratic government. Most of these colleges and universities have traditionally been liberal institutions.
Autocracy and Fascism
The techniques Trump and his camp are using overall are lifted directly from Hitler’s fascist playbook: books are banned (not burned), demands that only a white elitist history of the U.S. is to be taught in all schools (firing of Jewish professors and jailing of clergy who opposed Hitler), punishing of students (the execution of the White Rose students), and ICE is operating with impunity in making arrests for deportation and incarcerating them under poor living conditions or deporting them to impossible living conditions in detention in other countries, and more. They are not sending them to camps to exterminate them like Hitler’s Germany did but they are sending them to jails (camps) under impossible living conditions in the U.S. and other countries.
That denial of the colleges was also true in some respects during the protests on campuses during the Vietnam War. Protests involved hundreds and sometimes thousands. Not only did they occupy administrative offices, they shut down campuses. At the University of Minnesota they shut down major streets such as Washington and University Avenues and blocked access to nearby freeways. They set up a People’s Park in a vacant lot adjoining a commercial area in what is called Dinkytown. The police tear-gassed students on the main plaza near the main administration building, Morrill Hall.
This time I have seen clips of police violence worldwide. Because as was true during the George Floyd demonstrations in 2020 in Minneapolis that drew thousands of protesters, shut down freeways and city streets, and more, the police were violent toward the protesters and the press. As is always true from labor strikes to antiwar and civil rights protests, the police represent the authorities; they attempt to contain and stop the protesters; in most cases they do not hesitate to use violence to do so.
In the more recent case of the George Floyd in the Minneapolis/St. Paul protests there was looting and extensive burning of buildings. In some cases there were outside agitators who clearly led the burnings and later were picked up by federal agents in other parts of the country.
George Floyd Protest The Minnesota Reformer The place where George Floyd was killed is hallowed ground By: Max Nesterak– June 1, 2020 2:39 pm
Yet the majority of protesters was nonviolent and in many cases attempted to rein in those were more violent. But the police did not hesitate to hurt people, especially going after journalists, as is happening currently in many protest situations around Gaza. While this violence may not be viewed on the mainstream corporate media, they are numerous examples on social media. They used and still use tactics that were meant for violent criminals on the protesters and the press.
Fortunately, although we have had and are still having large pro-Palestinian protests in Minneapolis and St. Paul, they have been nonviolent, with experienced organizers who have also conducted trainings for protesters in general and for civil disobedience. Following an extensive study with the federal Department of Justice and Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB), new police guidelines have been put in place; these guidelines however have been threatened by the current Trump administration.
The same holds true in the Twin Cities for recent protests around immigration policies of the current U.S. Trump administration; while in large part pro-Palestine protests around the country and world have been nonviolent, the violence comes from the police or sometimes from counter protesters. That is not to say whether or not some pro-Palestinian protesters have crossed the line, but one never knows if these are genuine or a result of an oft-used tactic of planting violent protesters to make demonstrators look bad.
The LA Protests and Militarization
The most recent Hot Spot is Los Angeles. Trump has called out the National Guard, the Marines, and other law enforcement while the State of California suing Trump for doing so since he did not have the permission of the California governor to call out the National Guard or troops. Meanwhile the protests continue as I write this, and so do the lawsuits.
The first recent protests in Los Angeles in June 2025 took place on June 6, 2025, according to multiple sources. These protests were sparked by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting individuals suspected of illegal immigration. The protests initially began peacefully but escalated into clashes with law enforcement, including the LAPD, near the Metropolitan Detention Center. (Ai, Google Search)
No Kings Day, June 14, 2025
When Trump decided to organize a military parade in the tradition of dictators to show his [supposed] strength on his birthday, Indivisible, the primary organizer of the Hands Off demonstrations, again called for nationwide resistance ─ and got it, with even more people than turned out for April 5, 2025. At the Minnesota state capitol grounds in St. Paul an estimated 80,000 people came with their good will, nonviolence and their signs and chants. A turnout of five million was estimated for the day, national and international.
This turnout in Minnesota was after a state politician and her husband were murdered by a lone gunman shortly before No Kings Day and another couple was seriously injured. Rather than cancel the events planned, which some had considered, a call went out to honor the people who were killed and attacked by taking part in the demonstrations at the capitol and elsewhere.
The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
I often speak of Trump’s Legacy of Hate, a legacy that is predominant now in the nation and worldwide: the racism, the taking away of rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the unraveling of so many programs started by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), and the weaponizing of anti-Semitism, not to mention Trump’s hate rants against Ilhan Omar, Fifth District representative in the House, or against just about anyone who crosses him.
But now I would like to speak of another important legacy, that of Martin Luther King (MLK) and the Civil Rights Movement along, with the invaluable lessons of that movement from MLK.
Originally published in 1963, MLK’s book Why We Can’t Wait, is well-described by the publishers as ”Martin Luther King’s classic exploration of the events and forces behind the Civil Rights Movement.”
With the rise of white supremacy that disgracefully comes from the White House and Congress, the words of MLK are again relevant for Black people and other people of color, including people of Hispanic heritage and the Native Peoples.
Taking Action
It is more than that now though, as the Hands Off and No Kings Day demonstrations brought home to all of us: We cannot wait and must take action. This plight, this fight, this struggle is not essentially Democrats vs. Republicans as the mainstream media (MSM) (more accurately called the mainstream corporate media) likes to frame it. While it is for Black people and other people of color most definitely, it is also for all of us to form a movement against this insanity being perpetrated on us all by people who are demented in their treatment of other human beings, in their greed and insatiable quest for power, and in their attempts to maintain an imperialistic empire of settler colonialism that benefits the few. For them, Hegemony is All: Worldwide Domination. And it definitely is not a government ”of the people, for the people, by the people.”
From Why We Can’t Wait, the last chapter, “The Days to Come”
The hard truth is that the unity of the movement is a remarkable feature of major importance. The fact that different organizations place varying degrees of emphasis on certain technical approaches is not indicative of disunity. Unity has never meant uniformity. If it had, it would not have been possible for such dedicated democrats as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, a radical such as Thomas Paine and an autocrat such as Alexander Hamilton to lead a unified American Revolution. Jefferson, Washington, Paine and Hamilton could collaborate because the urge of the colonials to be free had matured into a powerful mandate. This is what has happened to the determination of the Negro to liberate himself. When the cry for justice has hardened into a palpable force, it becomes irresistible. This is a truth which wise leadership and sensible society ultimately come to realize.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man of vision. He and many others fought for the rights of Blacks and people of color, but his vision went beyond. He spoke against the Vietnam War. He knew. He understood. And once again now, in this rise up times, “We Can’t Wait.” Once again his words reverberate with what we need to do.
To reiterate from Part 1 of The Unraveling of the New Deal
Trump and Elon Musk created the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was not created by Congress but illegally by an executive order of Trump’s. Although DOGE is supposedly managed by the bipartisan DOGE Caucus whose purpose is “pave the way for the House of Representatives to streamline government operations and to save taxpayer money” they are dismantling and cutting off and/or reducing funding for many programs that support ordinary citizens in need as well as some foreign programs like USAid.
Trump and Musk are conducting a hell-bent crusade against as many social programs as possible that benefit ordinary people. They may not directly be the repeal of the same laws that were passed by Congress under FDR’s presidency but with the many layoffs in agencies, it is as if Trump and his cronies are trying to match the 15 million people who were unemployed when FDR officially became president in 1933. In addition are the the millions Trump has deported or plans to deport, some of whom are American citizens or hold green cards.
Elon Musk has now resigned from DOGE and has criticized Trump’s 2025 program. Regardless, Trump has vowed to go forward with the program. He has created what he calls The Big Beautiful Budget Bill which cuts many social service programs including Social Security and Medicaid. This bill passed the House by one vote, 215 to 214, and now goes to the Senate. Online articles, podcasts, etc. are constant at this time speculating about the bill and its contents. Most of this discussion is framed around party loyalty as Democrats vs. Republicans, although it affects all Americans of both parties who, are for example. on Medicaid or collecting social security and crosses party lines.
Trump and others plan to privatize all social service agencies, all agencies that serve the ordinary people, including social security. This privatization, with corporations holding the reins, would have disastrous results for the American people. Corporations ultimately have one goal, to make money for upper management and for their stockholders. Their stockholders are private individuals, not the average American citizen, who would have no rights under such a system.
The right of the people to assemble is already under fire. The right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances would not exist. They could perhaps try to petition the corporations but would be shut down. Union strikes? If they have a Union. Collective bargaining? Already under attack.
The right to peaceably assemble? We are already being attacked for peaceable protest gatherings, especially on college campuses. The students have been told for the most part in no uncertain terms they have no right to petition the campus presidents and boards to redress grievances and are instead being punished for what is an established right as set forth in the Bill of Rights although it does not apply to private groups, only the government. Of course, technically that right is the right to petition government, but their government on campus consists of these college officials. They are attempting to petition the government of their colleges and universities only to have the doors slammed in their faces as corporations are private entities and there are essentially no rights for the students.
A Note About Civil Disobedience
In an act of what we now call civil disobedience, colonial men climbed aboard a ship in Boston Harbor and threw the tea overboard in protest of the tax on tea by the British, now referred to as the Boston Tea Party. The colonial women women organized what we would now call a boycott of the tea as they were the ones who made such domestic purchases. What they were protesting of course was the oppression of the British government of their “colony.”
Protest is deep in American tradition. Whether you landed here by plane or boat, or walking across the Rio Grande, whether you arrived yesterday or your ancestors arrived those many years ago, we are all a part of that tradition. In his now famous lecture and essay on A Call of Duty for Civil Disobedience, where he coined the name, Henry David Thoreau names and discusses conscience and action by individuals and their relationship to government, using practical examples from his own neighborhood and state.
FDR: WWII Intervenes
I have chosen not to go into detail on FDR’s role during World War II. He was still president; he was in constant touch and met with Churchill several times before entering the war, which took place after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on June 6, 1943. The American public was opposed to entering another world war, but did not have full information about what was occurring in Germany and mainland Europe with the concentration camps and murders of much of the Jewish population. FDR had sources and did know, but not until Pearl Harbor did he act. The American people now understood how this war far from their borders affected them.
By mid-1944, the Willow Run assembly plant [Ford] was producing one B-24 per hour — accounting for half of all B-24s assembled that year. Photo: Assembly Magazine
When FDR acted he oversaw the industrialization of the United States into a full war economy. Instead of making cars, for example, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and other major manufacturers converted their factories: some made turbine engines, some planes, some tanks, etc. While men went overseas as soldiers to several parts of the world where war was being waged, women worked in factories and stepped into many jobs previously held by men. Ken Burns: The Roosevelts, Episodes 6 and 7, PBS.
Rose Will Monroe worked on the Willow Run assembly line building B-29 and B24 “Liberator” military planes. While on duty, she caught the eye of Hollywood producers who were casting the part of a “riveter” for a promotional film encouraging Americans to buy war bonds. Her exposure in that film resulted in the popular “We Can Do It!” poster by J. Howard Miller. [The legend of “Rosie the Riveter” was born.] Photo: Ford Corporate
At the end of the war FDR met twice at Yalta with Churchill and Stalin. It was after the second of these meetings that he suffered a fatal stroke and died on on April 12, 1945. (Ken Burns: The Roosevelts, Episode 7, PBS.
UPDATE (OPINION)
As I post this the breaking news I cannot ignore is that Trump has bombed Iran, ostensibly to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities, in total collusion with Israel, Zionism, and imperialism, never really giving any negotiations a chance. Much has appeared online about it already and more will follow. Being antiwar I am of course totally opposed to this bombing. I think Trump has an itchy trigger finger and needed to prove himself as “strong,” (it takes more strength to be nonviolent than violent) to regain what was lost in his self-respect when the Kings Day March in Washington DC was essentially a washout. He still has very low opinion polls. He should not have put the nation at risk of a nuclear war or even of a new “hot war” in the Middle East as is being discussed by news outlets, journalists and others online now.
His alliance with Israel and their genocidal Zionist policies is of course morally and culturally just plain evil. His imperialism along with Israel cloaked in the weaponization of antisemitism is anti-American.
On June 14th 5 million Americans spoke out on the streets on No Kings Day. For everyone who was there, there are many who for one reason or another, could not take to the streets (like me). For everyone on the streets at least one more could not be: That means a mandate of at least 10 million Americans opposed to not just Trump but to the 2025 program he endorses. And to his new Big Beautiful Budget Bill that destroys or cuts services essential for so many Americans just to survive, be healthy and while not rich at least comfortable while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Part 4, the last chapter of The Unraveling of the New Deal will be published soon.
If you must die
then I must live
to begin where you left off, although
you have never truly ceased.
Your poems journey across the world,
echo in my mind,
gather like a family’s embrace.
Your lessons visit me each night,
an alarm that stirs the soul,
reminding me to live,
always, and without fail.
I must live
to trace your steps,
stand where your footprints lie.
I must read in cafés and cars,
on bustling streets,
amidst the market stalls.
I must read at home and in the university —
just as you so often did.
I must meet you in the pages of your books —
Gaza Writes Back. Gaza Unsilenced.
No hesitation, I must live
to cling to the tail of a paper kite
soaring across the world,
boundless and free, no walls to hinder,
no soldier to halt my flight.
I fly with a pen in my hand as my weapon,
just as you did.
On my back I carry a bag
filled with your poems,
inked on paper, so true.
I must soar
to scatter the fragrance of your verses from the sky.
Your words descend, colorful blossoms upon the earth.
One drifts to a child with a paper kite in hand.
The child glimpses the brilliance you release
and is struck, as I was,
with a fever of love for poetry and art —
caught by it, just as I was.
I will live
to answer that little one’s questions,
to plant the seeds of your verses,
scatter the nectar of your steps,
and one day stand before you in the sky.
I will carry your trust on the wings of a plane,
deliver your message to all those children
who will be struck with love for poetry,
the children who tomorrow will rise,
successors to Refaat in poetry and letters.
I must live
to prosecute those who sentenced your art to death,
halted its rightful course
and sought to crush the scent of safety
your verses breathed into the hearts of your readers.
I must stand before your words,
draw hope there —
a hope I fear losing
as I lost you.
I must do my work
so you may rest in peace —
you’ve left your legacy in the right hands.
Your inheritance, divided justly, multiplies
and even strangers tremble at the weight of its value.
I will live
to mourn the tale of the great father,
to close the notebooks of barren grief,
to ignite a revolution of true poetry
and sound the warning of a searing fire,
to bring to the world the essence of your verses
and tear down the veil of Zionism,
as you once desired.
I can still imagine you there — in the university.
I must tell you how everyone yearned for your counsel,
how they hesitated to mourn you.
The students flocked to the Faculty of Arts
at the mere mention of your name in the news,
the weight of your death
pressed upon them,
even as they tried not to hear it.
I must craft endless poems
from the deepest part of my sea,
tuck them away in my travel bag
along with countless messages
from all who love you.
I will keep them safe for you
until we can meet.
The perpetuation of the fiction of widespread antisemitism, which of course exists but which is not fostered or condoned by these institutions, coupled with the refusal to say out loud what is being live streamed to the world, has shattered what little moral authority these institutions and liberals had left. It gives credibility to Trump’s effort to cripple and destroy all institutions that sustain a liberal democracy.
Trump’s Useful Idiots – by Mr. Fish
by Chris Hedges/ Original to ScheerPost/ May 27, 2025
The media, universities, the Democratic Party and liberals, by embracing the fiction of “rampant antisemitism,” laid the groundwork for their own demise. Columbia and Princeton, where I have taught, and Harvard, which I attended, are not incubators of hatred towards Jews. The New York Times, where I worked for fifteen years and which Trump calls “an enemy of the people,” is slavishly subservient to the Zionist narrative. What these institutions have in common is not antisemitism, but liberalism. And liberalism, with its creed of pluralism and inclusiveness, is slated by our authoritarian regime for obliteration.
The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers. These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress. Use the words ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ and you are fired or excoriated.
Zionist Jews, in this fictional narrative, are the oppressed. Jews who protest the genocide are slandered as Hamas stooges and punished. Good Jews. Bad Jews. One group deserves protection. The other deserves to be thrown to the wolves. This odious bifurcation exposes the charade.
In April 2024, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, along with two board members and a law professor, testified before the House of Representative education committee. They accepted the premise that antisemitism was a significant problem at Columbia and other higher education institutions.
When Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University David Greenwald and others told the committee that they believed “from the river to the sea” and “long live the intifada” were antisemitic statements, Shafik agreed. She threw students and faculty under the bus, including long-time professor Joseph Massad.
The day after the hearings, Shafik suspended all the students at the Columbia protests and called in the New York City Police Department (NYPD), who arrested at least 108 students.
“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” Shafik wrote in her letter to the police.
NYPD Chief John Chell, however, told the press, “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”
“What disciplinary action has been taken against that professor?” Representative Elise Stefanik asked in the hearing about Columbia law Professor Katherine Franke.
Shafik volunteered that Franke, who is Jewish and whose position at the law school where she had taught for 25 years was terminated, and other professors, were being investigated. In an apparent reference to visiting Columbia Professor Mohamed Abdou, she claimed he was “terminated” and promised he “will never teach at Columbia again.” Professor Abdou is suing Columbia for defamation, discrimination, harassment and financial and professional loss.
The Center for Constitutional Rights wrote of the betrayal of Franke:
In an egregious attack on both academic freedom and Palestinian rights advocacy, Columbia University has entered into an “agreement” with Katherine Franke to leave her teaching position after an esteemed 25-year career. The move — “a termination dressed up in more palatable terms,” according to Franke’s statement — stems from her advocacy for students who speak out in support of Palestinian rights.
Her ostensible offense was a comment expressing concern about Columbia’s failure to address harassment of Palestinians and their allies by Israeli students who come to campus straight from military service — after Israeli students sprayed Palestinian rights protestors with a toxic chemical. For this, she was investigated for harassment and found to be in violation of Columbia’s policies. The actual cause of her forced departure is the crackdown on dissent at Columbia resulting from historic protests opposing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Franke’s fate was sealed when former Columbia president Minouche Shafik threw her under the bus during her cowardly appearance before Congress.
You can see my [Hedges] interview with Franke here.
Despite her capitulation to the Zionist lobby, Shark resigned a little more than a year after assuming her position as head of the university.
The crackdown at Columbia continues, with an estimated 80 people arrested and over 65 students suspended following a protest in the library in the first week of May. Former television journalist and Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman condemned the protest, stating, “Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies…Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today.”
Of course, appeasement does not work. This witch hunt, whether under the Biden or Trump administration, was never grounded in good faith. It was about decapitating Israel’s critics and marginalizing the liberal class and the left. It is sustained by lies and slander, which these institutions continue to embrace.
Watching these liberal institutions, who are hostile to the left, be smeared by Trump for harboring “Marxist lunatics,” “radical leftists,” and “communists,” exposes another failing of the liberal class. It was the left that could have saved these institutions or at least given them the fortitude, not to mention analysis, to take a principled stand. The left at least calls apartheid apartheid and genocide genocide.
Media outlets regularly publish articles and OpEds uncritically accepting claims made by Zionist students and faculty. They fail to clarify the distinction between being Jewish and being Zionist. They demonize student protesters. They never bothered reporting with any depth or honesty from the student encampments where Jews, Muslims and Christians made common cause. They routinely mischaracterize anti-Zionist, anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian liberation slogans and policy demands as hate speech, antisemitic, or contributing to Jewish students feeling unsafe.
The New York Times, in a decision worthy of George Orwell, instructed its reporters to eschew words such “refugee camps,” “occupied territory,” “slaughter,” “massacre,” “carnage,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” when writing about Palestine, according to an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. It discourages the very use of the word “Palestine” in routine text and headlines.
In December 2023, Democratic Governor of New York Kathy Hochul sent a letter to university and college presidents who failed to condemn and address “antisemitism,” and calls for the “genocide of any group.” She warned that they would be subjected to “aggressive enforcement action” by New York State. The following year, in late August, Hochul repeated these warnings during a virtual meeting with 200 university and college leaders.
Hochul made clear in October 2024 that she considered pro-Palestine slogans to be explicit calls for genocide of Jews.
“There are laws on the books – human rights laws, state and federal laws – that I will enforce if you allow for the discrimination of our students on campus, even calling for the genocide of the Jewish people which is what is meant by ‘From the river to the sea,’ by the way,” she said at a memorial event at the Temple Israel Center in White Plains. “Those are not innocent sounding words. They’re filled with hate.”
The Governor successfully pressured City University of New York (CUNY) to remove a job posting for a Palestinian studies professorship at Hunter College which referenced “settler colonialism,” “genocide” and “apartheid.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in his new book “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” leads efforts by the Democratic Party — which has a dismal 27 percent approval rating in a recent NBC News poll — to denounce those protesting the genocide as carrying out a “blood libel” against Jews.
“Whatever one’s view of how the war in Gaza was conducted, it is not and has never been the policy of the Israeli government to exterminate the Palestinian people,” he writes, ignoring hundreds of calls by Israeli officials to wipe Palestinians from the face of the earth during 19 months of saturation bombing and enforced starvation.
The grisly truth, openly acknowledged by Israeli officials, is far different.
“We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us,” gloats Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
“Last night, almost 100 Gazans were killed…it doesn’t interest anyone. Everyone has gotten used to [the fact] that [we can] kill 100 Gazans in one night during a war and nobody cares in the world,” Israeli Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, told Israel’s Channel 12 on May 16.
The perpetuation of the fiction of widespread antisemitism, which of course exists but which is not fostered or condoned by these institutions, coupled with the refusal to say out loud what is being live streamed to the world, has shattered what little moral authority these institutions and liberals had left. It gives credibility to Trump’s effort to cripple and destroy all institutions that sustain a liberal democracy.
Trump surrounds himself with neo-Nazi sympathizers such as Elon Musk, and Christian fascists who condemn Jews for crucifying Christ. But antisemitism by the right gets a free pass since these “good” antisemites cheer on Israel’s settler colonial project of extermination, one these neo-Nazis and Christian fascists would like to replicate on Brown and Black in the name of the great replacement theory. Trump trumpets the fiction of “white genocide” in South Africa. He signed an executive order in February that fast-tracked immigration to the U.S. for Afrikaners — white South Africans.
Harvard, which is attempting to save itself from the wrecking ball of the Trump administration, was as complicit in this witch hunt as everyone else, flagellating itself for not being more repressive towards campus critics of the genocide.
The university’s former president Claudine Gay condemned the pro-Palestine slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which demands the right of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, as bearing “specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel.”
Harvard substantially tightened its regulations regarding student protests, in January 2024, and increased the police presence on its campus. It barred 13 students from graduating, citing alleged policy violations linked to their participation in a protest encampment, despite an earlier agreement to avoid punitive measures. It placed more than 20 students on “involuntary leave” and in some cases evicted students from their housing.
The capitulations and crackdowns on pro-Palestine activism, academic freedom, freedom of speech, suspensions, expulsions and firings, since Oct. 7, 2023, have not spared U.S. colleges and universities from further attacks.
Since Trump took office, at least $11 billion in federal research grants and contracts have been cut or frozen nationwide according to NPR. This includes Harvard ($3 billion), Columbia ($400 million), University of Pennsylvania ($175 million) and Brandeis ($6-7.5 million annually).
On May 22, the Trump administration intensified its attacks on Harvard by terminating its ability to enroll international students that make up around 27 percent of the student body.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Kristi Noem, DHS Secretary wrote on X, when posting screenshots of the letter she sent to Harvard revoking foreign student enrollment. “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
Harvard, like Columbia, the media, the Democratic Party and the liberal class, misread power. By refusing to acknowledge or name the genocide in Gaza, and persecuting those who do, they provided the bullets to their executioners.
They are paying the price for their stupidity and cowardice.
NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.
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Feds Leverage Assistance from Minneapolis Police & Hennepin County Sheriff’s
Office Debut Action of New Task Force Shocks Lake Street Community
Anonymous Federal Police Identify as “The Others” on Nameplate
Minneapolis, MN — Dozens of federal agents in a newly minted federal task force raided a business on East Lake Street in South Minneapolis on Tuesday morning (June 3) and were quickly met with a raucous crowd amid toxic smoke conditions from Canadian wildfires. The crowd of up to 200 people grew through the day under the impression an immigration raid was underway, at times blocking federal vehicles from vacating alleys and streets. Federal agents responded violently by shooting pepper balls and unleashing pepper spray; personnel from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Response Teams (SRT) were filmed shoving people. Mobilized community members eventually pressured the federal agents out of the neighborhood, while Minneapolis police officers provided crowd control.
ICE Special Response Team badge. Courtesy Brandon Schorch.
Inside the new “Homeland Security Task Force” (HSTF) network, the lead agency is Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), one of two divisions inside ICE. The other division of ICE, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) – which targets immigrants for deportation – was also involved, according to Jamie Holt, HSI’s acting special agent in charge in Minnesota. Holt said this was the debut action of the HSTF in the state. (More about the little-known new HSTF network below.) [Unicorn Riot leaked ICE HSI agent manuals in our #Icebreaker series.]
Pastor Ingrid Rasmussen (Holy Trinity Lutheran Church) confronts Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara. Courtesy Aaron Johnson.
The raid started before noon and federal agents walked out of the neighborhood in groups sometime after 1 p.m. but street activity continued for hours into the afternoon. Authorities said they had a warrant to search Las Cuatro Milpas restaurant on Bloomington Avenue and Lake Street, claiming to be seeking evidence of drug trafficking and money laundering. The restaurant’s suburban location was also raided along with six other locations.
Unidentified ATF agents; one is wearing a tag saying “The Others.” Several ATF agents are wearing shirts with yellow “Sheriff” labels. Courtesy Brandon Schorch.
Badge featuring a Vegsivir design – the agent had ICE markings on the opposite shoulder. Courtesy Brandon Schorch.
Many of the federal agents were masked and did not have visible names or identification numbers, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to file lawsuits against individual agents in court.
Masked ATF agents walking on Lake Street. Garbage bins were placed in the street by community members to deter vehicles. Courtesy Aaron Johnson.
By the end of a full afternoon of confusion, at least five community members had been detained with a few being arrested. Unicorn Riot saw one forceful arrest shortly after 4 p.m. as Minneapolis police tried to practice crowd control.
Overall the incident showed that, similar to an ICE-led immigration raid in San Diego on Friday, May 30, people in local communities are becoming galvanized against the presence of masked and menacing federal law enforcement personnel targeting their neighborhoods.
Protesters gathered outside the site of the former Minneapolis Police Department Third Precinct, at Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue. Courtesy Aaron Johnson.
Local politicians and officials have weighed in; several were on the site of the raid and during the community gathering after the feds pulled out in the afternoon:
State Senator Omar Fateh (DFL-62) described it as “blatant fascism.” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (DFL) said“it seemed like the point was to inflict terror and fear into the community.” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty posted“ICE is being used to terrorize people” and that local law enforcement should be “transparent about what assistance” they are giving to the Feds. Jazz Hampton posted that they saw someone they know personally knocked unconscious. (Hampton and Fateh are both running for mayor currently, as is incumbent Jacob Frey.)
…we cannot hope that a Federal Task Force led by this DHS or FBI will have any goal in mind other than to create maximum fear and anxiety while accelerating Trump’s agenda of family separation and deportations.
Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt tried to push a message that community actions were triggered by “irresponsible rumors” while Frey attacked Fateh’s statement about “blatant fascism,” claiming this was “stoking panic.” (Frey attempted to distance this raid from immigration enforcement, but targeting immigrants is actually foundational to the Trump’s HSTF task force structure itself. More on that below.) Frey also made the rounds [1, 2] trying to reassure Lake Street business owners that he’s not assisting the Trump administration crackdown.
Minneapolis Police and the Hennepin County Sheriffs Department claim they were unaware of the raid until it occurred. In a press conference on June 4, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the raid was “tone-deaf.”
Groups in the Twin Cities including the Minnesota Immigrant Movement (MIM), Asamblea de los Derechos Civiles and Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) held a press conference outside Mayor Frey’s office on June 5, demanding “accountability from the mayor and MPD after local law enforcement helped federal authorities terrorize the immigrant community on Lake Street. […] [T]he mayor is unable to uphold this promise of safety for the city’s residents. […] This is what the Trump administration’s war on immigrants looks like.” Other groups including SEIU Local 26, Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB), Indigenous Protector Movement (IPM), Twin Cities Coalition for Justice (TCC4J) and Wrongfully Incarcerated and Over-Sentenced Families Council-MN (WIAOCF-MN) are also supporting this press conference event.
‘Homeland Security Task Force’ Led by ICE-HSI Makes its Minnesota Debut
Mayor Frey claimed on Wednesday “our police officers will not work to enforce federal immigration law, we will not be involved in federal immigration actions.” However, Unicorn Riot obtained a memo showing all HSTF teams are built directly on “Border Enforcement Security Task Forces” — that entire document is transcribed below.
Very little is known about the new HSTF system. A new report from NBC News discusses HSTF alongside “Operation at Large.” A new estimate of 21,000 National Guard personnel are sought for this currently active White House-directed operation, along with 5,000 federal law enforcement personnel.
The text of this Homeland Security Investigations diagram is dated 2/21/2025. Agency badges include the departments of Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Here’s the full text of the document transcribed from the diagram image above:
ESTABLISHMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY TASK FORCES (HSTF)
In accordance with the President’s Executive Order (EO) 14159 section 6: “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” the National Security Council is directing the creation of a Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) network. The Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General are directed to take all appropriate action to jointly establish HSTFs in all states nationwide — to include the establishment of a national command center to coordinate law enforcement activities of the HSTFs, provide support as required, and direct national-level priorities aligned with the EO. This whole-of government approach will include representatives from federal law enforcement agencies, federal prosecutors and other U.S. Government agencies with the ability to provide logistics, intelligence and operational support to the HSTFs. The approach will include representation from relevant state, territorial and local law enforcement agencies in the fight against transnational organized crime (TOC).
HSTF STRUCTURE
The HSTF will leverage the existing structure and capabilities of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)-led Border Enforcement Security Task Forces (BESTs) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) National Targeting Center (NTC), which together provide a strong foundation to meet the requirements for an HSTF network. There will be a minimum of one HSTF per U.S. state with interagency support staff provided by the executive steering committees.
HSTFs will be immediately deployed nationwide leveraging 112 BESTs operating in every state and U.S. territory. At the discretion of the HSI Special Agent in Charge, additional HSTFs can be established augmenting other existing law enforcement task forces with interagency personnel.
GOVERNANCE
The HSTF has a three-tiered governance structure with Interagency Support Staff (ISS):
1: Principals. Cabinet-level officials, chaired by the Secretary of Homeland Security and co-chaired by the Attorney General, with additional participation from the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Treasury, and the Secretary of State.
2: Executive Steering Committee (ESC): Deputy Director-level official designated by the HSTF Principals to represent their respective Department and/or Agency Heads. The ESC will be chaired by HSI and co-chaired with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
3. Executive Steering Sub-Committees (ESSC): Established in all 30 HSI SAC (special agent in charge) offices, the ESSCs will report directly to the ESC. Each ESSC will be chaired by an HSI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) and co-chaired by an FBI SAC.
The HSTF National Command Center (NCC), located at ICE Headquarters (HQs) is staffed with ISS representatives from federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies with the ability to provide funding resources, logistics, criminal network analysis and operational support to nationwide HSTFs in the fight against TOC [transnational organized crime].
NCC chart includes three groupings. Intelligence Operations: Strategic, Data Integration, Targeting & Analysis. Global Operations: Immigration Enforcement, Human Trafficking, Transnational Gangs, Weapons Trafficking, Narcotics & Contraband Smuggling, Illicit Proceeds & Financial Crimes, Human Smuggling. Mission Support: Staffing & Personnel Security Unit, Legal, Policy & Planning, Budget & Performance, Training & Development.
Editor’s Note: For the full report published in Unicorn Riot on May 29, 2025, go to The New ‘ICE ARMY” Also available on WingsofChange.me under the same title.
Interview with reporter Dan Feidt on KFAI Radio, June 4, 2024 [Vimeo / YouTube]:
Niko Georgiades and Dingane Xaba contributed to this report.Cover image composition by Dan Feidt. Images courtesy Aaron Johnson and Brandon Schorsch.
In the U.S., this means embedding resistance training in civil society groups, civic education, labor unions and professional associations. It means preparing city councils, schools and unions to reject unconstitutional directives, and establishing watchdog groups to monitor and respond to democratic backsliding. And it means preparing for what comes after victory, so we’re not left scrambling during the transition.
The show is an indictment of the militarism, perpetual war, imperialism, settler colonialism, and the “corporate dystopia” we all struggle to survive and a call to action to love, protect and share our precious and precarious planet home.
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Engraving of the Four Freedoms at the 
