On June 16, Homeland Security arrested 15 Minnesota activists involved in the anti-ICE movement. They now face up to 36 years in federal prison. The Communist spoke with one “outside agitator,” Emmett Doyle, who has called Minnesota home his entire life.
KN: Hey Emmett, thanks for joining us today. Just want to start off with you telling us about yourself: who you are, what kind of jobs you’ve done, and what you do for fun.
ED: My name is Emmett Doyle. I’m born and raised in Minnesota. I’ve worked blue-collar jobs throughout my life, and I’m now a union carpenter. I’m also a folk musician, very active both in the music scene and community organizing. In my free time, I’m either playing a guitar or shouting into a megaphone.
KN: Do you think that the mass movement in January grew out of previous movements in Minneapolis like Black Lives Matter? What do you think is setting the stage for these mass movements?
ED: Every time you have a mass movement, you build relational infrastructure between people, and even if whatever formal or informal organizations stop existing, the relationships between people continue existing. Then the next time of crisis, those relationships come together. So certainly in 2020 between Covid and the George Floyd uprising, we had a huge amount of relational infrastructure that was built through mutual aid, neighborhood defense committees that formed, and various groups in the sanctuary movement. A lot of that was mobilized again during Metro Surge. You know, standing and filming someone who’s holding a gun in your face—a lot of people have experience with that in the Twin Cities, even before Metro Surge.
KN: Do you think past movements like Black Lives Matter are why Trump targeted Minnesota?
ED: Absolutely. Something like 2% or less of the population here is undocumented. Our primary immigrant communities here are mostly people who came as refugees. It’s actually very difficult for Somali refugees to come here. If it were about undocumented people, they wouldn’t be sending ICE agents to Little Earth [a Section 8 project] and rounding up indigenous people, because obviously they’re not undocumented. It’s about punishing the Twin Cities. It’s revenge for 2020. The George Floyd uprising forced a racial reckoning that really undercut the legitimacy of the first Trump administration. They never forgave us for that.
KN: It seems like the “commuting networks” were a logical next step. Why do you think people are keener to get organized now?
ED: You couldn’t go anywhere in town without seeing armed patrols. You regularly encountered “ghost cars”—windows smashed in, seat belts cut, nobody inside. You had to search the glove box to inform abductees’ families. They shot two of our neighbors to death in the streets, and they shot another person through his door. Victor Manuel Diaz was found hanging in his cell. So, I think that was really just what it was. It was almost a fight or fly instinct, and we chose to fight. It’s our city, we’re not going to fly.
KN: Tell us a little bit about what you saw during the movement in January.
ED: The level of involvement from everyday people was head and shoulders above anything I’d seen. My neighborhood is very near to where ICE enters the city, close to some of the largest Latino and Ethiopian communities. So I would go patrolling in my car for a couple hours in the morning, and then a couple hours in the evening. There would be people outside of every daycare and school—standing out there in brutal freezing temperatures for hours on end with whistles—in case armed men came for a raid. As you’re commuting, you would sometimes get a call, “There’s ICE agents over here.” You saw convoys of one to three vehicles full of men pulling up on a place, and taking someone away, and a crowd of people would gather so fast and whistling at them and yelling at them that they couldn’t take anyone away. There were defeats and victories every day.
On the front lines of confrontations with ICE agents were old men and women, people with physical disabilities, people you would never imagine leading protests. I saw my entire community getting shelled and tear gassed and beaten and barraged with rubber bullets, and not moving and taking the hits and coming back over and over again.
People brought all sorts of resources to the table. Tow truck drivers moved people’s vehicles back to their homes after they had been abducted. A team of carpenters went around fixing the doors of people whose doors have been kicked in by ICE. Even if your family member had been taken, you still had safety from burglary, and your home was secure for winter. That’s pretty important. People delivered food, picked up laundry from families that were in hiding, so that they didn’t have to go to the laundromat. There’s so much creativity that people had and a big part of how it all came together, and they just found ways to plug in. A lot of people just found ways that were surprising and really enriching.
KN: Why do you think the state waited for the movement to ebb to charge the Minnesota 15?
ED: Yeah, well, I think that’s a very common dynamic when movements ebbed, that’s when repression comes down. The government is aware that during the height of a movement, if they pour more gasoline on the fire, it’s not going to end well for them.
After Metro Surge, they left behind more federal agents in this city than were here before Metro Surge, and they’re still blackbagging people. In the last five days, there’s been 10,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in a nationwide surge. And we have to remember that when they’re arresting people, you’re going to a concentration camp. People are dying in these camps. They have inadequate nutrition—allegedly, there’s physical abuse and torture. Sexual abuse seems to be an epidemic in these camps. The terror is ongoing. And we’re being targeted to pacify the community, so that they can continue the terror.
KN: A lot of you who were charged are union members. Why do you think that is?
ED: Unions were very active in the resistance. Even if the leadership is tied to the Democratic Party, our rank and file movement is very close to resistance movements in the streets. We were agitating for and implementing the general strike, and the general strike terrifies the ruling class. To have a general strike in a major American city, even when private-sector union membership is near an all time low—it’s terrifying. Many people who struck were not union members. So they’re not really going after us for what’s in the indictment.
KN: What can our readers do to help you all fight these charges?
ED: Well, we have a legal defense fund that we are asking people to donate to, that would be very helpful. Beyond that, solidarity rallies, solidarity shows, benefit concerts, things like that—spreading the word. The government wants to parade us around as their captured “antifa terrorists,” isolate us. We need to show them that people around the world stand with us. Political persecution requires a mass political response.
KN: It’s really clear this is a case of “an injury to one is an injury to all,” so I want to let you know the RCA is definitely standing with you. We say, solidarity to Minnesota 15 and drop the charges! Thank you so much, Emmett for taking the time to talk with us today. We really appreciate it.
ED: Absolutely, thank you.
Emmett has lost his job as part of Trump’s retribution campaign. Our readers can support the Minnesota 15 through their legal defense fund.