Minnesota: Climate Justice Committee rallies to resist Trump's attacks

Minneapolis, MN – In frigid weather, February 20, 50 people rallied with the Climate Justice Committee (CJC) to oppose Trump’s attacks on the environment, along with the barrage of other attacks that have happened in the first month of Trump’s presidency. 

Speakers connected Trump’s attacks on immigrants, trans rights, workers and Palestine to the rollback of environmental protections that Trump instituted in his first days in office.

Trump has used executive orders to push more fossil fuels and end the U.S. role in the Paris Climate Accords, ensuring that previously agreed upon goals to curb climate change won’t happen. The CJC speaker emphasized how every tenth of a percent of rising temperatures mean more intense weather, food scarcity and increasing energy costs that fall disproportionately on oppressed nationality and working class families and their communities. They also talked about the lack of action by Democrats like Senator Klobuchar, whose office the rally was in front of.

Rally goers chanted, “Stand up fight back” as the emcee rotated the attacks on immigrants, trans rights, Palestine, and workers that are happening from Trump and his cronies. 

Kristen Bledsoe from Minnesota Abortion Action Committee talked about the heart wrenching case of Sam Nordquist, a Minnesota native who had recently been tortured and killed in New York as a logical conclusion of the transphobic rhetoric coming from the Trump administration. 

Bledsoe ended her speech with, “We have to resist the impulse to shut down and hide. We have to recognize that the cruelty and the chaos of the Trump administration is meant to make us lose focus, and we have to counter that by being more strategic, more united, and more organized than ever before.” 

“Trump’s attacks on DEI show the white supremacist mindset, trying to kill anything that would make this country more equal for those who have been left out for centuries,” stated Minnesota Workers United speaker Neil Radford. Radford called on rally goers to focus on solidarity of the working class that needs to stand together and not allow Trump and his ilk to divide us. 

Mira Altobell-Resendez from the Minnesota Immigrant Action Committee talked about the important work MIRAC is doing using Know Your Rights trainings with immigrant communities and allies to stand against ICE and governmental agencies. 

Trent Fast from the Minnesota Anti-War Committee made a clear case, “We need to be mad as hell at Donald Trump and his attacks on everyday working people here at home - and those in Palestine. We all have more in common with everyday Palestinians than we ever will with people like Donald Trump. Solidarity across movements is our sharpest weapon against his presidency. Because when we stand together, there’s way more of us than there are of them!”

All of the speakers emphasized the importance of getting involved and building solidarity among the people’s movements to stand against the Trump attacks over the next four years and beyond.

#MinneapolisMN #TwinCities #CJC #ClimateJustice #MNAWC #AWC #ICE #MIRAC #Immigration #NoDeportations #DEI