Six vital lessons from Minnesota’s general strike

Every few months, you likely notice something: people on Instagram calling for a general strike.

The posts will appear suddenly, evincing urgency but sparse in details. Their provenance is usually obscure. But the message is always clear. To resist Trump’s authoritarian agenda, Americans need to unite in a national economic blackout.

The cyclical nature of the posts can be frustrating, but the impulse is born from a hopeful place. General strikes have a rich history in the United States. A wave of citywide strikes in the 1940s proved so threatening to the prevailing order that Congress passed the Taft–Hartley Act, banning unions from striking in solidarity with workers at other companies. For the past few decades, the general strike has seemed more like the fanciful hope of the anarchist bookstore poster than a real possibility. Online, much the same has happened. Modern-day social media calls for mass strikes have rarely translated to collective action in the material world.

Then came Minneapolis.

On January 23, roughly 75,000 people flooded the streets on a workday, in sub-zero temperatures, demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leave Minnesota. Hundreds of businesses and cultural institutions in the Twin Cities closed their doors; one in four Minnesota voters either participated in the shutdown or knows a loved one who did, according to Blue Rose Research. A motley coalition led the charge: labor unions, racial justice groups, faith-based organizations.

The remarkable success of Minnesota’s “Day of Truth and Freedom,” as it was billed by organizers, inspired student groups at the University of Minnesota to call for another day of action. One week later, on January 30, tens of thousands of protesters across all 50 states took to the streets. Students held walkouts on high school and college campuses. Many businesses in major cities either closed for the day or committed to donating their proceeds to immigrant advocacy groups. More than 1,000 organizations signed on in support of the “national shutdown.” 

“We want to bring it to the national stage and see it happen all over the country,” Austin Muia, vice president of the University of Minnesota’s Black Student Union told my colleague, Nate Halverson. “We want everyone to feel that solidarity that we felt last week.”

While the day of action on the 30th was an impressive start, it ultimately manifested more like a mass protest. A general strike requires a substantial portion of workers, organized across multiple industries, to halt economic activity in pursuit of a shared goal.

The US economy largely functioned as usual. That means there’s still a lot of work to be done. 

But as Trump’s federal agents continue to occupy US cities—raiding workplaces, wrenching apart families, and shooting protesters dead in the street—the momentum for a national general strike is undeniably growing.

Last week, I spoke with five organizers involved in the Day of Truth and Freedom. We discussed the tactics they used to organize a labor stoppage in the Twin Cities and what strategies the rest of the country can employ to replicate Minnesota’s success. 

Here are six key takeaways from those conversations.

Labor unions were vital for executing the Day of Truth and Freedom. They mobilized thousands of people to stop work across sectors—both those in their unions and those who aren’t in them.

Devin Hogan, president of OPEIU Local 12—whose members include roughly 2,000 clerical workers and paraprofessionals—told me that unions bring experience in spearheading collective action. “We’ve seen our labor movement so organized over the years,” he said, and so even if others were nervous, “we knew that this could be pulled off basically without a hitch.”

An event two years ago provided an example for how local labor leaders could coordinate mass action. In 2024, various unions across industries in Minnesota arranged for their contracts to expire at the same time, increasing their leverage and bargaining power. Local units are now “organized in a way that allows them to basically all be ready to go on strike if they need to,” said Hogan, “and also bring in the broader labor movement.”

Other union leaders told me similar stories of working across the movement. As a hospitality union composed largely of women, people of color, and immigrants, UNITE HERE Local 17 has been hit particularly hard by the ICE occupation in Minnesota. President Christa Sarrack said at least 17 of the unit’s members have been detained since December. She said organizing collectively was crucial to protect workers. “We’ve been working together closely with lots of other unions for years,” Sarrack said. “It can’t be any one union…We just had to take that risk and really believe in what we were doing and know that at the end of the day, if something happened, it was worth it.”

While organized labor provided a foundation, both Hogan and Sarrack highlighted the importance of unions working in coalition with a broad range of community groups to broaden the reach.

“It was very helpful to have faith leaders as part of the coalition from the start, because when we’re talking to employers, we’re not saying, ‘Oh, this is just unions doing union stuff.’ Instead, it was faith leaders, cultural organizations, and labor unions all working together for this goal,” said Hogan. “I’m glad to see the participation of clergy across various religions, seeing this as what it is—as a righteous fight.”

Minnesota organizers continually looked for people with different skillsets and positions that could help build the movement.

“We’re looking at our own communities to see where the pillars of power are represented. Do we have people in the press? In our churches and synagogues? Do we have people in major corporations?” said Rev. Dana Neuhauser, a Methodist deacon who serves on the steering team of MARCH (Multifaith Antiracism, Change & Healing). “There is no one figurehead that’s going to save us from authoritarianism. What I’m seeing every day here is thousands of people finding the way to plug in and do what they can, so the work is distributed and broad and growing deeper.”

Officially, of course, unions can’t call for general strikes. So Minnesota labor leaders tried something different: They asked their employers to close.

“That’s really the biggest lesson I can share to the rest of the country: just ask,” said Hogan. “You’d be surprised by how many people are willing to either close for the day, or make arrangements to plan ahead for their ‘business needs’ while also letting as many people off as possible.” Once a few large cultural institutions agreed to close, others followed suit. 

Hogan and Sarrack explained how they negotiated using a ladder of requests. First, if employers refused to close, organizers asked that unit members be allowed to take time off without penalty. Then, they requested permission for employees to use paid time off. If businesses imposed limits on how many people could take off that day, unions pushed to increase the cap. And then, finally, they asked employers to refrain from disciplining unit members who called in sick.

“Very, very few of our employers were just not willing to negotiate,” said Sarrack. “I think they also know that this is their workers’ safety too.” 

Every person I spoke with emphasized that the Day of Truth and Freedom was made possible by Minneapolis’s decades of organizing history and the existing fabric of community groups. 

“There’s a very deep movement ecosystem in the Twin Cities metro area, from unions to community groups to renters’ rights and worker centers,” said Merle Payne, executive director of Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha (CTUL), a grassroots organization that fights for fair wages and better labor conditions, especially among immigrant workers who can’t unionize. These hundreds of organizations, Payne said, enabled the people of Minneapolis to “take the anger of being pushed into a corner and channel it in a direction of mass peaceful resistance.”

That ecosystem didn’t appear overnight. It was built, often through previous tragedies. “Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of practice in Minneapolis responding to state-sanctioned murders of our neighbors,” said Rev. Neuhauser. She pointed to the police killings of Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, George Floyd, and others in recent years.

“I think with each of those inflection points, we’ve gotten more skilled at building deep relationships, so that we are nimble and ready to show up,” she said. “The on-ramp to growing a resistance was shorter because of that muscle memory.”

Hogan of OPEIU Local 12 also said that 2020 was a tipping point for building out organizing infrastructure. “We had Proud Boys and Boogaloos on the streets, so we had to get to know our neighbors in order to stand watch and protect ourselves.”

Rod Adams, founder and executive director of the New Justice Project—a Black-led organizing hub focused on racial and economic justice for low-income Minnesotans—told me something similar. “Every five years, there is a moment where Minneapolis is center stage in America or global political news,” he said. “It’s important for people around the country to learn how we got this way.” And, he noted, sustained mass political engagement has led to real legislative change. Adams cited a suite of progressive policies passed by the Minnesota legislature in 2023, including paid family leave, voting rights for formerly incarcerated people, and a new child tax credit.

 “Those are policies that have been worked on for 20 years by hundreds, if not thousands, of people,” Adams said. “The thing that I say to the rest of the country is that right now is the moment to get organized.”

Okay, so you’re not in Minnesota, and you’re not in a union or in a community group. Now what? How do you actually get organized?

“Get to know your neighbors,” said Hogan. “Start with two or three people on your block, and then just keep talking to people. And then that can turn into not only protecting yourselves from ICE, but saying, hey, let’s all work together to show up at the next protest or event.”

Those neighborhood connections proved vital for pulling off the Minnesota strike. While social media played a role in getting the word out, much of the communication happened on the ground—whether among neighbors or labor unions, inside congregations and local ICE rapid response networks, or simply going from business-to-business, asking them to close for the day.  

“We talked to dozens of Black businesses in North Minneapolis, which is really the core economic hub here for Black Minnesotans,” said Adams of the New Justice Project. Sarrack of UNITE HERE Local 17 said the regional labor federation went door-to-door with flyers.

“If your city is being occupied by ICE and there’s a rapid response group in your neighborhood, join it. If there isn’t, create one. If there is a mutual aid network, join it and support it. If there isn’t, create one,” Adams added. “Right now, the thing that is going to win is community-led, community-decided solutions.”

Building power at the micro level also means understanding the immediate needs of your community and strategizing accordingly. Since OPEIU Local 12 represents clinic workers, for instance, Hogan said that unit members had conversations with hospital employers about creating protocols for protecting the rights of undocumented patients in the event ICE shows up. Something everyone can do right now, he said, is demand their employer have a policy for when ICE enters their specific facility or detains a colleague.

Organizers pointed to the range of ways that community members showed up on January 23 and throughout that week. 

While 75,000 people marched down the streets of Minneapolis, protesters demonstrated against ICE deportation flights at the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport. Roughly 100 faith leaders were arrested after kneeling on the road, praying for immigrants who had been detained—including members of UNITE Here 17, Sarrack noted. A few days before that action, a group organized by CTUL’s worker-leaders occupied the offices of developer DR Horton, demanding that the company protect its employees against ICE raids on construction sites. 

In addition to asking folks to strike, UNITE HERE Local 17 used the Day of Truth and Freedom to push out a mutual aid fundraising drive. When I spoke with Sarrack on January 29, she said the fund had already raised $100,000 for members who are currently unable to work.

Rev. Neuhauser said she saw a huge outpouring of donations of winter wear for protesters and clergy. “And then there are these community-based little glimpses of—I mean, I don’t know how to describe it other than love,” she said. People served hot beverages to marchers on the side of the road, while businesses opened their doors just so people could come get warm. 

“One of my favorite things about what’s been happening in Minneapolis is the number of Somali aunties that show up to public actions with trays of homemade sambuses and cups of hot Somali tea,” Neuhauser added.

The Day of Truth and Freedom may be over, but the work will continue. “We’re in a different world than we were even a month ago. The possibility of what can be done is different,” said Payne of CTUL.

He noted that CTUL is using the momentum generated from the strike to demand workplace protections from large developers and visiting job sites to talk to workers about their rights. 

“There’s been silence from the largest business interests in the state since all of this is happening, but this is impacting their bottom line,” Payne said. “We see an opportunity to make our campaign significantly larger than we ever could have in the past…and drive a wedge between the largest business interests and the Trump administration.”

Organizers all said they were encouraged by seeing people across the country march and strike in solidarity with Minnesota, because it shows people understand their struggles are connected.

“We are all under attack,” said Adams. “If you don’t understand that you’re under attack, you’re going to wake up one day and realize that you had an opportunity to stand up and now it’s too late.”