On Sunday morning, I received a press release inviting me to a meeting of over 300 activists at the United Labor Center in Minneapolis to discuss expanding the general strike. At the top of the press release was a phone number for a press contact, and like a million times before as a labor reporter, I called to see what was going on with these union meetings.
On the other end of the phone was Alex Pretti’s next-door neighbor, Chris Gray, a teachers' union activist at a local middle school.
“He was a wonderful neighbor,” Chris tells me as he recounts stories of Alex swinging by for parties and BBQs. “It’s just wild to think that the guy I saw walking his dog every day was executed in the streets.”
For many in his community, it felt like they could be next.
“People are really emotional today. We watched one of our community members get killed, doing something we've all done,” says Chris.
He explains the beautiful patchwork of the working-class Lindale neighborhood of South Minneapolis, just south of the Whittier neighborhood where Alex was assassinated.
“We’re a working-class part of Minneapolis. We have immigrants on our streets. We have retired people on our streets. We have young renters. We have Latinos, we have Somalis. This is a community we have here. And Alex was a part of that community, you know, he was a wonderful neighbor.”
Chris says everyone walking around the neighborhood is now pondering the same thing.
“The question is, why is my neighbor dead? It's because he's fighting these people. You know, he's doing what everyone else is doing, what everyone else should be doing around the country.”
Chris tells me about how excited folks in his neighborhood were on Friday after marching along with 100,000 activists in -10 degree weather as over 700 businesses shut down as part of the Minnesota General Strike. For many activists, the mood was elating, and there was a sense that a major victory had been won by pulling off a general strike.
"We really scored a blow," says Chris.
But by Saturday, ICE and the Border Patrol struck back, and many activists found themselves struggling with grief and fear. Chris strongly believes the violence was a direct response to the success of the general strike.
“We organized a massive, nonviolent protest, not any violence at all, nothing happened except that we shut down the economy,’ says Chris. “Then, less than 24 hours later, ICE is standing in the middle of one of the busiest commercial sections of our city during brunch, terrorizing people. I think there's a feeling of, ‘these people are out to get us.’”
“They drove right into the heart of Whittier, that was the heart of the George Floyd rebellion. It's a progressive, diverse, working-class neighborhood,” says Chris. “They drove straight into the center of it, and they started roughing people up, and then they killed someone.”
I ask Chris how Alex felt about the general strike, and he tells me that they hadn’t had a chance to talk about it. One of Chris’s big regrets is that so much of the immigration rapid-response network is organized on Signal. Given the extreme weather, Chris regrets there aren't as many community meetings as there should be in the neighborhood.
“Everybody should be in their local gymnasium, at their elementary school, talking about what they think they should do. You know, there should be food, there should be childcare, there should be security. You should be able to come raise your ideas,” says Chris, “And then we should make decisions about how we want to escalate the struggle, because that's the only way we're gonna be able to stop these people.”
Just such a meeting took place on Sunday afternoon, where Chris joined more than 300 trade unionists and activists who had participated in the general strike. In the midst of grief, the meeting was still joyous as they brainstormed how to continue organizing.
“We had workers from Target, from Starbucks, other non-unionized sections of the economy that went on strike on the 23rd, and they were actually able to get their workplaces to close, organize their co-workers and come out, which was really inspiring,” Chris told me Sunday night.
While the general strike on the 23rd shut down many large public employers, such as school districts, and other unionized workplaces, as well as over 700 small businesses, major employers like Target, Whole Foods, and many others did not close down. Activists wondered how they could reach these workers next time.
“How do we actually do it? How do you get organized? And hopefully, our meeting today played a tiny part in getting people confident to talk to their co-workers and actually shut things down,“ says Chris. “There were a lot of people at the meeting there who were like, ‘I could not get everybody out,’ so I think that's what we're looking at next time.”
Many at the meeting strategized about how to reach even more workers for the next general strike.
“We talked about what the next step is like. What about Whole Foods? What about Target, you know? And that we can't do that without those workers,” says Chris. “And so there's an organizing process that has to take place. No one's slowing down, and no one's gonna sit home and hope that ICE leaves.”
As Chris spoke of his grief, it combined with excitement and resolve about the organizing ideas that he heard at the meeting that day.
“We're not backing down, we're not giving up. I think Friday showed the truth about our city and the truth about our community. We're going to build off that momentum and keep this fight going,” Chris told me as he ended our phone call Sunday. “We don't want ICE here. We don't want ICE anywhere. So we need to beat them in Minneapolis so they don't come to your town.”
