U.S. news roundup: Minneapolis on the front lines of fascism
Hello,
The last roundup I wrote was about the murder by ICE of Renée Nicole Good, and now just two weeks later we are mourning Alex Pretti, who was murdered by Border Patrol in Minneapolis on Sat 24 Jan.
Pretti stepped in to help a woman shoved to the ground by Border Patrol. An agent pepper sprayed both of them, threw Pretti to the ground, removed his legally carried handgun, and then shot him at close range, emptying an entire clip into his already lifeless body.
Alex Pretti was killed just streets away from where Renée Good was killed on Jan 7 – and where George Floyd was killed in 2020.
The regime’s lies
I wish these deaths were cases of rogue agents being out of control, but this is a very clear and intentional choice of tactics for these agencies. After Good’s death, multiple ICE agents were recorded threatening protesters and legal observers, “did you not just learn?” Jonathan Ross, the man who shot Good, is a firearms instructor for ICE, not one of the hordes of unqualified, untrained new recruits.
Again, just like after Good’s murder, the Trump regime immediately called Pretti a “domestic terrorist,” claiming that he arrived with the intent to “inflict maximum damage”. This despite clear video evidence from multiple angles, bravely recorded by ordinary people, one of whom is afraid to go home because she has heard agents are looking for her. This despite Alex Pretti being a registered nurse who died because he stepped in to help someone.
This regime is fully following the authoritarian playbook laid out in Orwell’s 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The leaders of this regime will continue to spread their self-serving, heinous lies not because they expect people to believe them (though many will), or even because they themselves believe it (they don’t), but because as political philosopher Hannah Arendt writes, “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer… And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
In 2024, Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, said the United States was in the middle of a second American revolution that would remain bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”
Like most things they say, that was never true — people of colour have always been targeted and killed by the state, and we continue to see evidence of grave human rights abuses in the ICE detention system.
Decentralised resistance
What I do think is true though, is that MAGA never expected this level of resistance to their monstrous policies. They expected people to be cowed by displays of violence and so-called strength — the same intimidation tactics Trump is attempting in foreign policy — because that’s what works on them.
These people are bullies. They only understand the world in terms of force and violence and self-servingness. So they are no match for people like those in Minnesota who are creating decentralised networks to track ICE agents, warn neighbors of impending raids, gather within minutes to record agents’ actions, and deliver groceries to people who can’t safely leave their homes. They have no concept of doing something because it’s right or because it helps someone who might be different from you.
Alex Pretti was murdered the day after the Minnesota general strike, the first general strike in the US in 80 years. Schools andhundreds of local businesses closed, and tens of thousands of Minnesotans participated in a “no work, no school, no shopping” day of protest, marching in Minneapolis in temperatures as low as -28°C.
Their demands were that ICE leave Minnesota, Jonathan Ross be held accountable for killing Renée Good, no more federal funds be given to ICE, and ICE be investigated for human rights and constitutional violations. Just this week in Minnesota, ICE agents detained a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old, and tear-gassed a family in a car, resulting in the mother having to administer CPR to her infant child.
And this kind of state-sponsored violence is what politicians like Kemi Badenoch have openly stated they want to bring to the UK. The Tory party’s proposal of a “Removals force” to deport 150,000 people a year is directly modeled on ICE, and Reform party politicians have repeatedly called for a “UK ICE”.
But the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti are not the result of an administration that is going well.
Stand up to power
Minnesotans are standing up for each other and for democracy, and the regime was not prepared for this.
Mark Carney quoted Czechoslovakian dissident Václav Havel in his speech to the World Economic Forum this week, in which he called out the “useful fiction” of American hegemony and made clear that we are in the middle of a “rupture” of the entire international rules-based order, because Trump has made it impossible to keep pretending that those rules were ever applied equitably.
Havel and Carney’s messages are that people are not powerless: “The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name realities, to build our strength at home, and to act together.”
It is precisely because Minnesotans are resisting this regime so effectively, because they are exercising their power as ordinary people in community, that this regime is brutally attacking its own people and executing civilians in the streets. Because that is their only tool and their only idea, and it is not working.
Minnesotans are showing us how to stand up to power. This is what Starmer needs to do, instead of bowing to every tech and trade “deal” Trump imposes on the UK. This is what the European Union needs to do when Trump next threatens tariffs, or invasion. And this is what ordinary people like us need to learn to do — so right now we look to, learn from, and support Minnesota.
In solidarity,
Alyssa
How you can help
Donate to on-the-ground organisations
UNIDOS MN: an immigrant-run organization getting things done on the ground
Immigrant Law Center of MN: providing assistance to hundreds of people with families detained by ICE
Immigrant Rapid Response Fund: a fund assembled by a coalition of Twin Cities Foundations committed to getting assistance out the door as quickly as possible.
See more at StandWithMinnesota.com
Recommended resources
Newsletter: How to Survive the Broligarchy by Carole Cadwalladr makes the connections between Brexit, MAGA, and how to hold the tech broligarchs to account
Instagram: Jess Craven does an excellent job of compiling accurate, important news from the US that might not make it on your radar otherwise
Book: Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit reminds us how activism changes the world, even if we can’t tell at the time