MINNEAPOLIS, January 28 — In international solidarity with our working-class brothers and sisters of Tahir Square and our fellow anti-capitalists in Athens, London, Paris and Rome, the Minnesota Occupiers held Occupy Space Day in Minneapolis. It was thrilling!
A contingent of 70 demonstrators marched through the Steven Square and Eliot Park downtown neighborhoods protesting income inequality and housing evictions. Minneapolis has one of the Midwest’s highest eviction rates, after Chicago. Our demonstrators were men and women, black, white and bi-racial, union activists, workers and college students. While many were reformist in outlook, many others were anti-capitalists.
The kkkops harassed us initially but left before the march’s main event. In Eliot Park where the march ended there was an anti-capitalist speech declaring international solidarity with our working-class brothers and sisters in Egypt and with other global protestors against racist, imperialist capitalism.
The speech was in front of an abandoned church that Hennepin County declared county property. An unused church could be used as a workers’ cultural community center. However, the county bosses want to hold onto it rather than give it to workers, so we took it!
One speaker declared, “We take this property in the name of the Minneapolis oppressed!” The doors were forced open and we had a party! We held it for one hour before the cops gave us 15 minutes to clear out or be arrested. We all left together, orderly and disciplined.
Despite that outcome it was a small victory because workers are slowly learning we don’t have to take oppression, that we can collectively fight back. Workers took all the CHALLENGES I had. Personally the march and occupation made me think of the 1871 Paris Commune and the 1968 general strike in France.
This is a great time to be alive because the PLP will show millions of workers globally the revolutionary path to communism!
Minnesota Red