The following is a speech given by Fiona Cavanagh, member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (speaking in a personal capacity) and member of Socialist Alternative, at a mass anti-ICE meeting on October 10 in Philadelphia. With over 175 people packing the room, the meeting was co-sponsored by 17 endorsing organizations. Minnesota 15 defendant and Executive Board member of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Treasure Thoreson, spoke at the meeting, as well as Delaney Hall Detention Center strike support leader, Gabriela Soto. Read a full report on the meeting here!

Hello, I’m Fiona. I teach 8th Grade Math in Northeast Philly. Thank you for being here. We must fight back against the terror that ICE is continuing to put our communities through. And when we fight back against ICE, we know that Trump and his billionaire administration will retaliate—they will attack and try to undermine our movement.

That is what they are doing when they charge activists like the Minnesota 15 or they come after detainees who stand up like Martín Soto. But we won’t be intimidated. We won’t let them undermine us. We will defend against these attacks with a mass public defense campaign. This is how political repression has been beaten in the past and it’s how we’ll do it today. I am a union member, a teacher, and a socialist, and I’m honored to speak alongside Treasure and everybody else here tonight. 

I, like many of my union siblings in the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT), work in a school community with a large immigrant population. Across the country this year, ICE arrests have surged. ICE’s budget climbs, while there’s never enough funding for our schools and our students. We see in our classrooms that students are traumatized by the threat or the experience of family members being deported or detained. I am proud of how Philly educators have stood up for our students this year, but we cannot meet this need as individual teachers. Let’s learn from the workers and teachers in Minnesota—we must take decisive action as a union.

We’re going to hear more from Treasure soon, and she’s going to talk about how when 4,000 ICE agents invaded Minneapolis last January, the teachers unions fought back. They organized networks of school staff and volunteers to escort undocumented students and kids with undocumented parents to and from school. To deliver groceries to families too afraid to leave their house. And to take part in rapid response patrols. 

Then, after ICE murdered Renee Good in cold blood, the teachers unions and the rest of the movement had to shift from defense to offense. They had to go beyond networks meant to protect their students and take up the strongest tool that unions have to win demands—the strike. Minneapolis and St. Paul schools were completely shut down as part of the general strike on January 23, 2026 demanding ICE OUT of their cities. The Twin Cities showed us that, as educators and as workers, we have power. We’ve just got to be organized enough to use it.

This is why I am excited to not just be in the teachers union in Philly, but to be a part of a group of rank-and-file PFT members who are fighting for a more democratic, more organized, and more powerful union. This past February, we hosted a training on how to organize against ICE in our schools. Over 100 PFT members attended and discussed our rights and how to get prepared.

We were watching what was happening in Minneapolis and at the same time looking at the inaction of our own district and even our own union leadership—and realized we had to take matters into our own hands. Because ultimately, our union is only as strong as we, the membership, are organized, and in the PFT we have got to get a helluva lot more organized if we’re going to be strong enough to fight back against attacks and fight for the schools our students deserve.

As Minneapolis showed, mass strike action—united across different industries, different communities, union and non-union—will be necessary to really defeat Trump. And progressive and democratic socialist elected officials must use their positions to build movements, not compromise with the establishment. It’s not the Democratic Party or the courts that will stop him, it will be us—the working class—using our power to fight back.

Trump and the billionaire class want working people to turn and blame each other for how hard it is to get by. They want people to think it’s immigrants’ fault that there’s not enough good jobs. That healthcare, housing, transportation, and education are dysfunctional and unaffordable. That our communities are traumatized by gun violence, gender violence, and drug abuse. These are all very real problems, but none of them are the fault of immigrants. All of them are caused by the brutal, racist system we live under that puts profit before human life, which is capitalism. 

So, we need the strength of the labor movement to reject this division and unite around clear demands:

Drop the charges against the Minnesota 15 and all anti-ICE and pro-Palestine protesters! An attack on union members and activists in Minneapolis is an attack on all of us. The courts are not made to be fair, but are made instead to keep working people in line. Federal charges are brought against these protesters, while we’ve seen zero charges for those in the Epstein files or the rapists at Cornell. We’ve seen no accountability for killer ICE agents, killer cops, deadly detention centers, and prisons. We cannot have trust in the judicial system, but instead must demand that protesters and detainees be freed, and that the real threats to society are brought to justice. We demand full immediate citizenship rights for all. None of our students, neighbors, or fellow workers should live in fear of being taken away. 

Abolish ICE. Instead, use the $85 billion in the ICE budget to go toward childcare, education, housing, and healthcare for all. Our campaign must unite around a vision for a future that is worth fighting for. 

Both rank-and-file PFT members and Socialist Alternative are proud to help build this campaign. Please visit our tables in the back and get involved in the campaign. Come out to the Minnesota 15 outreach day on October 25, and bring your friends! If you’re in a union, talk to your coworkers and pass a resolution of support for the Minnesota 15 (sample resolution here). And when the trial starts, come out to our solidarity protests! Thank you to Treasure, the other speakers, and everyone here tonight. Solidarity, and let’s keep fighting.