Assessing Minnesota General Strike

Jan. 23, 2026

In the coming days, detractors loyal to the regime and the more quibbling moderates who deplore what the regime is doing but equally deplore doing anything to stop it, will try to tell us that the general strike today accomplished nothing- that business is already returning to normal and a one day general strike in one metro won't change anything in the long run.

 

In one sense, there's some truth to that. One day's general strike in one metro won't change much. Nobody who called for it or organized it thought that it would, on its own. But an action, a protest, a one day strike, is not the end of the road, a goal that is reached and then walked back from. It is a new horizon for our action, beyond which to go further.

 

This was the first general strike in our city in 92 years. For almost a century since the Teamsters led the working class of the Twin Cities in the streets against the scabs and Citizens Alliance, labor relations in Minnesota have remained contained mostly within the familiar, legalistic framework of labor law which the regime is presently ripping apart after decades of sustained clawbacks and attacks from bosses under both parties. For the working life of virtually every worker in the Twin Cities, strikes have been fairly rare (despite the renewed militancy of the last few years), have happened around unfair labor practices or during contract negotiations, and have contained themselves to the workers in one workplace, one bargaining unit, one company. For our whole working lives, our unions bargained for bread and butter issues and avoided taking stances on issues outside of the workplace. Taking direct action on such issues was seen as unthinkable. For our whole working lives, except for the Day Without An Immigrant that foreshadowed today's general strike, strikes were something that union workers sometimes did but that non-unionized workers didn't do.

 

Today's general strike turned those assumptions on their head. Today we saw a huge mass of workers, both union and non union, go on strike. We saw the unions, pushed by the rank and file in local after local, either outright endorsing a strike or giving a wink-and-nod statement for workers to call in, outside of a ULP or a contract negotiation. We saw a strike that brought us together across industries. We struck not over wages or benefits, but over the safety and freedom of our coworkers, selves, neighbors, friends, and family- and against a campaign of brutal state violence that has been waged on our community. With workers inside and outside of the unions leading the charge, we saw sections of the business owners, foremost the immigrant business owners, joining us in a mass, social strike.

 

It was one day. This time. But power is like a muscle. Collective action requires exercise. We've made a big, big lift today- heavier than we've made in a long time. Now we know we can do it. We know a new strength. What will we lift next? Two days out? A week? Not just the metro, but other cities? Other states? The whole country? What demands would such power allow us to make? ICE out of our communities? Abolishing the agency? Amnesty? The fall of the regime?

 

That's why detractors are going to insist that we accomplished nothing today. Because they're scared of what we can accomplish by building on today. They want us to believe we have no power because our strength terrifies them.