ASR 95 (Summer 26)
Fifteen Twin Cities (Minnesota) activists face conspiracy charges – prosecutors (one of whom was part of the group that stormed the capitol in 2020 trying to keep Trump in power) charge them with organizing the Direct Action Movement to resist government attacks on our fellow workers. Their defense team has documented extensive government spying and infiltration of several labor and activist groups, though the feds are resisting demands for full disclosure. Meanwhile these fellow workers (one of whom wrote for ASR last issue on workers’ resistance to ICE) are barred from speaking with each other, face restrictions on their organizing efforts, and some have lost jobs and housing.
Hundreds have been arrested around the country for resisting the Trump regime’s brutal assault on immigrants (and those racist federal agents think might be immigrants). Most have had their charges dismissed or been acquitted by juries, a few have pled to reduced charges in order to escape the clutches of the criminal injustice system, and many have cases still wending their way through the courts.
In Texas, 22 Prairieland protesters face decades in prison following a noise demonstration outside an ICE detention center (though one was not even at the protest, but rather was convicted of moving a box of anarchist and other pamphlets out of his home following his partner’s arrest; another was convicted of firing at a federal agent he thought was about to open fire on protesters – unwise, but one can understand his fear in light of the many shootings by ICE agents).
These attacks are reminiscent of the criminal syndicalism prosecutions that swept up more than a thousand Wobblies in the 1910s and the 1920s (the last prosecution was brought in 1972), on charges ranging from organizing strikes to distributing union literature to lining up their fellow workers into the One Big Union. Before (and after) the criminal syndicalism laws, thousands of workers were prosecuted on conspiracy charges for organizing strikes, boycotting unfair employers, refusing to work alongside scabs, and simply forming unions.
There is nothing more dangerous to the bosses than an organized working class prepared to act to defend its interests.