Luis feliz Leon

Icicles hung from the beards of men in union beanies. The lobbies of large commercial buildings in downtown Minneapolis opened to the public for respite filled with people rubbing each other’s sore feet, peeling the sticky adhesive off foot warmers to place them under their socks, and jamming their feet into thickly insulated boots.

Minnesota appears to be in gear for a mass uprising. Unions, community organizations, faith leaders, and small businesses there are calling for a statewide day of “no work (except for emergency services), no school, and no shopping” on January 23. Festering grievances swelled into a national outcry on January 7, after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed poet and mother of three Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis while she and her wife were observing federal agents swarming her neighborhood. A week later, another federal agent shot a Latino immigrant from Venezuela in the leg.

The whistle blows in short bursts: PHWEEE! PHWEEE! PHWEEE! PHWEEE! Code: ICE is nearby. Then comes the long blast: PHWEEEEEEEEEEE! Code: ICE has taken someone. These are the codes rapid responders are using to alert their neighbors and co-workers to ICE sightings and kidnappings. Federal agents are armed with military-style weapons. Up against them, everyday people have whistles, boundless courage, and the acronym S.A.L.U.T.E.

Labor federations around the world are condemning the Trump administration’s acts of war in Venezuela. In a raw display of imperialist aggression, the United States bombed the country, kidnapped its president and his wife, and imprisoned them in New York City on January 4. Special forces and military aircraft killed 80 civilians and military personnel. “We join the international labor community in condemning President Trump’s unconstitutional actions in Venezuela,” said the main U.S. labor federation, the AFL-CIO, in a social media post.

Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and the Democratic nominee, will be New York City’s next mayor, after trouncing former Governor Andrew Cuomo in a primary and general election double whammy. “The working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands,” Mamdani told a roaring crowd at his victory party in Brooklyn. “Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor; palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars; knuckles scarred with kitchen burns—these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power.

Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and the Democratic nominee, will be New York City’s next mayor, after trouncing former Governor Andrew Cuomo in a primary and general election double whammy. “The working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands,” Mamdani told a roaring crowd at his victory party in Brooklyn. “Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor; palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars; knuckles scarred with kitchen burns—these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power.

Solidarity between workers is the lifeblood of a fighting labor movement. The workplace throws us together regardless of culture, race, gender, and language; we may have little in common but the need to earn a livelihood. But working shoulder to shoulder, we forge genuine bonds. By breaking bread together or facing down tyrannical supervisors together, we build trust. We begin to generate a class culture, to establish norms for behavior on the job. Everywhere I’ve ever worked, I got my real orientation not from H.R. but from my co-workers.

Volkswagen has dug in its heels in first-contract negotiations at its assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where workers won a landslide victory in last year’s union drive. “We’re still waiting for the company to agree to a proposal that simply affords us a fair share,” auto worker Steve Cochran testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on October 8. “We are living with health care that forces people into bankruptcy.

Two hundred union workers, out of 5,700 who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers, and dryers for GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, received notice this month that the Trump administration is revoking their work authorizations. The immigrant workers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela have received a mixed reaction to their imminent deportation—hostility from some co-workers and an outpouring of support from their union and the local labor movement. They’re part of the Communications Workers’ industrial division, IUE-CWA Local 83761.

An estimated 600 Amazon workers went on a short strike or participated in pickets from December 19 to Christmas Eve across eight warehouse locations, from Queens to San Francisco. The coordinated mobilization was an opening salvo to Amazon, and a test of capacity for the Teamsters’ growing national network.