CALL TO ACTION on January 23, 2026
Minneapolis Labor Unions are calling for a full #GeneralStrike. No school, No work, No shopping. Those of us outside Minnesota, stand with the unions by not shopping.
“The Minnesota labor movement is united against the violent ICE occupation of our beloved cities .. Workers are essential for our communities to function. Since the ICE campaign of terror began, both immigrant and non-immigrant workers have feared for their safety when going to work, being at work, and coming home from work.
Working people, our schools our communities are under attack. Union members
are being detained commuting to and from work, tearing apart families. Parents are
being forced to stay home, students held out of school, fearing for their lives, all while
the employer class remains silent. Our labor federations are encouraging everyone to
participate on January 23rd.”
Scary Austin
in reply to Scary Austin • • •He's yet another figure I didn't learn about in my whitewashed history classes, but I can benefit from his example now.
White people filming ICE are not the same; he was white passing but certainly not afforded the privileges of an actual white man. This was something he realized early while *watching* the Atlanta race riot of 1908 from the roof of his family home.
We can remember his courage, though. If he can do it as a man not afforded full civil rights, we can do it.
Scary Austin
in reply to Scary Austin • • •Federal anti-lynching laws were not passed in his lifetime, though his work did contribute to their passing.
Imagine if there had been millions of actual white people backing him up and documenting the violence.
That's possible now. Attempted purges of nonwhite people are nothing new in this country, but it's new to have millions of white people rising up. Obviously the regime didn't think that would happen! These people seriously thought most white people only pay lip service...
Scary Austin
in reply to Scary Austin • • •...to diversity and would actually welcome ICE ethnically cleansing "our" cities. They can't imagine anything else.
There are people who denigrate others' efforts because others are risking themselves to document abuses, but aren't shooting anybody. It's always people who do absolutely nothing.
Meanwhile one single man who didn't really have white privilege, who couldn't save lynching victims' lives, contributed to the passing of anti-lynching laws and ultimately prevented more deaths.
Scary Austin
in reply to Scary Austin • • •I've seen first hand how terrified the ICE agents are of cat ladies holding cameras. We were laughing about this last night at the resistance dance party. I was standing there in a taco costume talking to other protesters after an ICE watch shift and we were cracking up. "Imagine being afraid of me!" I exclaimed at one point. The visual really is hilarious.
Those cameras do make a difference. If you feel powerless watching videos of these horrors, know that you are not.
Scary Austin
in reply to Scary Austin • • •Scary Austin
in reply to Scary Austin • • •...completely defenseless, just like domestic abusers do, and we know these are the same kind of men.
They're scared of being watched, they're so scared of lawyers they shut up a lawyer yesterday by threatening to detain two other people as well as her client if she didn't shut up. (She was rightly saying the kidnapping they were doing was illegal.) She had to shut up at that time but her client will have his day in court. We initiated community support.
They are SCARED scared. They act...
Scary Austin
in reply to Scary Austin • • •...tough away from cameras but not when the cameras are going. Not when there's a crowd. Not when there's even one VIP, such as Bishop Pham of San Diego, who showed up to immigration court and made the ICE agents scatter like cockroaches.
The movement makes real difference in the here and now and will make a real difference when we punish these people.
Walter F White realized he had power as one Black man in the US in the heyday of the Klan.
We have real power if we use it.