The New Dark Age

The first week of January, Trump sent 2,000 ICE paramilitary agents into Minneapolis, targeting Somali neighborhoods, along with Hmong and Latine communities, and turning the city into a domestic war zone.

Minneapolis’ working-class communities responded with an ICE Watch network — thousands of people tracking raids, filming arrests, and rushing to protect each other, often armed with nothing more than Signal chats and tin whistles. When ICE paramilitary officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37‑year‑old mother of three Renee Good, a legal observer, on Jan. 7, protests exploded across the Twin Cities and helped fuel a statewide general strike on Jan. 23 against the operation.

Before the general strike, federal agents operated openly in Minneapolis. The day after, they responded to the political crisis by shooting Alex Pretti, who was filming them.

That sparked the Jan. 30 “National Shutdown,” as walkouts spread from Knoxville to Seattle, from Pittsburgh to Kansas City, and the struggle went continental.

For years, commentators insisted U.S. workers were too divided to act together. Minnesota demolished that theory. People did not wait for politicians or appointed leaders. They moved.

On Jan. 23 in Minnesota, walkouts spread. Students left classrooms. Transit slowed. Freight stalled. Tens of thousands filled the streets in subzero temperatures. Large parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul shut down.

How Minneapolis shut down

It was a political general strike — a collective refusal to keep society running while federal agents carried out raids and killings in working-class neighborhoods.

This was working-class self-organization, born of necessity.

Faced with working-class mass action and the danger of shutdowns spreading beyond Minneapolis, the Trump administration blinked. Officials were removed. Trump publicly spoke of “de-escalation.”

Even a heavily armed government depends on people going to work. When workers stop cooperating, repression alone can’t keep things running. Minnesota showed that.

Corporate media claims workers are drifting right. What they miss is simpler: More people no longer trust courts, legislatures, or reform promises.

They trust what they experienced in January — the power of solidarity and collective action.

What workers learned in January

They saw federal agents shoot people in their neighborhoods. They saw officials lie. They saw armored vehicles and rifles take over. And they saw what happens when workers respond and move together.

That experience is now guiding their actions.

During the strike, people bypassed institutions. They did not ask how to influence power. They exercised it.

Reform politics treats moments like this as bargaining for policy change. Minnesota showed something different.

What emerged, unevenly but unmistakably, was working people stepping in where the system failed — organizing themselves.

The lessons came fast.

In a few days, tens of thousands learned more about how this system actually works than decades of elections and press conferences ever taught them. They saw that police exist to protect federal operations, not neighborhoods. They saw politicians close ranks around armed troopers, not around families who lost loved ones. And they learned something just as important: When workers move together — when they walk out, shut things down, and refuse cooperation — they can interrupt business as usual and force federal authorities to back off.

These lessons didn’t come out of nowhere. They grew out of the George Floyd rebellion, the Black Lives Matter uprisings, last summer’s anti-ICE actions in Los Angeles, and fall mobilizations in Chicago. Each fight passed along tactics, confidence, and networks. What began as a protest has carried forward as organized resistance — preparing people to shut things down when it mattered.

Despite its strength, the movement hit a ceiling.

Why organization matters

Spontaneity carried the movement forward. It couldn’t carry it through to stop ICE or force federal agents out. Workers can shut things down. Without organization, they can’t keep them shut.

History shows that moments like this do not automatically turn into lasting victories. They require conscious working-class leadership — leadership rooted in workplaces and communities, capable of turning shutdowns into a unified force.

Minnesota has to be understood in the wider context of U.S. imperialist decline.

Abroad, Washington is starving Cuba by blocking oil deliveries — a move that could leave the island without power within weeks — while pairing sanctions and military pressure against Venezuela and Iran. At home, it expands ICE, builds detention camps, and occupies working-class neighborhoods.

Domestic repression is how the ruling class tries to hold things together as prices rise and public services collapse.

Minnesota showed what happens when that strategy collides with organized communities and workers who refuse to comply.

A rehearsal for what’s coming

The Minneapolis general strike was not an ending. It was a rehearsal.

We’re entering a period of upheaval. General strikes are returning. Federal violence is becoming routine. The legitimacy of capitalist institutions is breaking down.

The question is no longer whether the capitalist system will be challenged. It will.

The question is whether workers will build the organization needed to shut things down again — and keep them shut.

Minnesota clarified what is possible. It also clarified what is missing.

The working class has begun to rediscover its collective strength. The task now is to match that strength with disciplined organization — not after the next eruption, but before it.

Things are moving fast. Power is being contested through struggle, not polite debate.

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