‘We need radical leadership’: Interview with DSA organiser in Minnesota [Aminah Sheikh]
Aminah Sheikh, union organiser and steering committee member of the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America, spoke to Socialist Worker about Ice’s raids and the resistance to them
Monday 26 January 2026
A protest in Minneapolis against Ice (Picture: Chad Davis / Flickr)
Why has Donald Trump targeted Minnesota?
Trump is not unique to this. It is very American to target the working class.
He is purposefully targeting Minnesota for multiple reasons. First, the uprising after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Minneapolis historically has a large and established inner city Native American community. This is the home of the American Indian Movement, which fought the United States.
Minnesota has progressive laws, including unions who won extended parental leave recently.
America is at war abroad, but also spiralling internally and escalating on multiple fronts because it’s in a stage of fascism.
It is deliberately punishing the poor, unhoused and working class because that’s the purpose of fascism—to create terror.
What was the nature of the shutdown on 23 January? Was it a strike?
The day was amazing. It’s not necessarily a general strike yet, because many people’s businesses just shut down. But 23 January was a test to see where we are collectively.
We have to lift the imaginations of the working class and the poor and 23 January did that.
Mayor Brandon Johnson in Chicago—Democrat and former organiser for the Teachers’ Union—brought up the need for a general strike weeks back. So has Sara Nelson, the President of the Flight Attendants’ Union.
We need radical leadership. But more importantly, we need to respond to demands from the rank-and-file that they are ready to do more.
Nothing is perfect. This is a muscle we need to build. It’s also one of the many tactics that working people and poor people are engaged in.
People across the state are forming rapid response networks to help protect our neighbours from this domestic terror led by the Trump administration.
What do you think the next steps are?
Our Democratic Socialists of America group wants to build towards an actual general strike.
We need unions to push members into an actual strike. We need this to spread across the country and move beyond the bounds of “legality”.
We have seen in Italy and India and elsewhere how work refusals, disruptions and coordinated strikes are one way we can repel and fight repressive governments.
Who organised the huge march and rally on 23 January?
The organisation that led a lot of what was happening on the day was SEIU Local 26 based here in the Twin Cities.
They service and organise the working class and working poor. Many of their own members are being abducted and terrorised.
So, it is incumbent on the labour movement to defend their members.
I am extremely proud to have come out of my own organising experience out of a powerful union, that knows the fight for workers is both at home in their communities and in the workplace. You can never separate the two.
