The bourgeoisie continue their dress rehearsal of mass terror and deportations with the commencement of Operation Metro Surge in December of 2025, in which the state of Minnesota is being targeted to prepare for the coming intensification of mass deportations and attacks on living standards in the wake of the inevitable economic crisis. Using the pretext of fraud, the state launched the initiative and has managed to arrest around 3,000 people. The racial element of targeting minority immigrants was made explicit with Trump labelling Somalis as “garbage”, along with the DHS and ICE collaborating to racially profile and target Latino workers who often perform precarious, low wage work. A leaked memo authorizes ICE agents to enter private residences with an administrative warrant, i.e. they do not have to receive approval from judges and can issue warrants autonomously, marking a break from previous legal practice. Once again, we observe how the bourgeoisie violates its own laws and constitutions out of the necessity of continuing the exploitation of the working class. We shall see when the class struggle intensifies who the real garbage is… the capitalists!

In response to these federal operations and more acutely, the murder of Renée Good, a series of protests have occurred that culminated in what opportunists of all stripes are calling a “general strike” on January 23rd. Thousands and perhaps as many as 50,000 engaged in the protest under the leadership of the “ICE Out Coalition”, a local activist organization that has managed to gain the support of a significant section of the Democratic Party and the petty-bourgeoisie, as nearly one thousand small businesses closed their doors to support the action. This is likely because cheap immigrant labor is essential for them to exploit to achieve slim profit margins. Their demands call for: ICE to leave Minnesota, legal accountability for state officers, no more funding for Trump’s ICE (notice that their problem is stated to only be with Republican-controlled ICE), and for corporations big and small to deny access to ICE agents and become “4th Amendment businesses”. Also present are the classic appeals to abide by and defend the Constitution, democracy, and rights of all kinds, human and inalienable.

We communists know that the working class has no interest in defending bourgeois order, which is both fascist and democratic. “The rights of the poor are empty words”, to quote the lyrics of the Internationale. The bourgeois tendency of this group is also highlighted by its tactical approach to the question of striking by first encouraging workers to find “friendly bosses” and common ground with them (as if such a thing could exist!) and by leading workers onto the terrain of the NLRB where the class struggle is co-opted into legal channels. Their official document reminds workers of their no-strike clause and makes the suggestion to claim mental or physical illness as a means of calling out sick.

As for the unions which endorsed the protest, Teamsters Local 638’s official statement tepidly reminded workers that striking would be illegal. IATSE Local 13 told workers that they have the right to choose, but to make sure the bosses know in advance. SEIU Healthcare MN issued a stern warning that participation in strike action could lead to job termination. The president of CWA Local 7250 stated, “We have not voted on a strike, but our union is calling on people to support this call”. The MNA told their workers that they hold an essential caregiving role as a moral appeal in order for them to follow the no-strike clause, as well as a quite honest assessment of what the endorsement is by stating that the “MNA is joining a broad and growing coalition of labor organizations, faith leaders, business owners, and community members across Minnesota”. According to the New York Times, the president of the MNA went so far as to discourage members from missing work alongside other labor leaders.

The function of the business union leadership seen here is to suppress militancy wherever it organically erupts. By telling workers to not take action and not even bother voting on taking more serious militant action, this layer serves to neuter struggle and keep it legal in order to preserve their labor aristocratic privilege of a salary far beyond what the average worker makes. They fear breaking labor law because it puts their job in jeopardy and salary on the line. Ultimately, the result of this is a drive to find power from other classes, which pushes these unions into engaging in united fronts that keep the status quo.

Let us look more deeply at where the working class was in this action. Spontaneous organization among the proletariat in the form of workplace committees or strike councils did not occur in any significant sense, or perhaps at all, and so the workers who chose not to go to work typically did so on an individual, legal basis. This, of course, is a very weak tactic and one that diminishes the importance of workers acting as one and drawing strength from numbers and common action. The leadership of the regime unions fall squarely in line with the rest of the mush of this activist united front. Unions endorsed the action en masse, but unanimously rejected any strike language, consistently citing contractual legal obligations to the no-strike clause. The function of this endorsement is then to send the workers to the protests, to not strike (they are granting individuals the glorious freedom to choose!), and to rope them into bourgeois politics and tactics that are connected to the growing anti-fascist popular front led by the Democrats.

In the absence of the leadership of the class political party, the actions of the proletariat are left to be subsumed by bourgeois politics and directed towards the defense of capital. We cannot depend upon the bourgeoisie, its state, and its allies to give us scraps; we need to force their hand with militant class struggle. The political and activist coalitions present themselves as the organizers and ignitors, but they are opportunists seeking to anticipate and direct the class back onto the field of class collaboration and coalitions with the bourgeoisie, thus practically delaying the development of the class and its maturation into defensive self organization.

Despite the present misleadership, we celebrate the awakening of the proletariat as it participates in mass action and seek to guide it in the right direction toward the class union and to communism.

The question remains: Was this action qualitatively different from previous actions like 50501 and No Kings? To this, we answer with a resounding “no.” What happened was neither a general strike nor a notable “step forward” in comparison to previous action.

It is true, however, that talk of a general strike has become more common, but this is to be expected as the objective conditions worsen and the class organically and spontaneously develops the trade-union consciousness to attain short term objectives. This growing popularity of the term “general strike” may also be a result of appropriation and defangment to instead mean disorganized walk-outs and protests, with no serious worker organization committing to a workplace strike. The role being played here by news outlets, activist groups, and opportunism is negative and serves to misdirect workers towards sterile action, proclaiming the general strike as the ultimate weapon all while lying to workers and telling them that mass protest without serious strike action, like what has been happening before, is tactically correct and that we just need “more organizing” or “more numbers” in general.

Missing from the chagrin of these scoundrels is a serious plan for accomplishing a general strike and a concrete analysis of business unionism and the labor law regime. Only the Communist Party, with its historic experience and political clarity, can correctly give the watchwords that put the working class back on the path of class struggle and towards a serious and effective general strike.

When we look back at the historic 1934 Minneapolis General Strike that has been referenced in comparison to the recent action, there is a stark contrast. At that time, workers organizations were still in the process of being subordinated to the state, with the National Industrial Recovery Act being one such method of government mediation in labor disputes. Communists agitated within the Teamsters, then led by business unionist Daniel Tobin, to push for a strike that encompassed multiple different sectors of workers as well as the unemployed. With a significantly militant and impoverished base of workers, they managed to easily outmaneuver whatever attempts at restriction and anti-militancy that came from leadership. When the time came to strike, other unions struck in solidarity as well.

There was no popular front at play here, nor a united front with interclass and non-worker organizations from above, but rather a united front from below in which workers in their own organizations agitated and committed to serious strike action outside of the limited governmental structures that existed at the time which would have them compromise. Coalitions were made on the explicit grounds of worker organizations and for strike action. The Democratic governor at the time, Floyd Olson, mobilized the National Guard, declared martial law, and banned picketing despite the supposed pro-worker orientation of the Farmer-Labor Party and the broader FDR administration. Federal intervention had forced the employer to accept most of the union’s demands, but this was only to prevent broader social revolt. With the bought time, FDR’s administration was allowed to stabilize and further penetrate workers organizations in order to subordinate them to produce for the imperialist war and allow capitalism to survive.

It is this very same Democratic Party that prepares to cloak itself in a worker veneer as it begins the construction of the future anti-fascist popular front à la Roosevelt. Its real purpose lay in the preservation of capital and of disciplining workers for war. It is the same Democratic “heroes” in office that call for ICE to leave or for immigration reform, but allow their party members to authorize expanded funding and for Walz to mobilize the national guard to protect private property and the capitalist order. It is the same Democratic Party whose “deporter-in-chief” removed nearly 3 million people to be exploited abroad so that the economy could recover from the 2008 crash, beating Trump’s record. The Democratic Party, its non-profit and activist appendages, and the regime union apparatus work to anticipate the organic emergence of working class defensive struggles and seek to corral these energies into their interclass organs to save capitalism and prepare for imperialist war.

Workers need to recognize the mirage for what it is, abandon the false oasis, and resume the path of class struggle and building the class union. To seriously achieve a general strike, it will take a great deal of effort and coordination that has to contend with enemies on all sides that seek to misdirect the struggle, as well as an objective worsening of the conditions of the class. Practically, workers must agitate within their unions for class unionist principles such as removing the no-strike clause, radical economic demands, aligning contracts to expire on May 1st, 2028, and be willing to struggle against business union leadership that would rather compromise. The NLRB straightjacket can, must, and will be broken so as to unleash workers from their slumber and truly fight back. Unorganized and organized workers alike must come together and unite to strike from below, utilizing what they can in existing unions and forming new organs of struggle to put forth their own class demands. It is only by fighting for the class union and ultimately for communist revolution that ICE will be dismantled and for there to be an end to the bourgeois reign of terror.

For the united trade union front from below and a real general strike!
Against the coming popular front!
Against united fronts from above!
For independence from bourgeois parties and activist coalitions!




January 30 Flyer
Towards a REAL general strike!

We must fight for an actual general strike! An indefinite strike that halts production, paralyzes profit, and demonstrates the power that a united workers’ movement has. This action is the workers’ strongest weapon for defending against attacks on living standards and resisting violent mass deportation. The general strike will bring in busboys and bus drivers, domestic workers and natives, the organized and unorganized.

While we applaud the fighting spirit of workers across the United States and are encouraged by their willingness to engage in collective action, it won’t do to settle for any distortion of what a general strike is. A general strike is not a one day “economic shutdown” that is pushed by capitalist politicians or employers through calls for individuals to not shop, not go to school or work, or bosses shutting down their own shops for the day and locking out workers.

A general strike is when workers, arm in arm, take a stand against the capitalists and the state through a collective withholding of their labor-power under the leadership of explicit workers’ defensive organizations. It cannot come from decentralized networks of individuals that do not collectively commit to strike.

The interclass groups that lead these efforts seek to direct genuine anger into voting for the Democrats Party, strengthening capitalism and delaying the workers from organizing a militant, organized defense.

Both Democrats and Republicans use ICE and deportations to regulate the labor market, cyclicly opening and closing borders in order to secure the exploitation of precarious workers for low wages while undercutting domestic workers wages. Immigrant and domestic workers must unite in common defense of wages and living standards across borders!

When the established labor unions tell workers that they cannot violate the no-strike clause in their contracts, as they did during the protests in Minneapolis, they undermine the very action required for a real general strike. Mere protests without indefinite strike action, which can leverage the labor-power of large swathes of the working class, channels the rightful rage and pain of workers towards temporary symbolic action behind demands that are neither truly fought for, nor something capitalism will ever yield without extreme struggle; at best, it results in a temporary reform that can be easily revoked as class tensions subside. By telling workers to follow Democratic Party-linked groups, they funnel the energies of the class into class collaboration and abandon what really gives workers power: the strike.

Simply calling for “more organizing” and “more numbers” isn’t enough. We must restore the meaning and power of the general strike with a radical change in tactics.

We need to abandon the united front from above with interclass political and activist groups that misdirect the struggle and work towards a united front from below, i.e. one that combines all worker’s defensive organizations towards collective strike action.

This means forming class struggle formations or workplace committees, inside or outside existing unions, among the organized and unorganized, committed to increasing the strength of the struggle to achieve the immediate demands of workers without holding back from taking action that would break the suffocating rules of the National Labor Relations Board which are designed to contain the working class from leveraging its full strike power. We must reject compliance with the no-strike clause in contracts and organize towards collective action across sectors, unions, and borders by organizing in solidarity for May 1st, 2028 alongside the unions that have already taken this step, or organize a real general strike much sooner.

Out of this united front must come the combination of workplace committees, unions, and workers into a single class trade union that includes all workers against the wage system. Only the international unity of workers, organized in these class unions and led by the communist party, can destroy the capitalist system that produces ICE, prisons, deportations, and poverty.

For a real general strike directed by workers’ organizations that coordinate collective mass strikes!
Against united fronts with interclass capitalist groups!
For the class union!