Minnesotans Shutter Businesses and Call Off Work in Economic Blackout Day to Protest ICE
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Minnesota on Friday, closing down businesses and calling out of work in a mass protest against the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown in the state.
The “Ice Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom” demonstration, organized by community leaders, members of the clergy, and labor unions, called for a “no work, no school, no shopping” economic blackout.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“Minnesotans are coming together in moral reflection and action to stand together against the actions of the federal government against the state of Minnesota,” a website for the movement reads. “There will be a unified, statewide pause in daily economic activity. Instead, Minnesotans will spend time with family, neighbors, and their community to show Minnesota’s moral heart and collective economic power.”
A large march began Friday afternoon from the Downtown Commons in Minneapolis toward the Target Center arena, where a rally was scheduled to be held. Bishop Dwayne Royster, the executive director of Faith in Action, which co-organized Friday’s movement, says that organizers were expecting more than 20,000 people to be on the ground standing in solidarity at the rally.
“We are not sitting on the sidelines, and we’re not going to be idly standing within the four walls of our congregations, but we’re speaking truth to power by our very actions today,” Royster tells TIME while driving to the Target Center with other clergy members. “Let me be clear that not only has Minneapolis and Minnesota come together, but they’re calling the nation together as well.”
Protests have spread in Minnesota and across the country in the wake of an ICE officer shooting and killing Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, in Minneapolis. The Trump Administration has defended the shooting as an act of “self-defense.” But video of the incident appears to contradict federal officials’ accounts, and the incident has inflamed outrage over the Administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics. On Tuesday, ICE officers detained a five-year-old boy named Liam Conejo Ramos, along with his father, in a Minneapolis suburb and transported them to a detention center in Texas, sparking further scrutiny and backlash against the crackdown.
The movement behind Friday’s protests is demanding that ICE vacate Minnesota; that the officer who killed Good be held legally accountable; that no additional funding be given to ICE in the upcoming congressional budget; and that the agency be investigated for “human and Constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.”
The group is also calling for Minnesotan businesses to refuse entry and service to ICE officers moving forward.
Amid the ongoing demonstrations, around 100 clergy members were arrested without incident in at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport on Friday during a protest calling on airlines to stop cooperating with deportation flights.
Hundreds of Minnesota businesses also shuttered on Friday.
The owner of Gold Room Restaurant and Lounge in Central Minneapolis, Nabil, who wished to not provide his last name to preserve his anonymity, was among those who closed his doors in line with the day of protests, though he provided food to protestors free of charge.
Nabil tells TIME that his business, along with others, has been hurt as a result of ICE’s presence as people are more afraid to be out on the streets.
On Friday, however, “a lot of different people are out. I mean, all different races, all different ages,” he says, adding that the streets were “packed” amid the protests.
“I think it represents that classic phrase: ‘United you stand, and divided you fall,’” he says. “It’s a beautiful thing to see.”