How 'Justice for George Floyd!' Shook the Ruling Class to the Core

By Nino Brown

Republished from Liberation News.

On May 25, 2020, 44-year-old white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on 46-year-old unarmed Black man George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, sadistically murdering him. Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit 20 dollar bill at a local convenience store in the middle of a pandemic that left tens of millions of Americans out of work and deeper in poverty. Floyd was a victim of the capitalist system, one of the tens of millions who were out of employment. The deadly encounter between Floyd and Chauvin was captured on video by community members and went viral shortly thereafter. 

The next day, the Black working-class communities of Minneapolis led thousands of people of all nationalities demanding justice and accountability, inspiring a nationwide protest movement against racism and police brutality that brought an estimated 35 million people into the streets in righteous and militant indignation. Solidarity protests were held in 60 countries all over the world from Palestine to Haiti to South Korea and more. As brutal force and thousands upon thousands of arrests were employed to repress the movement, the racist underbelly of so-called U.S. democracy was on display to the entire world.

One year since these rebellions began, many reforms have been passed and changes made to combat racism. Politicians and corporations have pivoted to allay the rage of the masses of people across the country sick and tired of racist police terror and the entire system of capitalism with its disgusting inequality. All across the country organizers, activists and progressive groups have demanded radical change, with some raising the slogan “defund the police” and “abolish the police” — representing a marked shift in the struggle for justice.

Derek Chauvin was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of manslaughter on April 20. Facing sentencing in June, Chauvin could be put in prison for 40 years for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder and up to 10 years for manslaughter. 

Yet, since that fateful day in May 2020, many more people have been killed by U.S. police. Some of these people’s names are widely known, such as Daunte Wright, Ma’Khia Bryant, Adam Toledo and Andre Brown. George Floyd’s murder was the “straw that broke the camels back.” But no matter how much negative attention the police get, as an institution of racist rule by a tiny class of the super-rich, they cannot help but enact all kinds of violence against poor and working-class communities, especially Black communities. The fundamental task of the police is to preserve the racist, capitalist status quo.

In the year since Floyd’s murder, activists all over the country have taken aim at qualified immunity, which shields officers from civil and criminal liability. President Joe Biden met with the Floyd family and other families of police brutality on Tuesday in a push to get the Senate to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The bill would impose limitations on the use of police chokeholds, standards for no-knock warrants and limits on the sharing of military equipment by the Defense Department with police departments. Many of these reforms were already on the books in various cities and towns, yet they have not significantly hindered the police from continuing to kill and enact wanton violence on the people. The ruling class is far more reluctant about stripping the police of qualified immunity — their carte blanche to kill, maim, harass and bully. This continues to be an important front of struggle.

The police have been killing people since they were formalized as an organization growing out of the slave patrols in the U.S. South and out of the needs of the capitalist class to police immigrants and low-wage workers in the industrial North. The violence is not new, and many outright murders and assassinations have been captured on camera by civilians. So what is new? What has changed? It is the consciousness of the working class. All of last summer and even into the fall and winter, people continued to rise up against racist police terror and state violence.

As revolutionaries, we know that in order to win basic reforms and so much more, the working class and oppressed people of this country need to be organized. Our class must continue to keep the pressure on through mobilization, education and agitation — drawing in more people to the fight for justice in the immediate sense and also more broadly against racism and capitalism and imperialism. The rebellions have changed the political calculus of the ruling class and thus the terrain of the class struggle. 

In the aftermath of the conviction of Derek Chauvin, many debated what more needed to be done to win true justice. While the verdict was a victory secured through arduous struggle, we know that true, enduring justice can only be enjoyed by winning a new system that removes the basis for white supremacy and all the other unspeakable injustices in this society. To honor George Floyd’s memory, millions have and will commit themselves to this task.

The Minneapolis Uprising and the Heavy Stick of Reaction

[PHOTO CREDIT: David Gannon/AFP/GETTY]

By Ashton Rome

Republished from Left Voice.

Vladimir Lenin is once supposed to have said, “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” The events following the murder of George Floyd prove the dictum. Floyd was murdered on May 25, and less than a month later, the world looks completely different. The cops who killed Floyd were fired, and Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, was charged with second-degree murder. The other three officers, Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao, were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Floyd’s murder happens in the broader context of the murders Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and now Rayshard Brooks. Within the first 10 days after Floyd’s murders, protests spread from Minneapolis to cities around the country and internationally, to Germany, England, and elsewhere. Not surprisingly, it has also inspired state and reactionary responses. This rebellion has quickly gone to phase 2 — the heavy stick of the state.

The Carrot and the Stick

The protests are going on during a period of economic and social crisis, exacerbated by a global pandemic and fueling — and being fueled by — a historic decline of U.S. global hegemony. The crisis is marked by a collapse in confidence in traditional institutions of power in the United States, and growing approval of “socialism,” especially by young people and people of color. It is yet to be seen how much the capitulation of Bernie Sanders’s campaign and his endorsement of Biden has affected people’s political consciousness, but it is likely a significant factor. It has at a minimum prompted reflection on the political expediency of inside-outside and similar strategies. When the old rules and traditional institutions of a society can no longer deliver stability amid crisis, the ruling class is prone to rely on naked violence from the state and “stormtrooper”-like elements.

In the face of crisis, the capitalist class maintains power by using a combination of “carrots” and “sticks,” reform and repression. The exact ratio depends on the ruling class’s ability to contain the crisis at particular moments. The stick is often used during a crisis of legitimacy, in which the ruling class feels itself under existential threat. The reforms are meant to placate the most moderate wings of the movements. They are also an ideological tool to convince a movement that the system is “reformable,” which means that more confrontational approaches to politics are not needed. The stick, on the other hand, is meant to serve both an ideological and coercive goal — to show what happens when individuals and movements verge outside of acceptable boundaries.

A good example of these tactics is found in response to the unrest in the 1960s. In response to the challenges against what Martin Luther King called the “three evils” (racism, poverty, and war), the state combined repressive initiatives like the Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro) and LBJ’s Omnibus Crime and Safe Streets Act with reforms like the War on Poverty and initiatives that supported “Black capitalism” and Black elected leadership. In his book Black Awakening in Capitalist America, Robert Allen argues that the ruling class was terrified by the mass movements and promoted the ideas of “Black capitalism” and community development programs to redirect current and potential radicals into safe channels. By contrast, Cointelpro was the stick — surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting organizations deemed subversive.

As the U.S. economy shifted toward neoliberalism, the carrot has been significantly impoverished, consisting now mainly of favorable media attention, foundation funding, and positions within nonprofits. “Black capitalism,” embodied in the 1960s slogan “Black Faces in High Places” — now called “trickle-down social justice” — was promoted as a way of integrating a section of Black Americans into mainstream society. These “representational demands” were placed in contrast to the revolutionary aims of the Black Left like the Black Panther Party.

Under neoliberalism, nonprofits have also proliferated, existing within a set of relationships that link political parties and the state, donor foundations and educational institutions, leftist movements and capitalist enterprises. Because this arrangement involves class collaboration instead of class conflict, nonprofits are ripe for co-optation. The number of nonprofits in the United States has risen from 3,000 in 1960 to more than 1.5 million in 2016. Individuals and charities typically fund the bulk of these organizations, alongside philanthropic foundations redistributing a micro-percentage of the wealth accumulated by the 1 percent.

Funding from the 1 percent and nonprofits’ needs for funding have helped the financial backers direct and moderate organizations and movements. In her essay “The Price of Civil Rights,” Megan Francis shows how the NAACP’s early civil rights litigation agenda was redirected from a focus on white-supremacist violence and lynching during the crucial Red Summer of 1919 and redirected toward education and integration. The author discusses a phenomenon called “movement capture,” which she describes as “the process by which private funders use their influence in an effort to shape the agenda of vulnerable civil rights organizations.”

The usual co-option will unlikely hold in the face of the current level of social instability, anger, and scale of the protests. As Lara Putnam, Erica Chenoweth, and Jeremy Pressman point out in the Washington Post, protests are even spreading to conservative towns in rural and suburban America. They have likely occurred in more places and in greater numbers than even the Women’s Marches of 2017. The twin crises of the pandemic and economic downturn have the potential to incite protests beyond even what occurred after the 2007–8 economic crisis. Currently, just 19 percent of Americans say they can trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest levels in the past half-century. The burning of the 3rd Precinct police station in Minneapolis is more popular than Biden and Trump. Though May’s unemployment figures may look positive due to “cooking the books,” the unemployment rate is the worst since World War II, with some estimating that 42 percent of recent layoffs could become permanent job losses.

Fascism

Political and economic crises spur mass action and sometimes even revolution, but they also provoke state reaction and counterrevolution. At the same time, fascism, a political movement that uses brute force to eliminate workers’ organizations and liberal democracy, unfolds in a way corresponding to the crisis that creates the conditions for it. The intense state reaction to the current rebellion, alongside the political violence and increased organization of the Far Right, should be cause for concern. Fascists seek to use the mass anger of a crisis situation like the one we now face — a crisis that under the right circumstances can lead to mass class action — and divert it through appeals to racism, xenophobia, and conspiracy theories.

During the 1960s, the Far Right grew substantially, waiting in reserve for when things got out of hand. It is important to remember that the massive civil rights movement was accompanied by the rise of far-right groups like the Minutemen, the KKK, and the John Birch Society. The latter had in 1966 an estimated 80,000 members, operating with a revenue of $5 million. According to Eckard Toy in The Right Side of the 1960s, the John Birch Society’s inaugural meeting included among its luminaries President Eisenhower’s first commissioner of Internal Revenue, a former personal aide of General Douglas MacArthur, two past presidents of the National Association of Manufacturers, a banker, and a University of Illinois professor and rich businessmen. These far-right groups and others aimed to figure out how to mobilize the white working class in the interest of a reactionary and violently oppressive racial order. This goal subsequently became central to the remaking of the Republican Party, reaching its apotheosis in the current presidency.

Protests by heavily armed conservative activists against the Covid-19 lockdowns suggest what can be expected if traditional state means of controlling the working class fail. The protests included an array of explicitly far-right groups, including the Proud Boys and militia groups like the Boogaloos. The majority of the attendees were small-business owners but also disgruntled workers upset by the economic devastation due to the pandemic and lockdown.

The Michigan Freedom Fund, cohost of one such rally, received more than $500,000 from the family of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, which includes among its luminaries the far-right businessman and mercenary-supplier Erik Prince. It was also assisted by Fox News, which ran favorable coverage, and President Trump, who used Twitter to mobilize his base around the protest.

State Repression

Scenes reminiscent of Ferguson have appeared throughout the country as states have deployed the National Guard and militarized police to enforce curfew orders and protect private property. So far, the National Guard has been activated in 15 states and Washington, DC, and 40 cities have imposed curfews. While police in militarized gear like tactical uniforms and utilizing armored personnel carriers were seen in previous events like Occupy and the Ferguson Protests, the Blackhawk helicopter at a DC protest on June 1 and a Predator droneat a protest in Minneapolis, are emblematic of the escalation in state repression. Equally threatening, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty soldiers if governors do not themselves violently crackdown on the protests.

Such a deployment would be the first since the 1992 Rodney King riots and the 1967 riots in Detroit. From January 1965 to October 1971, guard units were used in 260 disturbances, whereas from 1945 to 1965 they were used to handle 88 disturbances. Ironically, the Kerner Commission, which produced a presidential study of the riots of the 1960s, determined that instead of calming communities, the National Guard (as well as inadequate housing, high unemployment, and voter suppression, and racial discrimination) contributed to the years of rioting. The death of David McAtee calls into question their effectiveness in restoring “law and order” currently.

Even before the current protests, Trump and the DOJ were looking for more ways to indefinitely detain people in order to curb the protests. Importantly, Trump and Attorney General William Barr used the DOJ to help whip up the far-right and “angry middle class” protests against social distancing policies. The DOJ’s actions under Trump makes it harder for it to serve the same role as it did in response to rebellion under Obama with Eric Garner. This is because Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions, severely restricted prosecutors’ ability to seek consent decrees and court-enforced agreements.

Simultaneously, Trump has again invoked the threat of “Antifa” and “anarchists,” promising on May 31 that “the United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.” Terrorist organizations, not ideology, are typically designated by the secretary of state, and once selected, they become illegal to join. Even if Trump and the security apparatus of the state do not have the constitutional authority to designate Antifa a terrorist group, there are several essential considerations. Simply threatening to label Antifa a terrorist group may signal to law enforcement that they are expected to investigate and aggressively single out one section of protesters.

The threat could inspire the creation of a category such as “Black Identity Extremist (BIE),” which was cooked up after the Ferguson Protest. Then, it was used to justify assessments or informal investigations by the FBI, subjecting protesters to physical surveillance, informants, and other means. By singling out “anarchists” and “outside agitators,” the state can likely pursue harsh charges against one section of protesters and follow up with others.

In response to inauguration protests led by DisruptJ20, an umbrella coalition of groups, 234 people, including activists, journalists, medics, and legal observers, were arrested and charged with felonies, including inciting to riot, assaulting a police officer, and conspiracy to riot, all of which carry long prison sentences. The case of Ferguson activist and live streamer Michael Avery, who was arrested by the FBI for a social media, post is worrying. They claim that he encouraged looting in Minneapolis. Such an incident, unfortunately, will not be isolated.

Relying on police and the coercive state to subdue movements is complicated. As the degree of conflict intensifies, and the police assume a greater role in repressing demonstrations, strikes, and other forms of resistance, pressure may grow among law enforcement officers to break with the state. During times of mass action and reaction, law enforcement’s everyday functions and legitimacy are called into question, and police experience broad public hostility. This development is embodied by recent calls to “Defund the Police” as a means of curtailing departments’ coercive power. Protests tend to cause splits, as seen in the wave of Black police associations created across the country to deal with racism during the civil rights era. It has also inspired police organizations to react to crisis conditions by using trade union tactics to advocate benefits or defenses against cuts. Repression is not automatic. All these reactions by the police challenge the ordinary functioning of class rule and create another reason for the state to rely on an auxiliary of far-right militants.

The “Anarchist Threat”

Within the first couple of days of the George Floyd protest in the San Francisco Bay Area, “calls to action” were posted online, some of which could easily be attributed to right-wing trolls. The “calls” have no political content and typically call for looting. These likely fake posts created local hysteria that has whipped up the right-wing reaction, up to and including armed citizen patrols, and contributed to a wave of curfews and other restrictions on freedom of movement for activists.

Across the country, news articles have detailed the violent reactions in this environment of hysteria. Only recently, a multiracial family of four visiting Forks, Washington, was confronted by cars full of people, some with semiautomatic weapons, spouting allegations that they were Antifa. There have also been social media posts alleging buses full of Antifa protesters coming to local areas. These posts are tailored to even rural counties throughout the country. These social media posts seems to be in line with a white-supremacist strategy called accelerationism, which says that supremacists should foster polarization to “accelerate” its destruction of the current political order.

Tactics

Aside from the provocations launched through fake accounts, genuine anger has led to looting. This has led to renewed conversations on the Left about tactics. The article “In Defense of Looting,” published by the New Inquiry during a wave of “riot shaming” in the Ferguson Uprising, makes some very good points. Importantly, it shows that the distinction between violent and nonviolent protesters stems from a long-standing discourse about Black criminality and ignores that, historically, change has not come through nonviolence. The author correctly points out that the attention produced by property destruction reflects the primacy of private property for the rich. In this context, the author questions the often-repeated attack that “protesters are burning down their communities”:

Although you might hang out in it, how can a chain convenience store or corporate restaurant earnestly be part of anyone’s neighborhood? The same white liberals who inveigh against corporations for destroying local communities are aghast when rioters take their critique to its actual material conclusion.

But what is the usefulness of looting as a tactic? The article says that “it represents a material way … to help the community by providing a way for people to solve some of the immediate problems of poverty and by creating a space for people to freely reproduce their lives rather than doing so through wage labor.” This could be true at an individual level, but when we talk about a capitalist system and a state that serves the ruling class, we are talking about a question of power.

Spontaneous action like looting and rioting can help disrupt business as usual. Relying on spontaneous action, however, doesn’t get past pressuring those in power to alleviate the issue. Spontaneous action may get the ruling class to pay attention. It does not answer tactical questions like how to turn a temporary rebellion into a movement by bringing in new people. Riots bring increased attention to immediate grievances, which means funding for nonprofits, career opportunities, media appearances, and VIP visits; but by failing to address the root causes of the crisis, it results in a worsening condition for Black people.

At many protests, voting has been a major theme. In November, there will be elections for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate, and, most notably, the presidency. Joe Biden likely hopes that this uprising can be captured to bring much-needed enthusiasm to his campaign. The election might be why demands like “Dismantle/Defund the Police” have gained popularity among some elected Democrats, at least in word.

If this election cycle is anything like 2016, the Democratic Party will be cautious not to offer concrete proposals, as was recommended in a memo to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. We must also be realistic and understand that no single election decides questions of power, and that the threat of fascism is not a short-term problem. The Democratic Party’s identity as a capitalist party, albeit one based in the labor and other social movements, means that it can not offer radical solutions willingly.

The risk of fascism highlights the need for a multiracial working-class movement. Though legal support, countersurveillance, and physical defense are important, it is essential to transform the current rebellion into a movement. The economic and social crisis can be exploited to grow the ranks of the Far Right, but it can also be used to build the workers’ movement. The Left can do more than demand the conviction of the four officers who murdered George Floyd. It can and must lay out a program that will address the root causes of the current crisis.

In Our Flag Stays Red (1948), Phil Piratin, an MP for the Communist Party of Great Britain, describes how the party used its tenant associations and trade union work in the 1930s and 1940s to undercut inroads by the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in his borough of Stephaney, London. The BUF, led by former Labor MP Osward Mosley, held meetings throughout the country and was making advances into working-class communities. The party organized unemployed workers in the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement and did work to strengthen the trade union movement. As well, the party famously organized counterdemonstrations like the one that led to the Battle of Cable Street on October 4, 1936.

The CP deduced that the BUF’s anti-Semitic propaganda struck a chord among some workers, but especially in areas of East London where people were living in miserable conditions and facing unemployment and low pay. The party organized demonstrations like the famous “Battle on Cable Street” that used direct action to limit the spread of the BUF and show that it could be defeated. They also organized in working-class areas where the BUF was creating a base. In the midst of its tenant organizing, the CP discovered that one of its families were members of the BUF. Piratin wrote,

I discovered that in both cases they were members of the BUF and obviously wanted no truck with us. The other was prepared to listen. We pointed out to them, so far as we could judge … that the bailiffs had the law on their side and the only thing to do was to prevent the bailiffs gaining access. This might mean a fight, but we convinced them that it would be worth while. … We called a meeting of as many tenants as possible in one of the rooms, put to them our proposals, and they agreed to make the fight. As a result of this solidarity the other family the next morning decided to take part. Meanwhile, in conversation, we asked this member of the BUF about to be evicted what the fascists had done for him. He said that he had raised the matter, but they had no intention of doing anything. This was a very valuable piece of information to be used by us in disillusioning many of the BUF supporters.

What this historical example shows is that we can undercut the basis of fascism before it forms by appealing to economic interests. This would be much easier if we had an actual left political party and left leadership in this country that could expose the limitations of right-wing populism and fascism. Unfortunately, in its absence we are left with milquetoast Democrats who dress in kente cloth and put forth Band-Aid reforms.

Conclusion

This historical example does not mean that socialists should reduce the unique oppression of the Black working class into a “secondary contradiction.” The anti-Blackness of capitalism is the skeleton key to unlocking all the contradictions of this system for ordinary working people. It exposes the role of the police and state violence in maintaining capital’s domination of society, it exposes how race and class determine who will die from the Covid-19 pandemic, and it exposes the primacy of property in our society.

This period brings profound opportunities and dangers. The crises that define this period have created openings for the Left to grow and challenge the legitimacy of traditional institutions of power and capitalism itself. Already a majority of Americans support the protests, and white Americans’ favorable perceptions of the police have dropped by 10 points to 61 percent. This is particularly noteworthy because “riots” in the United States typically cause pro-police beliefs to rise. But we must also be attuned to, and weave into our tactics, the unique conditions that exist today for the emergence of a fascist movement.

A Statement from Ferguson Political Prisoner, Josh Williams

By Josh Williams

# justice4georgefloyd Let's get this trending once again. Another black man has been taken from us by white racist cops and once again they will see our power. I send my shout out to everybody out there fighting. I say to you: keep it going, the fight is going to get hard but stay in the fight. We are Michael Brown, we are Eric Garner, let's fight. # I can't breathe # HANDS UP DON'T SHOOT.

I want to address the nation again and those who are in power as I sit and watch the protest. I call out President Trump on his bullshit ass comment. I say to you: those people who you call thugs, those people who you call criminals, are my people. Those people who are out there and doing what they doing, they doing it out of anger, they acting out of emotion, so calling them thugs is out of the question.

You the thug, Mr. Trump, and if you got a problem with that, I'm at Pacific Missouri Eastern Correctional Center and you can come personally and talk to to me. But calling my people thugs and criminals, watch your fucking mouth when you speak on my people.

If you would do your fucking job and send these bitch ass cops to jail they wouldn't be out there in the first place.

Second I want to call out the bitch ass cops in the streets of America. I see you and I see what the fuck y'all doing to my people and that shit not gonna fly. I'm telling you this now: KEEP YOUR FUCKING HANDS TO YOUR SELF. DON'T ABUSE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE PROTESTERS, WHEREVER YOU ARE IN THE WORLD, BECAUSE I AM WATCHING.

To the people out there I say to you: keep up the good fight, y'all are standing y'all ground to the max and I love every bit of what y'all doing. I love everybody out there let me tell y'all: if the police try to hurt you, y'all have a right to defend yourself.

Third. I want to call out that bitch ass cop who push that young lady to the ground. Why don't you come push me like that... Don't touch another woman out there, and if you got a problem you can come talk to me. Just set up an interview I'll be more than willing to accept it.

Send our brother some love and light: Joshua Williams, 1292002, Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, 18701 Old Highway 66, Pacific, MO 63069. Learn more about Josh at: https://www.freejoshwilliams.com/

Internationalism Gone Local: The Ginger Jentzen Campaign Shows How Socialism Grows from the Bottom-Up

By Bryant William Sculos

When Socialist Alternative member Kshama Sawant successfully ran and was elected to the Seattle City Council in 2013 (assuming office in 2014), she proved for the first time in a very long time that socialist politics, embodied and presented aggressively, openly, and strategically, can be viable in the United States. Since entering office, Sawant, as the only socialist on the council, has spear-headed a number of successful policy campaigns, including raising the city's minimum wage over several years to $15 an hour and reforming housing and rental policies in Seattle. Sawant has since been reelected and risen in national prominence. Her successes, supported by local, national, and international activists and organizers-combined with the massively popular Democratic Party primary campaign of Bernie Sanders in 2016-have led to a resurgent popularity of socialist ideals throughout the country, with those on left increasingly believing in the importance of building a political party to the left of the corporate Democratic Party.

The enthusiasm quickly spread to Minneapolis where another Socialist Alternative candidate for City Council is driving towards a possible upset election victory against a well-entrenched Democratic Party establishment. Ginger Jentzen's path to becoming one of the top candidates for the Ward 3 seat on the Minneapolis City Council is a bit different than Sawant's. Jentzen, before even considering running for office, led a massively successful uphill battle to convince the corporate-centrist Democrats on the City Council to support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour (something that the current mayor, who ran on a progressive platform, wrongly claimed they did not have the power to do, in a failed effort to quell the 15NOW! movement in Minneapolis, which Ginger was the director of).

The Democrats on the council colluded with Republican judges to keep a $15 minimum wage referendum off the ballot in Nov. 2016. Despite the machinations of the Democrats and Republican parties in Minneapolis, the continued pressure from the 15NOW! campaign pushed most Democrats on the City Council to pivot earlier this year in support of the $15 an hour minimum wage demand, but still only with some concessions to the powerful local business interests .

Ginger Jentzen's campaign is built on this foundation laid by the grassroots activists primarily from Minneapolis, as well as around the country, to win this raise for the working people of her city. Jentzen is striving to bring her experience, passion, and political savvy with her into an elected spot on the City Council.

Ginger is fighting, and gaining a lot of political ground, for her platform centered on: housing affordability, community oversight of the police, increasing taxes on the wealthy, support for the LGBTQA+ and immigrant communities, and expanding support for public transit and education. The Democrats want nothing to do with these extremely popular positions-or rather, they are only interested in them so far as they can appropriate them for electoral victories only to abandon them without a second thought as they continue to cash checks from their corporate backers.

Jentzen has refused all corporate and anti- $15 minimum wage interest donations to her campaign. She is fighting against the establishment Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (the Minnesota iteration of the Democratic Party) candidates who continue to benefit from outside money from corporations and DNC affiliated PACs, groups that care nothing for the working people of Minneapolis. Jentzen has recently become the most successful fundraiser in the history of the Minneapolis City Council-almost all of that money coming from very small individual donations (which is now over $140,000 - a new record for a Minneapolis City Council race).

Ginger Jentzen's campaign has been endorsed by the Minnesota Nurses' Association, CWA Minnesota State Council, United Transportation Union Minnesota Legislative Board, Our Revolution-Twin Cities, Socialist Alternative, the International Socialist Organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, and last but not least, the long-time civil rights activist, world-renowned scholar and public intellectual, Dr. Cornel West.

While Jentzen's victory would still represent a tremendous upset, it is far from unlikely. She has the support of the working people and students in her ward. She has the potential to benefit from the ranked-choice voting procedure in Minneapolis (though her Democratic opponents are laughingly attempting to convince voters that this should benefit them). By allowing voters to choose their real first choice and not be brow-beaten into the continually failed strategy of lesser-evilism, Jentzen has more than a fighting chance.

This is how democracy and socialism, inextricably linked, are supposed to work. Democracy and socialism must be internationalist in its outlook and goals, but building support for the cause of all humanity (especially those long-oppressed and exploited peoples) is a process of persuasion and movement/organization-building that must occur at the local level in order to be successful. Kshama Sawant and Ginger Jentzen (regardless of the eventual electoral results) show why this is so. Local successes, in addition to improving the lives of people, breed confidence. They serve as models for others who may share political and economic solidarity with the socialist project but wrongly fear that those politics cannot be successful electorally in the United States-or that whatever successes achieved would remain local.

Kshama Sawant is a household name in progressive circles in the US, and even beyond. She has continued to live up to her promise to fight for the working people of Seattle while also contributing to the building of a national and international movement. Ginger Jentzen's campaign offer the same promises for success for the working people of Minneapolis, as well as the broader aims of continuing to strengthen the organized Left in the US and around the world. For Kshama and Ginger, a small part of this includes only taking a salary equivalent to that of a skilled worker in their constituencies and donating the rest to build social movements.

Forget Hillary Clinton. These are the real women leading the movements that could eventually break the highest class ceiling of all: the glass ceiling of exploitative, white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, imperial capitalism.

For more information about how you can help or support Ginger's campaign before election day (November 7), check out her campaign website.

Building Working-Class Defense Organizations: An Interview with the Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee

By First of May Anarchist Alliance

The General Defense Committee of the Industrial Workers World (IWW) has become an important pole of struggle for pro-working-class revolutionaries in the Twin Cities. While active on a number of different fronts it is the participation of the General Defense Committee (GDC) in the year-long struggle against police killings and brutality in the Twin Cities that has largely led to the significant growth of the organization. The GDC has grown to approximately 90 dues-paying members in Minnesota, and has several active working-groups. In the wake of Trump's election victory, Wobblies (1) and others across the country have begun establishing their own GDC locals - strongly influenced by the Twin Cities' model.

First of May Anarchist Alliance spoke to Erik D. secretary of the Twin Cities GDC Local 14 about the history and work of the General Defense Committee there. Erik is a father, husband, education worker, and wobbly who's also been involved in the youth-focused intergenerational group, the Junior Wobblies.

This interview originally appeared on First of May Anarchist Alliance's website .

Fellow Worker Erik, can you tell us about the origins and history of the General Defense Committee, its relationship to the IWW, and how the militants who founded the current Local conceived of it?

As I understand it, the General Defense Committee (GDC) was first founded by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1917, in response to the repression of wobblies and anti-WWI draft protests. I haven't learned enough about the historic GDC to really speak much about it. I joined the IWW in 2006, and we didn't formally charter the current local as a GDC until 2011. In 2011, the committee was 13 wobblies. But we had actually started organizing ourselves prior to 2011, calling ourselves the Local Defense Committee.

Are there historical or modern examples or inspirations that influence the way GDC sees itself, its activity and organization?

One of the things I've appreciated about the Twin Cities GDC is the very practical intention to learn, with a specific focus on learning in order to act. From the very beginning we engaged in mutual education. Since one of our early orientations was to anti-fascist and anti-racist work, we did a fair bit of reading on the topic of fascism and anti-fascism (Sunday mornings with coffee).

I mention this period of mutual education because we have a lot of inspirations, but none of them have been role models, per se. We have looked to previous movements largely in order to inform our own work and to learn from our elders and the experience of previous generations, but not as Role Models To Be Emulated. That's been important.

With that caveat, we have a lot of inspiration. I get new inspiration every time I read a book, it seems. Some of the inspiration is local: here, I'd specifically highlight Anti-Racist Action and Teamsters Local 544. Anti-Racist Action (ARA) came out of a Minneapolis-based group of anti-racist skinheads who decided they needed to find a way to kick racist skins and organized fascists out of the Twin Cities. Teamsters Local 544 was the local that organized the 1934 strike that made Minneapolis a union town, innovated new forms of the picket (specifically, the 'flying picket'), and engaged for a short time in open physical confrontation on the streets.

Beyond the Twin Cities, I think our members have a lot of very different inspirations. One of mine has always been John Brown, but I grew up partly in Kansas. I guess the Black Panther Party would be the most common source of inspiration among early members; our advocacy of Community Self Defense certainly owes a lot to the Panthers, including their Survival Programs. The most recent addition to my 'Hall of Inspiration' is Rudy Shields, whom I learned about from Akinyele Omowale Umoja's We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.

One of the first projects of the Twin Cities GDC was organizing a "Picket Training", which seems like a kind of simple project, but you all attached some importance to it. How come?

I think the history of the Picket Training is actually the beginning of the history of the local GDC, so forgive me for a longer answer. The IWW was always heavily involved in local May Day events, naturally. In both 2007 and 2008 we had dispiriting and potentially dangerous experiences in marches that were organized by other groups. These happened when we were 'out-marshaled' and 'peace-policed.' Folks might remember the 2006 "Day Without An Immigrant." In 2007 immigrant protection and rights continued to be major issues, and the march was partly centered around pro-immigrant demands.

So it was worrying when wobblies who had been active in local anti-fascist actions saw someone they thought they knew from a fascist rally elsewhere in the state videotaping the crowd (we were never able to confirm the identity because of what happened next). Fascists videotaping an immigrants rights march is extremely concerning; they were likely videotaping either to research immigrants rights' groups (including antifa groups), or to identify potentially undocumented people.

A few wobblies went to talk to the videotaper and get in the way of the camera. Shouting commenced, and the self-appointed organizers of the march successfully pushed the wobblies back into the crowd, allowing the videotaping to continue.

The May Day parade the next year found wobblies promoting militant chants shut down by the same sort of marshals.

At roughly the same time, the local IWW was doing a lot of organizing. While some of us had prior experience in organizing pickets and direct actions, the Starbucks Workers campaign, the Jimmy John's campaign, the Sisters Camelot Canvas Union, and the Chicago-Lake Liquors campaigns all provided early experience and training in planning and executing pickets and direct actions, in a context where we were already committed to IWW ideas and practices. Some of these were particularly challenging, such as doing intelligence and the occasional flying picket of scab canvassers in the Sisters Camelot campaign. Since they never stayed put, it felt like a throwback to the 1934 strikes and the flying pickets. It was cold both Winters.

There was one particular occasion at the University of Minnesota AFSCME strike in 2007 where the IWW promoted, and executed, a hard picket line in the early morning hours at a delivery dock. This was going extremely well until a UMN delivery truck driver rammed the picket line. I was in the wrong place at the moment, and ended up on his hood. I found out later I'd crushed three neck vertebrae; it took two surgeries and a lot of physical therapy to get past it. It also gave me a serious motivation for doing pickets and direct actions better. Just a week after a truck hit me, a delivery truck hit another picketer at an IWW picket of D'Amico's restaurant, thankfully without serious consequences.

Finally, 2008 was the end of an intense two-year process organized at disrupting the Republican National Convention. Most of us already had a critique of 'summit hopping' styles of disruption, few of which have been effective since before the FTAA in Miami 2003. But a number of wobblies were serious and on occasion influential participants in (at least the early period of) the two years of planning that ended up calling itself the "Welcoming Committee." The Welcoming Committee meetings (which were held in the same community space as the early IWW at the time, the Jack Pine Community Center) hammered out some early agreements and principles, including, along with other interested groups, the well-known Saint Paul Principles. This process also gave local wobblies experience in critically thinking through on-the-street tactics and what it would take to actually win goals and actions on those streets, whether in labor pickets or direct actions(2).

All these motivations and experiences were in the forefront of our minds when we thought up the picket training. We knew we had to get better at this, and though we all had some experience, that's not the same thing as having teachable knowledge. So we researched, wrote, debated, and practiced. We adopted a principle of teaching the tactics quickly rather than perfecting the training first, and encouraged people to think about themselves as the next trainers. In order to keep track of our curriculum and to make it portable, we created a trainer's manual, a trainee manual, and a setup manual, which we update frequently.

We offer the trainings to non-wobblies, and while we avoid being an on-call security group, we are trusted locally as providing quality security and planning successful actions. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and on-the-streets protest since Ferguson, I think the GDC has earned a bit of respect from other local organizations as a result.

Anti-fascism seems to have been a key concern for the Twin Cities GDC from the start. Can you explain a bit about why this was the case and how the GDC intended to "do" anti-fascism a bit differently than other antifa groups?

Partly that was organic, because of the people involved. One of our members was a member of the Baldies, and later Anti-Racist Action, and brought a lot of experience on that front to the table(3) .Others also had anti-fascist experience. Given that density of experience and expertise, it was fairly natural that we were interested in anti-fascism from the beginning.

Our first major action was the disruption of a David Irving event (4). Like most of his events in recent years, promotion and entrance to these is secretive and even paranoid. We created fake identities and profiles, acquired tickets and location information, and mobilized over 80 locals who hated the idea of fascists meeting in our city. This put our early group's planning abilities to the test, since the meeting was on an upper floor of a downtown hotel with a front desk by which everyone would have to walk.

As we went along, and based in part on discussions and debates both internal to the GDC and to the local IWW, we formulated a clearer understanding of the relationship we think should exist between anti-fascist work (I think these days, I'd say "Community Self Defense," which would include antifa work) and unionism(5).

Part of the clearer rationale was to establish faith and credit with groups that may have bad impressions of unions, or prioritize other forms of work, and to bring a more diverse group of fellow workers into the IWW. Another part was the understanding that if the IWW ever gets close to its goal of genuinely challenging the foundations of capitalism, we will have to have a group and an orientation capable of defending the union and its workers. We didn't feel that we should wait until the attack came to organize to fight it.

I think the most significant difference of our anti-fascism from other anti-fascist groups is our relatively public, or mass, orientation. Many anti-fascist groups operate largely as affinity groups, stressing secrecy and small numbers, for good reasons. But the types of pressure we can place on the fascists with these sorts of organizations is limited, and the risks to members enormous. Our anti-fascism has taken a mass orientation: we aim for the largest, most public, and most militant forms of engagement possible, consistently pushing for more radical analysis and actions. While some groups consider mass organizations fundamentally reactive and apolitical, the GDC has made its own anti-capitalist and revolutionary politics clear, in order to avoid being captured by liberals.

It seems apparent that the GDC really "took off" during the recent upsurge against police killings in the Twin Cities (Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, Phil Quinn, Michael Kirvelay & others) - could you say a little bit about why this was the case, how the GDC oriented itself and what allowed it to be a place for militants to come and to grow?

Right. The GDC began to grow very rapidly with the engagement at the Fourth Precinct. I want to talk for a minute about the types of engagement that we practiced there, but first I would like to point out the time difference: we'd been meeting irregularly since 2009, were chartered in 2011, and began to 'take off' in 2015. We didn't develop in a rush, despite our feeling of urgency. In retrospect, we should have done more, earlier, and more seriously. You can only prepare to be ready for crisis and then wait to respond in an organized fashion. By the time the police murdered Jamar Clark, after Ferguson and other places had already seen massive protests, we were ready to respond in public, I think.

About two months previously, we'd tested our ability to organize a disciplined mass march and directly confront racists. A group of racists organized a Confederate Flag display on the state capitol grounds. The state sold them a permit. We weren't going to tolerate that. We had meetings ahead of time to organize a counter-protest. We had decided to explicitly make clear that this was a GDC action, and to use our own marshaling teams, and worked with a large variety of other groups. One especially important person in that entire process person is the aunt of Marcus Golden, who murdered by the Saint Paul Police Department in January 2015. She joined the IWW and the GDC shortly afterwards, and seems to be everywhere at all times, moving the work along.

The march began where Marcus was murdered, and ended at the Christopher Columbus statue on the capitol grounds, after ensuring that the Confederate Flag wavers were no-shows. The sheer numbers of people and organizations pledging to come, along with our clearly demonstrated militance, scared them off.

When Jamar was killed, GDC members mobilized quickly. Young Black activists began an occupation of the Police Fourth Precinct. The Fourth Precinct is in North Minneapolis, which is a heavily policed Black neighborhood. In the 1960s, the building of the Fourth Precinct was constructed as a community center called "The Way," in response to two Summers' of uprisings demanding racial justice in the USA. As a metaphor of how unfulfilled the promises made to the civil rights movement have been, I can't think of a starker local one than the transformation of a Black-oriented Community Center into a fortress of blue terror.

Once the occupation was established, which took a matter of minutes to hours, activists began setting up the infrastructure for a long haul. It was already cold, but it got arctic during the eighteen days of the occupation. GDC members were heavily involved in the direct confrontations with police, to be sure, but far more importantly, we created direct relationships with local militants and young people from the neighborhood, whose politics and responses were often directly at odds with the activists who had started the occupation.

Local youth tended to a far greater degree of militancy, and simply understood more clearly what was necessary to protect the encampment, regardless of whether the self-appointed official protest leaders thought. We often provided security at night, when cars would drive at us menacingly, or shots would be fired in nearby alleyways. We were not present in an organized fashion at the moment when White Supremacists showed up and shot people at the occupation, and so I can't say how well we would have responded that night.

An important point about the rise in our local appeal during the struggle for the Fourth Precinct was that we were a largely disciplined group that could reliably be counted on to do what we promised. Equally important is that while we showed up consistently and stayed in solidarity with the protest, we never relaxed our principled criticism of other groups' tactics. Critiques weren't made on social media or publicly, but we were consistent in pushing in person for more radical and militant approaches.

At one point, the self-appointed protest leaders had had enough of being challenged by local youth and militants like ourselves. Pissed that they were losing the obedience of the crowd, which was largely demanding increased militance, one of them grabbed a mic during a tense moment during the encampment and id'd one of our white members as an undercover cop. Frankly, we were fortunate that the person she accused has been active in anti-racist circles for decades and is locally well-known as a result. If the accusation had been made against one of our younger members, the outcome might have been less peaceful.

As a consequence of that event, and a lot of others similar to it, the GDC wrote and released a public statement explaining 'badjacketing' and demanding that no one involved in seeking justice should engage in it (6). We pushed that line hard for what felt like months, but was really just about a week during the occupation. Then the tide started turning and a large number of groups and individuals began to consider the downsides of that sort of action, and condemn it. I think the outcome of our stance against badjacketing actually was greater over time and after the occupation.

For those that aren't so familiar with the last year of activity in the Twin Cities, what have been some high points and challenges of this struggle against the police- and how has the GDC concretely participated in and contributed to this struggle?

With specific reference to our anti-police work, a few things have come together. Those of us who'd been involved in previous actions had some knowledge of police personnel and leadership already; like most municipalities, our local cop leadership would be laughably incompetent if they weren't so oppressive and largely untouchable. A few particular people had started to catch our attention over the years, among them especially Bob Kroll, who was elected President of the local cop union in 2015.

Kroll has a long and documented history of brutality on the job and off, and has been accused of wearing a "White Power" badge on a jacket, and being involved in a process where the then-chief presided over the demotion, retirement, or firing of every single Black officer in the MPD. He also called the first Muslim to serve in the US Congress a "terrorist."

We had already written up a report on Bob Kroll, summarizing his history with documentation, but hadn't really distributed it(7). When Kroll started lying in public about the details of Jamar Clark's murder by two MPD officers, we released the report along with a demand that local reports stop allowing him to comment on subjects related to race and policing, without mentioning his background. We had a big effect in publicizing Kroll's history, to the point that he's been complaining about how frequently people refer to his background, calling him a White Supremacist, etc. We've had little to no effect on local reporters, unfortunately.

While the Fourth Precinct occupation was ongoing, we caught wind of a fundraiser being held by Sheriff Stanek (heavily involved in the crackdown on the protesters at the RNC Convention in 2008) for his reelection at a bar and bowling alley in Northeast Minneapolis. The site was about ten blocks from the Minneapolis cop union's headquarters. We planned and announced a march to the cop union headquarters at night from a local park.

The very same day, however, the police forced the Fourth Precinct occupation out. There was a great deal of anger and disappointment over the course of the day, and people weren't ready to give up just yet. We went ahead with our planned protest, starting with about 20 protesters at our rally site.

We began to march not to the cop union headquarters, but to the bar and bowling alley where the fundraiser was being held. The vast majority of Black Lives Matter protesters were across the river in downtown Minneapolis, inside City Hall. When they left City Hall, a large contingent came and joined us outside the bar. By the time they arrived, many of the fundraiser guests had fled, and the rest had locked themselves inside. We held an impromptu rally outside the bar, and then marched to the cop union headquarters. It was an energetic, militant march. We'd made the cops so nervous that they'd installed security fencing around the property, and had placed snipers in the upper floors of the building across the street.

A few GDC members continued to help hold down the Justice4Jamar movement locally after the eviction from the precinct. They joined a new coalition called the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar, and showed up outside the Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman's office every Friday for "Freeman Fridays," keeping Jamar's name in the news and the demand fresh. I was out of the country at the time, but on one of the coldest days of the year, the GDC played a large part in a mass march. The cold caused some innovations: entering local Cub Foods for a while looked like fun!

Of course, the local police haven't stopped murdering people since Marcus Golden and Jamar Clark. This year we had a number of people murdered by the police: Michael Kirvelay, whose sisters called the police for help while he was in a mental crisis, and who was murdered by them; Phil Quinn, a Native man also experiencing a mental health crisis, was murdered in 2015. Map Kong, a Cambodian-American murdered in his car while having a bad reaction to drugs, Geno Smith, and Philando Castile. The last is a bit closer to me than the others, since Philando worked at the school where my son went for 7 years, and my daughter had been there for 6 years already. They both knew and loved Philando ("Mr. Phil," they called him), like all the students did. Personally, I'm grateful I started fighting against police murder when I did; I think if I hadn't had some actual experience I would have been far more shaken when it came that close to home.

We're still fighting for justice for Philando and all those murdered by the cops. After Philando was murdered, a group of mostly younger activists marched to Minnesota Governor's Mansion, not far from the school where Philando worked. That occupation remained in place for some time, but never reached the militancy or organization that we saw at the Fourth Precinct, for a bunch of different reasons. After the occupation was cleared out, the GDC organized and called for a rally and march to shutdown the two municipally owned liquor stores, which help to directly fund the police department whose officer, Jeronimo Yanez, murdered Philando.

We organized this as a GDC-led action, and as such we organized it in our fashion. We did a lot of turnout work, education about the connection between the stores and the police department, and publicly promised that we would picket the stores with the intention of denying them important Saturday evening business.

This action drew the attention of more racists who tried to troll us. This was average and expected. We also drew explicit threats from Wisconsin National Guard veterans who claimed they would show up armed, and posted images of personally owned military weaponry on our pages to scare us off. We took these very seriously and began research and documentation. Shortly after, we released our security report on the situation, along with a public statement that we were unafraid, provide for our own security and don't rely on police, and we were going ahead. We did create a few new security tactics appropriate to the situation, which were useful in keeping us all safe.

Despite the threats, the protest was large and well-attended. We rallied at a point midway between the two stores, not letting on which store we were heading to. Before we even began marching, the both stores closed, which represented significantly more economic damage than we'd even hoped to inflict by picketing one of the stores.

What kind of folks began to join and participate in the GDC? How was its composition similar or different from the IWW or the anti-police movement in general? So far, the GDC seems to have "succeeded" as a multi-racial organization - how is this?

Most significantly were newer Black members and other members of color. Some had joined prior to the precinct, but it's my impression that anti-confederate flag action, and the precinct occupation, were important moments in attracting Black members. The African People's Caucus of the IWW was active prior to both of these events, and I think that their work, which was often behind the scenes, was often the most important work done, communicating revolutionary and antifascist politics to people who may not have encountered them in this way previously.

Probably the best way to describe the membership of the GDC in general is that members often have direct experience with forms of oppression that are not based solely in the workplace, and a desire to confront those challenges from a revolutionary and consistent place. All of our working groups arose either from skills members already had or had developed and were willing to share, or from needs we had. In addition to Anti-racism and anti-fascism, and training people to do more effective pickets and direct actions, we struck working groups like cop watch, harm reduction, and survivor support.

New working groups seem to have a period of incubation after being struck, during which the people involved start to think out, collectively and carefully, what a GDC and community self defense oriented approach would look like, and then get started. Once disciplined action is taken, especially if it's successful, we seem to have an influx of new members who are also affected by or concerned with those forms of oppression. I'm happy with the way that this approach has found knowledgeable and skilled members and connected them with others.

The Twin Cities IWW has been a fairly sizable and active Branch for years - this no doubt provided a good basis to build from, but there has also been some informal controversy and debate within the Branch over some Wobblies' orientation towards the GDC. What were the concerns and how has that played out?

Yes. The local GDC wouldn't exist without the local IWW, and I strongly feel that GDC locals should encourage all eligible members to join the IWW and begin workplace organizing. In terms of controversy, it's my impression that there were criticisms; I was definitely aware from the beginning that a few members opposed the formation of a GDC, but there wasn't ever a clear debate or discussion. GDC members solicited critique and engagement from wobblies, but nothing much really came of it, unfortunately.

Some concern was definitely based in the notion that organizing against fascists would put IWW members as a whole at risk of fascist attack. A few other objections seem possibly to have been that this was macho adventurism, and a distraction from the work of organizing at the workplace. All of these deserve a serious response. In some ways, however, the GDC's more controversial ideas have become common sense. The idea that anti-fascism is optional for unionists, for instance, seems to be moot at the moment. This isn't as much because of our work, necessarily, as because of recent history: it's hard to retain any illusion about the role of the police, or the threat of fascism to workers, after Ferguson, or after Trump's election.

How has the GDC maintained a democratic culture in the context of constant action and growth? What are the main ways for Defenders to communicate, raise ideas, and debate issues? How does political development work within the GDC - what would you like to see in terms of political and educational culture within the GDC?

The people involved at the beginning were all wobblies with a fair bit of experience in the organization and a dedication to democratic practice. So in that sense there was already a basic common culture and attitude. I'm not certain we've always done this as well as we could, though we usually self-correct fairly quickly. I think over the last year the most important nuts-and-bolts contribution to a democratic practice and culture has been found in improving our paperwork and bureaucracy, actually. With regular minutes and agendas, asking people to write motions ahead of time, and being as organized as possible, our organization has grown in transparency.

I'm not certain that we currently have the practices and culture in place to maintain this without serious new effort. The rapid growth in membership proposes a challenge to this: it means that the serious and lengthy process of mutual education, which was the basis of our common understandings and analysis, and made our planning and actions easier and more coherent, will now have to be sped up and transformed into a process that can handle large numbers of new members.

There is a very serious need for lots of educational initiatives, as well as finding ways to encourage people to take part in them. We need lots of writing, lots of one-on-ones, lots of explanations, and lots of patience. If you've been around for awhile, get used to hearing the same explanations of ideas, acronyms, etc. That's a sign that we're growing. If it's irritating, please get involved in making the explanations better. Along with speedily connecting new members to working groups, I think continuing the practice of mutual education is our greatest current challenge.

What initiatives of the GDC are you excited about and what do you see as the biggest challenges and weaknesses to overcome as we move into the Trump era?

The GDC has experienced solid growth as an institution for the last few years. Here in the Twin Cities, we helped folks in St Cloud organize and apply for charters for a new IWW and a new GDC local, both of which I believe were just approved.

The projects we take on in the GDC are organized by working groups. As we've grown in numbers and capacity, the number of working groups has grown. Every new working group makes me excited.

The Survivor Support working group is our newest working group, and has already taken numerous successful direct actions. I'm really excited about this project. It remains the case that many more people of color are murdered by police than fascists, and many more women experience rape and violence at the hands of partners, friends, and acquaintances than they do from the faces of the Men's Rights groups. We must address everyday violence and oppression in our attempt to build Community Self Defense.

The post-election moment feels very new, at least at the moment. In the days immediately following, a very large swell of interest in both the GDC and the IWW happened, and a lot of my personal energy recently has gone into helping other groups charter by giving as much practical advice and history as possible. Because I am convinced that the GDC and the IWW have immense potential for the next few years, this growth is thrilling and exhausting at once.

It's thrilling partly because of the new energy, and the sudden appearance of people who are, perhaps for the first time, to fight. It's exhausting because the task ahead of us is immense, and will require a nearly constant process of mutual education.

Thankfully, creating trainings is something we've been doing well in the Twin Cities, and with the new energy, I'm hopeful we can continue to both grow and consolidate our growing power. We've started thinking about what the process of doing mass, mutual education would look like, and thinking of how to implement it. The point of all of our trainings, beyond the specific skills taught, is to spread the skills and analysis we have as widely as possible among the working class, in order to increase our confidence, competence, and militancy. The next year is going to lit, if we do it right.

Finally, we've been debating and developing a long-term strategy for GDC growth in the Twin Cities. Without going into details, I'll just say that the long term strategic and nut-and-bolts planning of our group is inspiring, and gives me hope.

The Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee Local 14 contact info:

Web: https://twincitiesgdc.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TC.GDC/

Twitter: @TCGDC

Contribute $: https://fundly.com/support-revolutionary-community-organizers-in-minneapolis

Address: c/o Twin Cities IWW 2 E Franklin Ave Suite 1, Minneapolis, MN 55404

Members of the First of May Anarchist Alliance are among those active in the Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee. For more information on First of May: m1aa.org

Notes

1 A nickname for members of the Industrial Workers of the World union (I.W.W.)

2 For a discussion of the "St. Paul Principles": http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/2/16/1065414/-A-Principled-Stand-on-Diversity-of-Tactic-Avoiding-Uniformity-of-Failure; For more on IWW activity during the 2008 RNC: http://www.iww.org/nl/node/4384

3 The Baldies were among the first anti-racist skinhead crews in the U.S. Anti-Racist Action, is a radical direct action anti-fascist network that was a key to fighting KKK and neo-nazi organizing from the late 80's until recent times.

4 David Irving is probably the most famous Holocaust-denier "historian" in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving

5 "Unionism and Anti-Fascism" (2013) https://twincitiesgdc.org/antifascism/

6 "No To Badjacketing: the State Wants To Kill Us; Let's Not Cooperate" (2015) https:// twincitiesgdc.org/badjacketing/

7 "Robert Kroll: Not Credible on Race or Policing" (2015) https://twincitiesgdc.org/2015/11/29/ kroll-report/