und 4,500 people attended the Richfield rally at 66th and Penn Ave. Lines went for blocks down both sides of both streets (photo/Stephanie Fox)
BY ED FELIEN
“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” Jefferson, Franklin, Adams.
They called it a “Hate America” rally. Mike Johnson, the leader of the Three Stooges who locked the doors to our House of Representatives to protect Donald Trump from being exposed as a pedophile, said, “I bet you you’ll see Hamas supporters, I bet you’ll see antifa types, I bet you’ll see the Marxists on full display, the people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.”
Tom Emmer said it was organized by leftists.
Who were these leftists who organized this event? Where did they come from?
More than 200 organizations helped arrange the event.
The grass-roots organization, Indivisible, was chiefly responsible, and the co-directors of Indivisible are Leah Greenburg and Ezra Levin, a husband and wife team of Carlton College graduates with experience running Democratic Party candidates’ campaigns.
Thousands of protestors gathered in Minneapolis.
The City of Portland’s comic response to their ICE invasion just the week before set the tone for demonstrations nation-wide. There were lots of inflatable frogs and ducks, brass bands and a joyous mockery of tyranny.
There were demonstrations in more than 2700 cities and small towns in every state. It was a great chance to meet like-minded neighbors and have your faith in democracy reaffirmed. In June, Indivisible organized a protest against Trump holding a military parade on his birthday that drew 5 million people. The recent No Kings rally drew 7 million.
The rally in Chicago was especially militant. Chicago had just recently been invaded by ICE, and the response in the Northwest area neighborhoods was to organize block by block, pass out “Know Your Rights” literature and develop a “Spot the ICE” hotline to warn residents of a military invasion.
Mayor Brandon Thompson gave a fiery speech: “I’m calling on Black people, white people, Brown people, Asian people, immigrants, gay people, from around this country to stand up… We are going to make them pay their fair share in taxes to fund our school, to fund jobs, to fund healthcare, to fund transportation. Democracy will live on because of this generation. Are you ready to take it to the courts and to the streets?”
He called for a national general strike to show the billionaires who is really making this country run.
Estimates are that more than 250,000 Chicagoans took part in the demonstrations. That’s about 10% of the population.
The Three Percenters is a right-wing armed militia group that believes only three percent of the American people supported the Revolutionary War. They believed if they could get 3% of Americans to support overthrowing Obama, they could win a new Revolutionary War. They never got to that number, but they were the core of support for Trump’s presidential campaigns.
In Minneapolis, estimates are there were about a hundred thousand demonstrators at No Kings Day. That’s almost a third of the population of the City.
Many people believe Minneapolis is next in line. After Trump is through harassing L. A., New York, Washington D. C., and Chicago, he’ll come after undocumenteds in Minneapolis.
What can we do when the ICEman cometh?
Witness and report.
We must do what we can to document activities of ICE. Record them on your phone. Get witnesses. And report to the press, to the City and County Attorney’s Office, to social media.
Did the ICE officers violate a person’s Constitutional rights?
Following the tone set by Portland’s frog, this raccoon joined the protest.
(photo/Stephanie Fox)
Was there habeus corpus—enough evidence of a crime to justify stopping and arresting someone? Or, was the arrest race and culture based? All people in America, citizens and non-citizens alike, are entitled to due process and equal protection under the law. This applies to everyone regardless of skin color or sexual orientation.
The job of the Minneapolis Police Department is to protect and serve all the people of Minneapolis. If ICE comes to town and tries to stop people and ask for their citizenship papers based on whether they look Latin, that’s illegal according to Minneapolis ordinances, and it’s unconstitutional based on the “equal protection under the law” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
We deserve a mayor who will insure that all the people of Minneapolis are provided equal protection under the law.
When ICE came to Bloomington and Lake last summer the Mayor of Minneapolis was not there to insure that the rights of the people there were protected. Omar Fateh was there, along with Jason Chavez, Aisha Chughtai and Adam Schneider.
The George Floyd riots in 2020 caused half a billion dollars in damages to properties on Lake Street. Those damages could have been prevented if the mayor and the Chief of Police, if Jacob Frey and Medaria Arradondo, would have been on the scene and talked to the demonstrators. Their absence created a power vacuum that was filled by agent provocateurs like The Umbrella Man, the leader of a White Nationalist motorcycle gang, who smashed the windows of Auto Zone and spray painted “Free Shit” on the walls. A July 27, 2020, search warrant identifies Mitchell (Mitch) Wesley Carlson, from Ramsey, Minn., as Umbrella Man. But nothing was ever done about it. There was no prosecution. There has never been a full examination.
The people of Minneapolis deserve an explanation.
That’s one more reason we need a change in leadership at City Hall.
