Message from IFT President Stacy Davis Gates on Recent Events in Minneapolis and Nationwide

Today, we are once again confronted with the deadly consequences of a president with a cabinet full of billionaires that are bankrupting SNAP, healthcare and public education to fund a war on Americans defending our democracy. They choose cruelty, brutality and force over humanity and repression over democracy. The killing of another person by Trump’s Troops is the predictable result of policies rooted in fear, cruelty, and white supremacy. This time around, it is an ICU nurse and member of the AFGE union—a worker dedicated to caring for our veterans.

Instead of fortifying our founding fathers' values of protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Trump and his troops are doubling down on the darkest traditions of our country, indignities  that extend the brutality and fascism of Jim Crow—state-sanctioned violence and the brutal suppression of dissent. We have seen this before. From Bloody Sunday in Selma to today, history shows us what happens when rogue armed agents are unleashed on communities demanding dignity and justice. And history also shows us our responsibility in moments like this. In a scene that mirrors the nightmarish and most sordid parts of our history, a 5-year-old, Liam Coejo Ramos, who his teachers described as “a bright young student, and he’s so kind and loving, and his classmates miss him”, was kidnapped by ICE, and used as bait to capture family members and shipped to Texas for detention.

This terror and trauma being inflicted on Black and Brown children, protestors and families in Minneapolis, and in other occupied cities, resembles the role of Southern states that sent bounty hunters North to capture escaping enslaved Africans in the 1850s as a result of the Fugitive Slave Act or the labor exploitation and racist deportation of Mexican workers during “Operation Wetback” by the Eisenhower administration 100 years later. The moment is also reminiscent of the 1965 march across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, known as “Bloody Sunday”, SNCC activist and future congressman John Lewis, and others, were brutally attacked by state troopers for their non-violent protests demanding an expansion of voting rights. Had our predecessors backed down in the midst of these segregationist-like tactics by federal and local law enforcement agents, we would be less free and less capable of fighting back against the remnants of Jim Crow and white supremacy that are wreaking havoc on cities and states resisting the MAGA regime’s growing authoritarianism and repression.

This is a call to organize. To take to the streets. To fight forward for a democracy that is once again hanging in the balance. Tomorrow, we will stand with partners across Chicago demanding an end to ICE and an end to state-sanctioned violence. We urge others to stand with us.”