Community defenders routed a poorly organized group of fascists in Minneapolis today, as pardoned January 6 attempted coup participant and Florida US Senate candidate Jake Lang attempted to lead a “March Against Islamification” from city hall to the Cedar Riverside neighborhood.
Lang organized his march under the banner of his “Americans Against Islamification”, a personal fiefdom of his through which he has previously staged provocations in cities such as Dearborn, Michigan, where he was able to muster several dozen far right militants to march through one of America’s most Muslim cities. The people of Dearborn confronted Lang and his posse of would-be pogromists, resulting in a heavy police presence. Many Twin Cities residents feared that Lang and his crew were attempting to spark a similar repressive response from the state here in Minneapolis, and urged people to stay away from the march and make the route a “ghost town”. Others, drawing on our long local history of antifascism, refused to allow an uncontested march of fascists to approach the heart of the East African and Muslim community in our city.
Minneapolitans organized themselves in several counter-demonstrations, each with a different stance towards militancy and a relationship to state forces. The Cedar Riverside Protection Alliance, led by business and religious leaders in the East African community, was keenly aware of the campaign of demonization, scapegoating, and fear-mongering against Somali and other African people being conducted by the foundering Trump regime. With an eye towards optics, the leaders within the institutions of Cedar Riverside issued a call for the people of the neighborhood to go about their day as usual, to avoid conflict with the fascists, and to trust in community marshals, religious leaders, and the police to keep them safe. The CRPA further asked that counter-protests stay away from the neighborhood, not wanting to see confrontations or a media spectacle play out on their streets. Community defenders heard and honored these wishes, setting up responses downtown and in the Seven Corners instead.
Downtown, a Protest To Defend Our Neighbors was called by the People’s Action Coalition Against Trump, a coalition of community organizations and unions who have partnered to mobilize against Trump's attacks and continue to pursue the aims of social struggles his administration is trying to push back. This was a mass rally, with marshals for the crowd to maintain discipline and safety. This rally would muster several hundred defenders. Meanwhile, in the Seven Corners, north of Cedar Riverside, a group of local anti-colonial and anti-capitalist Somali and other East African organizers called for a mobile blockade to confront the fascists if they dared to march towards the neighborhood. This call attracted antifascists from across the metro, growing to around a hundred or two defenders. No marshals or other order-keepers were present, though those who rallied to the Seven Corners voluntarily took direction from the Somali organizers who had made the call for solidarity.
Indivisible Twin Cities was initially planning on holding a silent and completely nonviolent protest in City Hall. This was, however, called off to avoid the possibility of sparking a confrontation with the fascists.
Despite their rhetoric of a “crusade” decending on our city, Lang's gathering much more resembled the infamous “Children’s Crusade” of the 13th century, in which charismatic religious fanatics led vulnerable children to their doom in a poorly thought out and executed attempt to seize Jerusalem. Lang’s followers, child-like in ambition and wisdom though adult in body, numbered only around 15 as they set out, the eyes of community defenders already upon them. They made their way, flags fluttering in the frigid January air of a Minnesota cold snap, towards City Hall. By the time they reached it, the forces of community self defense already outnumbered them some ten to one there, with another hundred antifascists in reserve in Seven Corners.
Immediately, their attempt to hold their own space in front of City Hall fell apart, as community defenders acting autonomously left the designated protest space and occupied theirs. Within minutes, their tiny crew was isolated, surrounded, and pinned up against the walls of the Minneapolis City Hall. Any attempt on their part to launch their hateful rhetoric, to provoke the crowd by burning the Quran, or to otherwise follow their quixotic program for the day was moot. They were swamped in minutes. Soon, they initiated violence- a woman in their "march" began indiscriminately spraying pepper spray into the ranks of friend and foe alike.
The minutes that followed did not go well for these erstwhile Crusaders. Jake Lang quickly found himself and his followers drenched in water, from water ballons and super-soakers, leaving them to shiver in the zero-degree Minnesota winter day. Just like their ICE friends who have been slipping and sliding all over town, fascists unused to our cold climate miscalculate the brutality of General Winter! Other community defenders covered Lang and some of his associated in silly string, completing their already clownish appearance.
The antifascists gathered at Seven Corners kept warm dancing along to a drum marching band and laughing along to the updates they recieved from City Hall. The fascists were swarmed. Then, they were trapped. Then, they were trying to retreat, and failing. At last, they were scattering into smaller groups and routing in total disarray. While some of the community defenders at Seven Corners held their positions, bound by their commitment to support the African organizer who had called them there, others took off to join in the chase. A great spot of fun was had by all, fascists notwithstanding. They, for their part, were run for blocks. It is clear that the fascists are bad at organizing, worse at fighting, and worse still at hide-and-seek! Their enthusiasm for their crusade seemed somewhat diminished as they scurried, hounded by hundreds of Minneapolitans, back to their vehicles and out of town. After a long work week under the horrors of the ICE occupation, it was a good winter excursion for workers in our metro!
The Minneapolis Police Department, usually very proactive in defending far right elements from the people’s tribunal of the streets, spent the day with a leisurely attitude, not risking a hard confrontation with the people. They eventually rolled around in the mid-afternoon after these far right agitators had been thoroughly licked, to escort Lang and his cowering cronies from the Indigo Hotel, where they had tried to take shelter to the great disgust of guests and staff alike. We can take this as no indication of the the MPD's orientation, of course- the MPD have brutalized protestors and communities of color in our cities many times, with the Guard watching their back during the crackdown at the end of the Uprising in 2020. It seems, though, that the blue flu the MPD usually reserves for calls for help and protection from working-class Minneapolitans, can also be applied to particularly loathsome elements like Lang and his crew. ICE's Bortac unit was on the scene, and at one point intervened to scoop up a man who was being confronted by antifascist demonstrators, in what seemed more like an extraction than an arrest.
The fascists report that several of their number, who came to our city seeking a “crusade”, were injured in the melee and ensuing rout. The residents of Cedar-Riverside enjoyed a quiet Saturday, aside from the ongoing ICE terror in our city, free from “crusaders”.
The Twin Cities holds a long and successful history of antifascism, stretching back to the 1930 when the Teamsters defeated the anti-labor Citizens Alliance in the great strike of 1934. In the years that followed, the Silver Legion of America, who modeled themselves off the Blackshirts of Italy, where run out of town by the Union Defense Guard of the Teamsters, led by indigenous union militant Ray Rainbolt. Other community members, such as Jewish gang members led by the likes of legendary gangster Kid Cann, also got their licks in on the Silver Shirts. In the late 80s and 1990s, the Northern Hammerskins and White Knights were among the white supremacists driven out of town by an antifascist movement that included the famed interracial and anti-racist skinhead crew, the Baldies. This milieu would go on to give rise to Anti-Racist Action, which grew into an international youth movement in the 1990s and laid the foundation for modern American antifascism. More recently, both autonomous antifascists and revolutionary formations like the IWW General Defense Committee and later the Workers Defense Alliance defeated groups like Alt Right MN, the Proud Boys, and Bikers for Trump throughout the first Trump administration. Antifascists in Minnesota continue to build on a proud and victorious legacy, holding the line against racism and anti-Muslim scapegoating in our city.
No pasaran!
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