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News and Views from the People's Struggle

Wyatt Miller

By Wyatt Miller

Press conference in Minnesota Capitol rotunda hails wins in forcing state government divestment from apartheid Israel.

St. Paul, MN – Palestine solidarity advocates vowed to press ahead with demands for Minnesota divestment from Israel’s crimes after the State Board of Investment (SBI) released data showing it held just one remaining Israel Bond after a series of bond sales and non-renewals. At a Monday, November 10, press conference at the State Capitol rotunda, speakers from local organizations explained the significance of the disclosure and outlined next steps for divestment.

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By Wyatt Miller

Divestment sit-in participants stare down state troopers inside the Minnesota Retirement Systems Building.

Saint Paul, MN – On Tuesday, October 21, the typically quiet Retirement Systems Building was filled with chants of “Free Palestine” as advocates of divestment from Israel staged an all-day sit-in. The building houses the staff offices of the State Board of Investment (SBI), whose long-delayed quarterly meeting was held that morning in an online-only format in the board’s latest effort to avoid Palestine protesters.

The SBI is chaired by Governor Tim Walz, joined by Attorney General Keith Ellison, State Auditor Julie Blaha and Secretary of State Steve Simon. Growing numbers of public employees, pension holders and other community members have spoken at quarterly SBI meetings, calling on it to divest state-managed funds from the state of Israel and companies complicit in Israel’s apartheid system and genocide in Gaza.

Tuesday’s meeting had originally been scheduled for August 20, but was abruptly postponed by the SBI as soon as divestment advocates posted a call to pack the physical meeting room. The two-month delay and switch to a virtual-only format followed a year of similar moves by the SBI.

The action at the Retirement Systems Building began just after 8 a.m., when participants discreetly entered the building, hours before the SBI meeting and before security restrictions were implemented.

The group, which included public pension holders and Palestine solidarity activists, soon began their sit-in just outside the SBI’s offices, in the building's front lobby. They announced they would not leave until the SBI met their demands to immediately divest from Israel Bonds, create a task force to publicly state risks associated with Minnesota’s investment ties to companies complicit in Israel’s crimes, and pledge to hold all future meetings in person and fully open to the public.

Dozens of community members braved rain, wind and temperatures in the low 40s to rally in support of the sit-in from outside the building.

It marked the beginning of what would be nearly 16 hours of continuous protest. At 10 a.m., a rally in support of the sit-in began outside the building, coinciding with the SBI meeting itself.

Several divestment advocates gave public comment at the SBI meeting, during which the SBI also approved new public engagement rules that formalized many of the arbitrary restrictions the SBI had imposed over the previous two years. In protest of the online-only meeting format, some speakers made their comments to the SBI while physically present at the rally outside the building.

Anna Madison, a member of Families Against Military Madness, highlighted a September 16 report by the United Nations (UN) Commission of Inquiry that found Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. “The UN has handed you a gift with this report. It provides you with the moral clarity and diplomatic cover to completely divest from Israel and all related entities complicit and/or profiting from genocide,” Madison said.

“My mother has a Minnesota state pension fund, and I don’t want it soaked in the blood of the Palestinians any more than Governor [Rudy] Perpich in 1985 wanted our state’s pension funds soaked in the blood of Black South Africans,” Nathan Phillips told the SBI. In 1985, the SBI passed a resolution initiating broad divestment from apartheid South Africa.

Mary Ford is a retired teacher who receives a Teachers Retirement Association pension, managed by the SBI. “With the current, violated, ceasefire, there is a good chance that Gaza will go back to what it used to be: an open-air prison, this time with no buildings,” said Ford, who also shared an anecdote of trying to explain to her students when her Palestinian friend’s entire family was killed by an Israeli bomb in Gaza.

Several members of the Minnesota Association of Public Employees (MAPE) statewide labor union spoke in favor of divestment. In 2024, MAPE passed a resolution calling for the SBI to divest.

Hannah Gary, a state employee and labor unionist with AFSCME 668, highlighted that the state of Minnesota’s One Minnesota Plan includes a guiding principle of “do the right thing, especially when it’s difficult.” Gary explained: “We are asking you to follow the same commitments that we as public servants are holding up.”

In her comments to the SBI, Kim DeFranco, a community activist with Women Against Military Madness, estimated that the SBI has heard at least 600 public commenters calling for divestment from Israel since its current members took office in 2019. Groups have also submitted tens of thousands of petitions.

Cullom McCormick from the Climate Justice Committee highlighted ecological destruction associated with Israel’s occupation and genocide. “There is not a world in which the Minnesota SBI can remain consistent with its stated values of sustainability while remaining invested in Israel,” McCormick said.

When one sit-in participant called the SBI’s office to announce the demands, they were hung up on. Ultimately, both the sit-in and the rally outside the building continued up to 4:30 p.m., when state troopers initiated arrests.

In total, 11 people were detained and taken to the Ramsey County jail, where they were booked and held for hours. The support rally relocated from outside the Retirement Systems Building to outside the jail — despite cold, rainy weather.

While nine were released around midnight, two alleged sit-in participants were arbitrarily held overnight. They appeared in court the following morning, when a judge ordered their immediate release after prosecutors failed to justify their continued detention.

Maeve Aickin is a member of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee and a public educator who holds an SBI-managed pension. “I participated in the sit-in because the SBI invests the money I earn by creating a safe and healthy space for children, in an apartheid state that has spent the majority of the past century trying to make every space a Palestinian child can access into a dangerous one,” said Aickin. “Israel’s all-out assault on Palestinian children and their right to safety and education has culminated in its destruction of over 2300 schools. It makes me feel sick to know that my pension is invested in corporations that facilitate the murder and orphaning of children the same age as my students.”

Aickin added, “The state’s response to our peaceful protest registered to me as a spiteful mismanagement of public resources and taxpayer money.”

Organizers were undeterred by the arrests, announcing that Minnesota’s fight for divestment from genocidal, apartheid Israel would continue.

#StPaulMN #MN #AntiWarMovement #Palestine

By Wyatt Miller

A Minnesota State Trooper watches as dozens of advocates for divestment from Israel protest outside the at-capacity SBI meeting room.

St. Paul, MN – On Friday, March 21, the otherwise obscure Minnesota Retirement Systems building was guarded by dozens of state troopers who blocked entrances to the parking lot. More troopers manned the building entrance, screening bags and limiting entry to only a few dozen members of the public. Inside the small conference room where the State Board of Investment (SBI)’s quarterly meeting was to be held, more troopers along with plainclothes security lined the entire perimeter.

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By Wyatt Miller

Minneapolis march against Israeli  killings in the occupied West Bank.

Minneapolis, MN – On February 2, Palestine solidarity protesters marched down Hennepin Avenue in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. The action, called by the Twin Cities-based Free Palestine Coalition, was entitled, “Ceasefire is not the end! Stop the attacks on the West Bank!” Hundreds of people rallied at Gateway Park for speeches before taking the streets on foot and in cars.

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By Wyatt Miller

Thousands of small, seemingly innocuous devices, exploding in the hands and pockets of Israel’s enemies. Tuesday and Wednesday’s bombing attacks across Lebanon have been hailed by Zionists as a crushing blow to Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, an intelligence coup that one viral tweet called “biblical” in scale and sophistication.

But while the attacks certainly showed cunning, an analysis of their targets, objectives and likely effects reveals not sophistication but a crude logic of collective punishment, common to flailing colonial regimes.

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By Wyatt Miller

Minneapolis Land Day protest takes to the streets. | Fight Back! News/Sabry Wazwaz

Minneapolis – On March 30, around 2500 protesters gathered along Lake Street where it crosses a narrow isthmus between Lake of the Isles and Bde Maka Ska in the Chain of Lakes. Organized by the local Free Palestine Coalition, the action marked Land Day, which commemorates the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and land theft.

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By Wyatt Miller

Group of protesters wearing keffiyehs and holding Palestinian flags raise their hands to disrupt a meeting.

St. Paul, MN – On Wednesday, November 29, Palestine solidarity activists spoke at the Minnesota State Board of Investment (SBI)’s quarterly meeting, demanding divestment of state-managed pension funds and other public monies from Israeli weapons manufacturers, banks and bonds, and other entities complicit in Israel’s apartheid system in Palestine.

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By Wyatt Miller

Over 100 people attend Minneapolis speaking event featuring Chrisley Carpio and Lauren Pineiro of the Tampa 5. | Brad Sigal/Sigal Photos

Minneapolis, MN – “All of us were brutalized. I saw my friends kicked, punched, pushed into walls, put in chokeholds,” said Lauren Pineiro to a 100-person crowd that nearly filled the University of Minnesota lecture hall. “The chief of police even groped a student.”

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By Wyatt Miller

(Fight Back!News/ Photo credit: Brad Sigal) Human Rights Day car caravan in Minn

Minneapolis, MN – Nearly 100 cars stretched for over a half mile, honking horns in unison and shouting protest chants from rolled-down windows as they slowly drove through the Cedar-Riverside and Seward neighborhoods on December 12. The occasion was Human Rights Day, with car-caravanning protesters demanding respect for human rights at home and abroad from the U.S. government.

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By Wyatt Miller

Minneapolis, MN – Nearly 100 cars stretched for over a half mile, honking horns in unison and shouting protest chants from rolled-down windows as they slowly drove through the Cedar-Riverside and Seward neighborhoods on December 12. The occasion was Human Rights Day, with car-caravanning protesters demanding respect for human rights at home and abroad from the U.S. government.

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By Wyatt Miller

Minneapolis, MN – On October 20, the Minnesota Anti-War Committee (AWC) held an online discussion on the foreign policies of President Donald Trump and his rival in the upcoming election, former Vice President Joe Biden. Members of the longstanding Twin Cities-based street protest group compared the platforms and records of each candidate from an anti-war perspective.

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By Wyatt Miller

Ilhan Omar speaking at Minneapolis press conference on passage of NO BAN Act.

Minneapolis, MN – A small crowd gathered in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood on August 10 for a press conference celebrating the passage of the National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants (NO BAN) Act in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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By Wyatt Miller

Nakba Day marked in Minnesota.

Columbia Heights, MN – Just outside city limits from Northeast Minneapolis, Central Avenue was awash with Palestine flags during Friday rush hour as Palestinian-Americans and solidarity activists commemorated Al-Nakba. Nakba Day, held each year on May 15, remembers the 1948 ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians from their national homeland by Zionist settlers. Around 60 cars and dozens of families drove in a long caravan through the heavily Arab-American neighborhood, with chants of “From the river to the sea…” echoing for blocks. The protest was one of many actions that happened internationally.

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By Wyatt Miller

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Minneapolis, MN – On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon, elected on promises to end the war in Vietnam, instead announced U.S. ground troops would invade neighboring Cambodia to prevent another Tet Offensive.

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By Wyatt Miller

Twin Cites protest against a U.S. war on Iran

Minneapolis, MN – On January 25, around 150 anti-war activists and members of working class and community groups united to protest the U.S. military in Iraq and threats of war against Iran. Part of a global day of protest, the action came two days after millions of Iraqis overcame political disunity to fill the streets of Baghdad and demand an end to 17 years of U.S. occupation.

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By Wyatt Miller

Activists at MN State Board of Investment (SBI) meeting at State Capitol

St. Paul, MN – The Minnesota State Board of Investment (SBI) held its quarterly meeting at the State Capitol December 2 and got sharp criticism from immigrant rights and anti-war activists, as new documents revealed a nearly $1 million increase in investment in a controversial military technology company. Youth climate strikers also highlighted the SBI’s inaction over state ties to environmental destruction. Both groups were met with vacillation and excuses from the board which is tasked with the responsible investment of public pensions and related funds.

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By Wyatt Miller

More than 10,000 protest Trump in Minneapolis

Minneapolis, MN – Thousands of people poured into the streets on October 10 to resist the reactionary rally held by President Donald Trump in the heart of Minneapolis. Long targeted by the president’s racist incitement against the city’s immigrant, Muslim and Black communities, Minneapolis rose to the occasion with a massive display of righteous militancy.

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By Wyatt Miller

Protest demands Minnesota divest from border militarization contractor.

St. Paul, MN – On August 22, immigrant rights and Palestine solidarity activists presented over 1000 signatures of Minnesota residents petitioning the State Board of Investments (SBI) to divest state pension funds from the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems. Elbit sells cluster bombs and weaponized white phosphorus to the Israel Defense Forces, whose indiscriminate use on besieged Gaza has been widely condemned by international organizations. Elbit also manufactures surveillance equipment for the Israeli apartheid wall, and drones used in targeted assassinations of Palestinian political leaders.

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By Wyatt Miller

Representative Omar speaking at the University of Minnesota.

Minneapolis, MN – U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) have joined the ranks of thousands of human rights activists and millions of diaspora Palestinians who have been denied entry to Palestine by the occupying Israeli regime.

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