By Emily Newberg and Ulysses Dolan

Minneapolis, MN – On June 5, the Minnesota Anti-War Committee (AWC) and allied organizations held a rally outside the Minneapolis Convention center to disrupt the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s (DFL) 2026 Humphrey-Mondale fundraising dinner. The dinner is the Minnesota Democratic Party’s annual fundraising event and a strategic rallying point for local Democrats ahead of key elections.

Braving the intense summer heat for a program of chanting and speeches, community members made their voices heard as they demanded an end to state funding of Israel’s genocide in Palestine, an end to the war on Iran and Lebanon, and a return to quarterly in-person State Board of Investment (SBI) meetings.

Cassidy Aickin, member of the AWC and co-emcee for the day, opened the event by saying, “In that building the DFL is hosting their annual Humphrey-Mondale dinner; their biggest fundraising event of the year. The people who have the most institutional power in our state, alongside their benefactors, are coming together to celebrate – another ‘great year’ of shutting out their constituents, ignoring people’s cries for divestment, and directly paying for the bombs that have martyred hundreds of thousands of Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian people. Shame!”

Aickin continued, “The State Board of Investment, composed of Tim Walz, Keith Ellison, Julie Blaha and Steve Simon, chooses to invest hundreds of millions of Minnesota state employee pension dollars into weapons manufacturers, Israeli companies, and war profiteers like Palantir.”

The SBI had been scheduled to hold its second quarterly meeting of 2026 on Wednesday, June 3, but quietly removed the details from its schedule less than a month before. This effective cancellation continued the SBI’s over year-long trend of restricting community participation in what should be public meetings. But these cancellations have not deterred community involvement and have instead given way for powerful coalitions.

Representing the MN Immigrant Rights Action Committee, Mira Altobell-Resendez reminded the crowd that, “The Minnesota Democratic Party spent all of winter ignoring the calls for protections for immigrants during Metro Surge. Tim Walz can sign an executive order at any time to ban 287(g) agreements that deputize county law enforcement into local ICE agents. The candidates for this year’s gubernatorial election like Amy Klobuchar could commit to creating ICE free zones as soon as they step into office.”

Alissa Washington, founder and executive director of the Wrongfully Incarcerated and Over-Sentenced Families Council of MN, gave an impassioned speech connecting the wrongful conviction of her fiancé, Cornelius Jackson, and the over-policing of communities here and abroad. Washington said, “We’re here tonight because while the DFL dines with donors, we’re out here struggling to survive. While politicians gather behind closed doors, families are torn apart by wrongful convictions and over-sentencing! While they celebrate fundraisers, our loved ones are deported, imprisoned, displaced, and forgotten.”

Washington continued, “The DFL loves to tell us they are the party of working people. Then prove it! Stop shutting the public out of SBI meetings. Stop making decisions that impact our communities without our communities present.”

“What they’re really doing is defining what it means to run as a Democrat: position yourself as the only alternative to the Republican Party when you support genocide, racist tough-on-crime policies, corporate profiteers, expansion of the police state, all at the expense of the same constituents you claim to represent,” said Maddy Schwartz, member of the MN AWC. “The SBI has ignored constant calls from public employees to address this disgusting complicity in human rights violations. This sends a clear message that if you stand against genocide, your voice doesn’t matter.”

Only two days after the SBI was scheduled to meet, workers and allies in the anti-war movement made their voices heard, questioning why DFL politicians have time for their donors but not the taxpayers who pay their salaries. One volunteer working at the dinner stepped out from his role inside the Convention Center and picked up a “Divest MN from Apartheid Israel” sign for a portion of the action, before returning to his duties inside. When asked why he chose to join the voices demanding divestment he said, “It is the right thing to do.”

#MinneapolisMN #MN #AntiWarMovement #DFL #Palestine #Divestment #BDS

St. Paul, MN – On June 6, a beautiful Saturday morning, over 100 people gathered in Langford Park in Saint Paul’s Saint Anthony Park neighborhood for Women Against Military Madness’s (WAMM) 19th annual Walk Against Weapons.

This year WAMM marched on Lockheed Martin subsidiary ForwardEdge ASIC, which makes application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) for F-35 jets which have been used in the U.S.-funded Israeli genocide of Palestinians and now in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

WAMM’s new director and emcee for the event, Meredith Aby, said, “Today we are marching to Forward Edge to highlight the role of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest manufacturer of weaponry. Lockheed Martin is a primary weapons supplier to the Israeli military, providing F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, Hellfire missiles, and tactical transport aircraft that have been used extensively against Palestinians.”

Aby continued, “The U.S. outspends the next several highest-spending nations combined, historically accounting for roughly 33% of all global military expenditures and U.S. military spending is approximately 13% of total U.S. federal spending.”

Before leaving the park to march to Lockheed Martin, No Weapons No War Collective performed a short song and dance piece to explain how ForwardEdge ASIC was brought to Saint Paul by Governor Tim Walz, a member of the State Board of Investments, which has the power to divest Minnesota from apartheid Israel. Additionally, WAMM and Veterans for Peace members displayed a life-size battle tank replica that shoots flowers as a send-off for the participants marching.

Cassidy Aickin, a member of the MN Anti-War Committee, spoke about the experience of learning about genocide and the “brutality of war” from her teachers who have their pensions funded in genocide.

“The State Board of Investment, which manages the pensions of thousands of public employees in Minnesota, chooses to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into weapons manufacturers and surveillance technology companies like Palantir, which makes the software for the child-killing bombs used in Iran, and the ICE-funded surveillance technology used domestically. My teachers, who have to buy classroom supplies out of pocket, are indirectly paying for the abduction of their students and the slaughter of Palestinians,” Aickin said.

Christina Neighbors, a Navy veteran and member of About Face Veterans Against the War stated, “The products manufactured by ForwardEdge conveniently enable such events [genocide of Palestinians] to be far enough away that no one who profits ever has to see the reality of what their greed births and leaves behind.” The crowd erupted in “Shame!”

Neighbors continued, “ForwardEdge builds the silicon mind inside the weapons circuits made for one specific application; that application is death. And the giant it answers to, Lockheed Martin, pulled $75 billion last year out of a country that is told, time over time, that there is no money – none for the clinic, none for the classroom, none for the people sleeping in the cold outside in the very city that is helping slaughter innocent men, and women, and children around the world.” The crowd once again erupted in “Shame!”

WAMM’s next actions are on June 10 with a protest at the Saint Paul City Council meeting to pressure the city to divest from Israeli cyber security company Waterfall and, later that day, another protest at the Minneapolis Federal Building to demand the Trump administration stop its war threats against Cuba.

#StPaulMN #MN #AntiWarMovemen #LockheedMartin #Iran #Palestine #Cuba #WAMM