Shane Burley argues the June indictment of fifteen Minneapolis union members and leaders — on charges that can carry decades-long sentences — is the administration’s clearest acknowledgment that organized labor, not “antifa,” is what actually threatens its ICE crackdown.
In Minneapolis, no officer was injured. The alleged “conspiracy” is standard organizing: planning demonstrations, encrypted chat threads, blockading roads, and — in one case — moving a box of zines. What separates the fifteen from millions of other protesters is that they are union members and leaders in a city where the labor movement anchored resistance:
- The Minneapolis Federation of Educators built school patrols that brought thousands of parents to ICE watch outside classrooms
- Postal workers pushed ICE off postal property used as staging grounds
- SEIU Local 26 carpooled nervous workers past ICE checkpoints; UNITE HERE 17 ran mutual aid networks before a successful strike
- All fifteen defendants were active in the January 23 general strike that shut down much of the state
Defense discovery later exposed the surveillance behind the case: HSI ran “Operation Puppet Master” and “Operation Whipple” against MFE, MAPE, SEIU Local 26, and the statewide AFL-CIO — undercover agents at union halls, churches, and schools; SEIU’s finances probed for “domestic terrorist financing”; CWA’s PAC audited; even a Canadian local swept in. The investigation began before any illegal action was identified, and the defense calls it a conclusion reached “with no evidence (but obvious political animus).”
Burley’s point: while some labor leaders hope silence will spare them, it is unions’ very existence that threatens the administration’s agenda. Labor declined over forty years largely through inaction — its future depends on showing that solidarity is the antidote to authoritarian repression.