Fight Back! News

News and Views from the People's Struggle

TCC4J

By Jess Sundin

Protestors march through the street with an audience watching on the sidewalks. The march carries a large banner that reads "Take Back Pride. Stand Up, Fight Back".

Minneapolis, MN – For the seventh year running, community members disrupted the Twin Cities Pride parade, June 30, to protest the inclusion of cops and corporations. Their inclusion comes at the expense of queer community members who want the event to honor the spirit of radical resistance Pride came out of and to continue the fight for LGBTQ liberation. This year, more than 1000 protesters marched with the Taking Back Pride Coalition for not only LGBTQ liberation, but especially for Palestinian liberation.

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By staff

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Twin Cities Coalition 4 Justice.

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By Omari Hoover

Emergency protest in Minneapolis in response to the massacre in Rafah.  | Fight Back! News/Wyatt Miller

Minneapolis, MN – An estimated 300 Twin Cities residents came out in a downpour of rain to participate in the Free Palestine Coalition’s emergency rally to show solidarity with Rafah, May 27. The protest took place outside of U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office near downtown Minneapolis.

Protesters wore keffiyehs and pro-Palestine apparel, held signs favorable to Palestinian liberation, and bellowed chants like “From the olive to the sand, Palestine is our demand,” demonstrating their commitment and continued support of Palestinian liberation.

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By staff

Petitions demanding community control of police ballot initiative being delivered to Minneapolis city government. | Photo: Clara Marsh

Minneapolis, MN – Minneapolis city government placed a roadblock in front of the ballot measure to establish community control of the police, May 9. Community members say the fight will continue.

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By Montana Hirsch

International Workers Day march in Minneapolis.  | Fight Back! News/Brad Sigal

Minneapolis, MN – On May 1, over 500 people took to the streets on International Workers Day to march for immigrant and workers’ rights. The rally and march was organized by a coalition initiated by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) and MN Workers United (MWU).

Each year, International Workers Day is celebrated around the world with a call for solidarity with all workers and for union rights. International Workers Day has its origin in the fight for an eight-hour workday in the United States, where there were massive strikes and sharp confrontations in May of 1886.

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By Loretta VanPelt

Activists turn in petitions to place community control of the police on the Minneapolis ballot. | Fight Back!News/Michelle Tong

Minneapolis, MN – On Wednesday May 1, Minneapolis 4 Community Control of the Police (M4CCP) held a press conference in the Public Safety Center, the temporary home to city hall offices, to turn in their petitions to put community control of the police on the November ballot.

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By staff

Fight Back! editor Mick Kelly speaking at Twin Cities fundraiser. | Fight Back! News/staff

Minneapolis, MN – On Saturday, February 10, well over 100 activists, organizers, trade unionists and revolutionaries gathered under the signs and banners from movements past and present to celebrate the work of Fight Back!.

During the short program, various sectors of the people’s movement toasted to the important role of Fight Back! plays in uplifting the demands and wins from the mass movement. Organizers from the student movement, labor, climate, immigrant rights, police crimes, women’s and reproductive rights and the anti-war movement led the attendees in raising their glasses to the revolutionary reporting and editorials of Fight Back!.

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By staff

Minneapolis, MN – On Thursday, February 15, the University of Minnesota chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, in collaboration with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, held a panel in Nicholson Hall on the UMN campus discussing Marxist-Leninist perspectives on Palestinian liberation. Thirty people, both students and community members, were in attendance.

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By Rachel Storm

Protesters rallied in front of Abria Pregnancy Resources in North Minneapolis, demanding its removal from the neighborhood. | Fight Back! News/Ashley Taylor-Gougé

Minneapolis, MN – On January 28, over 60 protesters rallied in front of Abria Pregnancy Resources, a so-called “crisis pregnancy center,” or CPC, to demand its removal from the Northside neighborhood.

Protesters held signs and banners demanding an end to fake clinics, while chanting “Pass more bills, secure our pills!” and “Fund abortion, make it free, fuck the right and CPCs!” Passersby expressed their support vocally and by honking their car horns.

Abria, one of four anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers'' located in Minneapolis, utilizes deceptive tactics and medically inaccurate information to pressure pregnant people out of getting an abortion. Most of the funding for CPCs comes directly from right-wing evangelical backers.

CPCs set up shop in low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods like the Northside, knowing that pregnant people seeking abortion resources would have nowhere else to turn to.

Jae Yates, speaking for Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar (TCC4J), referring to Abria’s predatory practices, said, “This isn’t about human rights, it's about controlling people’s behavior and controlling their bodies and trying to force them to conform to a system of religion that they may or may not believe in.”

Samantha Alsadi, from the Anti-War Committee, spoke of her own personal experience with a CPC when she was seeking abortion resources. “I instantly felt unwelcomed,” Alsadi said, “but didn’t know what else to do. The staff assured me that everything I said to her would remain confidential and under no circumstances would anything I say to her be revealed to anyone else, but here she was telling someone else, getting the police involved, and calling my parents.”

Aldadi continued, “They manipulate people by portraying themselves as some resourceful place someone can go to for help, when all the while they’re only there to scare and coerce people into making decisions the facility wants them to make.”

“Black people have historically chosen abortion as a means to protect from material conditions. As early as when Black people were considered property Black mothers performed their own abortions in an attempt to protect unborn children from enslavement,” another speaker on behalf of TCC4J said. She told of her mother’s experience: “No one explained the health risks to her, the emotional responsibility, the vulnerability, no one explained abortion to her as anything more than a sinful option. She deserved more and that is another reason why I stand here today to fight.”

Alé Guzman, a member of the MN Abortion Action Committee, spoke to the way CPCs drain community resources, saying, “The physical space they use can be utilized a hundred times over for better capacities than a fake reproductive healthcare clinic. This could've been a community bodega, this could’ve been a family's source of income, future and dream. Yet Abria takes up space where they are not needed: shame on you!”

This protest against Abria Pregnancy Resources was organized by the MN Abortion Action Committee and the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar.

#MinneapolisMN #WomensMovement #ReproductiveRights #MNAAC #TCC4J

By Yossi Aharoni

Minneapolis protest demands end to siege on Gaza. | Fight Back! News/Lacey Woida

Minneapolis, MN – Amidst a frigid Saturday afternoon on January 20, over 750 Twin Cities pro-Palestine residents came out in the blistering cold to the Hennepin County Government Center to tell the Minneapolis City Council that their constituents demand they vote yes on a ceasefire resolution.

This week, on January 23 and 25, the Minneapolis City Council will be discussing and voting on a resolution that demands an immediate ceasefire of Israeli aggression against the civilians in Gaza.

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