UVM Staff United Statement on the Federal Occupation of Minneapolis and Popular Resistance
UVM Staff United Statement on the Federal Occupation of Minneapolis and the Response of the People
Since the beginning of the year, we have witnessed the federal government deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Minneapolis. ICE has disrupted civic life across the city, separating families, injuring community members, destroying and even ending lives. On Saturday, immigration agents shot and killed union nurse Alex Pretti, which along with the murder of Renee Good on January 7, brings their 2026 death count to at least nine. Their actions make it clear that ICE is a danger to the safety of our communities. We join National Nurses United, the Chicago Teachers Union, and others in calling on Congress to abolish ICE.
Yet the last month has not been without hope. On Friday, Minneapolitans carried off the largest general strike in the US in 80 years. Tens of thousands of people took the streets, and seven hundred businesses closed. Fellow AFT members in the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and the St Paul Federation of Educators have organized to protect their students by activating school patrols and helping families shelter in place (both unions are dually affiliated with AFT and NEA). And on street corners around the Twin Cities, neighbors are stationed with whistles, ready to sound the alert at the sight of an ICE vehicle.
Our union knows firsthand what people can achieve when we band together. In the last five years, we won two contracts that created workplace protections, established parental leave, and dramatically increased our pay through our solidarity, persistence, and action. We stood up for each other to enforce our contract and resist unilateral actions from our employer that endangered our most vulnerable.
Now it is time for our union and the entire labor movement to bring our collective power to the fight for our rights. This fight is both national and hyper-local. It will be waged on the floor of Congress and in the doorways of our schools, in our emergency rooms and our classrooms, in mass protests and on every street corner in America. Minneapolis is showing the way. Will we join them?
It is the responsibility of each of us to prepare to meet this moment in our workplaces and our neighborhoods. Specifically, we call for the following:
Union leaders: Now is the moment for our leadership. We call on fellow union leaders to activate their members to protect our local communities. Our union is working with unions at the hospital and with Migrant Justice to develop a rapid response network for the UVM and UVM Medical Center campuses, and we urge other unions to do the same for their places of work. We also must organize within our locals to become strike ready, in the event of a local or national general strike.
Union members: Now is the time to get involved with your union. Those of us who are union members are already organized in networks of collective power. We urge members to push their leadership to meet the moment, and to organize rapid response and mutual aid networks at your workplaces.
Everyone: Communities across Vermont are getting organized in local rapid response networks like those in Minneapolis. We urge everyone who can to find a way to bring their skills and capacities to these networks. In Vermont, a great place to start is by signing up for Migrant Justice’s action alerts.
Every single one of us has a role to play in protecting our communities from state violence. There are more of us than there are of them, and if we are organized together, we can and will win. Solidarity.
- The UVM Staff United Board