We offer raw materials here to build with. You’ll find photos and reflections from people on the ground in Minneapolis, when the working class and its allies rose up in revolt in January. People will talk about Minneapolis for a long time.

This doesn’t look like a normal essay. Here’s why. We don’t think for the working class. We think inside and alongside*. We don’t write like corporate media writes:* The New York Times clutches its pearls and tells us how to be cautious, liberal, and passive. Corporate media tries to do our thinking for us — thinking by the professionals for the masses. Workers think. Revolt has its reason.

Here’s how to use this material.

No text belongs to any image. No image belongs to any text.

How are they supposed to fit together? Build for yourself. Construct your own machine. Thought is a weapon of class war. We build our class weapons together. Class war legos. It’s a snap.

(Were you there on the streets? Send us your reflections, chants you remember, pictures you took.)

Everyone is a philosopher …  in “language,” there is contained a specific conception of the world, one then moves on to the second level, which is that of awareness and criticism.

— Gramsci

The first time I took my ear plug out to hear what it really sounded like was insane. You could not describe the noise.

— Minnesota worker

In a representative of the oppressed and exploited masses, this hatred — class hatred — is truly the “beginning of all wisdom.”

— Lenin

When [M.] and I first showed up to the intersection where Alex Pretti was killed, about an hour after the murder, there were already tons of people there. They were warning people that there was a lot of tear gas, but not a single person turned back. When we got tear gassed, another protester gave us water and goggles and told us they lived nearby. They offered to let us sit in their home until we felt okay again—we had no idea who this person was and we had just met that day, but they were ready to open their home to us. When we finally left the intersection hours later, a man was standing on the front porch of his house announcing to people that he had hot coffee and phone chargers inside if anyone needed to come collect themselves. It seemed that anyone nearby would have been willing to open their homes to us.

— Minnesota worker

Two things are absolutely necessary for the life of a State: arms and religion . . . force and consent, coercion and persuasion, State and Church, political society and civil society, politics and morals . . . law and freedom, order and discipline . . . violence and fraud.

— Gramsci

Another one of my favorite moments was hearing my students reflect on the walk out and attending the protest at the state capitol. They showed me videos in the signs that they made, and I could see how empowering it was for them. Hearing about one of my unsuspecting students who took the lead & lead their classmates in chants just had me in awe of them & it made me so proud. I could tell that was turning point for my students.

— Minneapolis worker

Everywhere you go in the city, you’ll see “ICE OUT” or “FUCK ICE” spray painted on walls. Every neighborhood has signs in windows showing resistance to ICE, from apartments in working class South Minneapolis to small businesses in Somali neighborhoods to giant houses in Saint Paul. At protests I saw everyone from young people to wine moms to men who look like they could’ve voted for Trump, faces full of rage against ICE. It’s amazing. An entire city, across all different types of people, is united in their fight to get ICE out.

— Minneapolis Activist

The war which the capitalist governments have started can only be ended by a workers’ revolution.

— Lenin

When a huge crowd of protestors got tear gassed, we all started running away, but you could hear voices in the crowd shouting “take slow breaths and don’t panic, it will pass.” Round after round of tear gas was fired at us, dozens of canisters, but people didn’t leave. We all listened to the advice to take slow breaths and let it pass. People all around offered us water and masks and milk for our burning faces, and we all took the time to recover and went right back to the fight in the streets. After four hours and countless tear gas canisters, the crowd of protesters was much larger than it started. We had pushed ICE completely out of the neighborhood, and we had done so because everyone was willing to help each other brave chemical weapons

— Minnesota worker

When Alex Pretti was killed, there was a battle in the street between protestors and ICE agents. We wanted ICE out of the intersection so we could keep the neighborhood safe and construct a memorial. After ICE was pushed out hours later, protestors started climbing trees and cutting down evergreen branches to surround the site of his murder. After days and days of protests and struggle, this was what finally made me break down and cry—Minnesota evergreens in place of flowers at the memorial for our fellow Minnesotan.

— Minnesota worker

As we were marching, we were walking through a very immigrant neighborhood, and there were all these families, and like little kids, who were like peeking out the windows and taking videos, an you kind of like start to notice them by like hands or phones or something like that, but then kind of as we went, more and more families were coming out in the alleyways or on their stoops, and chanting along, like si se puede, and I don’t know, smiling, holding their hearts, crying.

And it was just so affecting, because it was people who had been sheltering in place, and being afraid to go to work or school, and who were like so moved by the show of solidarity from their neighbors, who were out in the streets fighting for them … after months of stress and fear form the occupation of their city and the threat of deportation.

— Minneapolis Activist

I think there have been so many stages of surreal moments—some very heartwarming & others in a more heavy sense. The night renee good was murdered we went to the memorial site & that moment that took my breath away. Seeing hundreds of candles & flowers & how many people mobilized & came together to make sure she was honored was really touching. that moment we all knew there was no turning back.

— Minneapolis worker

Everyone is a philosopher …  in ‘language,’ there is contained a specific conception of the world, one then moves on to the second level, which is that of awareness and criticism.

— Gramsci

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