RESOLUTION BY IUPAT LOCAL 10 PROTESTING FEDERAL TARGETING OF MINNEAPOLIS LABOR AND COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS

Whereas workers here in Portland and throughout the U.S. have been greatly inspired by the courageous resistance of Minnesota working people to the violent repression and occupation of the Twin Cities by ICE and the Border Patrol, and

Whereas earlier this month the AFL-CIO’s convention, meeting in Minneapolis, awarded Minnesota’s labor movement for its members’ actions during the anti-immigrant “Operation Metro Surge,” with the AFL-CIO’s president stating: “This year, our Minnesota union brothers, sisters and siblings showed us the best of the labor movement,” and

Whereas yesterday, Tuesday June 16, after federal agents carried out a wave of raids and arrests, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted 15 Minnesota trade unionists and community activists on bogus “conspiracy” charges, in an obvious act of vengeance against the mass protests in Minneapolis earlier this year, seeking to cow and silence all labor and all opponents of anti-worker, anti-immigrant and racist repression, and

Whereas amid a slew of other allegations, “the indictment cited some of the individuals’ participation in assemblies of trade unionists and other workers held at the United Labor Centre in Minneapolis as evidence” that the activists had supposedly participated in a “criminal conspiracy” (Workday Magazine, June 16), a sinister logic by which almost any unionist anywhere could be framed up on bogus charges for attending labor movement meetings, and

Whereas Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham stated yesterday: “This past winter, the Trump administration tried to break Minnesotans’ solidarity and basic sense of decency by flooding our state with armed agents. They failed. Now they are trying to break us in the courtroom. They will fail again,” and

Whereas unionists in Minnesota have called for solidarity from the rest of labor against the attempt to intimidate us all and strip away our most basic rights, and

Whereas workers in Portland have gone through a federal occupation and experienced all kinds of attempts to stop the working class from defending basic rights against the bosses and all manner of anti-worker, divide-and-rule, bigoted and repressive forces, and

Whereas the attack on our fellow workers in Minnesota is an attack on our rights, too and the rights of all labor, therefore

Be it resolved that International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Local 10 demands that all charges be immediately dropped against the Minnesota activists, and

Resolved that we call on the rest of the Portland and Oregon labor movement to demand this as well; and

Resolved that this resolution be immediately published and communicated to the Minnesota and national labor movement.

Resolution approved by the members in attendance at the regular meeting of Painters Local 10 on June 17, 2026.