Photos by @riley_the_bruce
On a frigid, sub-zero December morning, in the parking lot of the Lake Street Post Office, a group of Minneapolis letter carriers in the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) unfurled a banner reading: ICE OFF POSTAL PROPERTY. Before long, a crowd of around 70 bundled-up coworkers and community members had gathered for a lively rally, and the group took the street, marching a mile east to Powderhorn Post Office.
“They’re making it unsafe and difficult for us to do our jobs,” said one of the rally organizers, Stefan Seaberg. “People at the post office wanted to do something. We’ve been just pissed off.” The rally was organized by Build a Fighting NALC (BFN), a reform caucus within the letter carriers union that aims to transform the union into one that fully mobilizes its membership in its struggle against the boss.
In the days that followed the rally, postal workers reported ICE was no longer staging raids at these post offices and that the only post offices at which ICE was spotted were in the suburbs. Workers successfully kicked ICE off of Minneapolis postal property.
A month later, following the brutal ICE murder of Renee Good and Trump’s rapid escalation of his deportation operation, postal workers led by BFN took to the streets again. This time they had a crowd of hundreds, and an even broader labor coalition behind them, including a contingent of Metro transit drivers with ATU Local 1005 as well as the presidents of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and CWA Local 7250.
Trump’s deportation machine has provoked a fightback in every city it’s taken aim at. To decisively defeat this anti-immigrant offensive, it will take the power of the organized working class, without which the economy can’t function. The Twin Cities are in the eye of the storm, and the call for a statewide mass strike on 1/23 is a monumental next step for the movement. But the call did not come out of thin air. Actions like these postal worker rallies, organized by rank-and-file workers, were an important step pointing the way forward for the rest of the labor movement.
Do Not Comply
After Trump’s “Operation Metro Surge” began in the Twin Cities, ICE was using USPS parking lots to conduct immigration arrests, including at these two post offices in the diverse Powderhorn community of Minneapolis. Disgusted, a group of letter carriers confronted ICE, began picketing their lot against ICE, and later decided to organize a community rally.
Letter carriers spend every workday immersed in their community, where they experience the devastating impact of this ICE operation. “There’s a lot of chatter at the post office about how sad the effects of this are,” said Seaberg. “People are staying inside, businesses locking their doors.”
The workers passed a resolution in their local NALC branch declaring that letter carriers should not cooperate with ICE, and also that the union will bargain for stronger protections for coworkers who are immigrants. Letter carriers have building access and personal information for residents all across the city which could be valuable to ICE.
Not far across town, Metro Transit bus drivers were organizing a vote for a similar resolution in ATU Local 1005. The resolution passed overwhelmingly, calling for members to not allow ICE onto buses and trains, to create rapid response teams, and more.
Former ATU 1005 president Ryan Timlin spoke at the postal workers’ rally on January 18, “Last Thursday, I sat in a safety meeting at Metro Transit, and I asked, ‘What would you do if a driver refused to let ICE on the bus.’ I was told, ‘You need to let ICE on the bus.’ What this shows is we need to build this movement further. … One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. ICE is an unjust racist structure that must be abolished.”
Build A Fighting Labor Movement
The labor movement needs unions that don’t just fight for their own members alone, but in the interests of the broader working class. This means unions that recognize that this nationwide anti-immigrant assault is an attack on the working class as a whole and that go beyond words to fight it.
The call for “No Work, No School, No Shopping” by a dozen-plus unions is a crucial next step. NALC in Minneapolis is not signed onto the call, likely steering clear because striking is illegal for federal workers—an obstacle that BFN is campaigning to change. Many other unions are also limiting their participation because of “no-strike” clauses in their contracts. But the right to a union and the right to strike were won through mass collective action, often illegal. While the strike on 1/23 is primarily a strike against ICE and Trump’s deportation machine, it can also serve to raise workers’ sights about the need to break unjust laws in order to fight for what we need.
Ultimately, to throw ICE out of every city, to abolish the department altogether, and to fight for a society where immigrants have equal rights and full citizenship—this will take a massive political movement leveraging the full power of the working class, which means nationwide strike action. Organizing this movement is no easy undertaking, but the moment must be seized to build this fightback.