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      Resistance to Trump 2.0 is getting more confrontational | Dana R Fisher

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      In Trump’s first term, activists focused on lobbying and voting. Now tactics are shifting to nonviolent civil disobedienceOn 24 January, Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents while he was helping another civilian in Minneapolis who had been knocked to the ground – just weeks after an ICE agent killed Renee Good. In response to this second killing of a Minnesotan, demonstrations spread across the United States to protest the Trump administration and its ultra-violent immigration enforcement tactics.Minneapolis has been in a state of sustained protest. Its general strike on 23 January mobilized tens of thousands of Minnesotans to participate in an economic blackout and march in the streets. Solidarity protests, strikes and marches also took place across the country, including the Free America Walkout, which involved more than 900 local actions across all 50 states on the anniversary of Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Continue reading… More

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      ‘We’re fighting for the soul of the country’: how Minnesota residents came together to face ICE

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      Networks created after police killed George Floyd were reactivated to challenge Trump’s mass deportation policyCory never expected he’d spend hours each day driving around after immigration agents, videotaping their moves. The south Minneapolis resident is “not the type of person to do this”, he said.The dangers of what he’s doing, even after the killings of two observers, largely stay out of his mind when he’s watching Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents – even when he’s gotten hit with pepper spray. In quieter moments, it occurs to him that agents likely know where he lives. Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old whom agents killed while he was filming them, “100% could have been me”, Cory said. Continue reading… More

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      How the left can win back the internet – and rise again | Robert Topinka

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      In the final part of this series, we look at how infighting has ripped the left apart online while the right has flourished – and how some progressives are turning the tideRobert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of LondonPart one: How liberals lost the internetPart two: How the right won the internetThere is politics before the internet, and politics after the internet. Liberals are floundering, the right are flourishing, and what of the left? Well, it’s in a dire state. This is despite the fact that the key political problems of the last decade – rising inequality and a cost of living crisis – are problems leftists claim they can solve. The trouble is, reactionaries and rightwingers steal their thunder online, quickly spreading messaging that blames scapegoats for structural problems. One reason for this is that platforms originally built to connect us with friends and followers now funnel us content designed to provoke emotional engagement.Back when Twitter was still the “town square” and Facebook a humble “social network”, progressives had an advantage: from the Arab spring to Occupy Wall Street, voices excluded from mainstream media and politics could leverage online social networks and turn them into real-life ones, which at their most potent became street-level protests that toppled regimes and held capitalism to account. It seemed as though the scattered masses would become a networked collective empowered to rise up against the powerful.Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London Continue reading… More

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      Pho, handwarmers, grief and loss: a week on the block where Alex Pretti was killed

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      Residents line up to support businesses that became refuges from teargas, and refresh the memorial dailyNothing is quite as it used to be along Nicollet Avenue.The spot where Alex Pretti was gunned down by federal agents has been cordoned off by orange stakes and caution tape, appearing like a giant gash along the block between 26th and 27th streets. Continue reading… More

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      Nurses remember Alex Pretti and vow to ‘bring the care our patients need’

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      Flowers and candles laid by VA building in Washington as killing reverberates through nursing communityFor Nolan Lee, it felt like Minnesota in Washington DC on Wednesday night. Despite the most extreme cold in 150 years, about a thousand people gathered in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) headquarters, a block from the White House, to remember Alex Pretti and demand an end to funding for US immigration and border agencies.The killings by federal agents of Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a veterans hospital, and Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, rocked Minneapolis and reverberated throughout the nation, with the future of US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – up for debate as a key funding bill that would increase the agency’s spending failed to pass the US Senate on Thursday. Continue reading… More