Will Trump Meet His Russian Winter in Minnesota?

History always has more to teach us—if we pay attention. Napoleon Bonaparte, my great uncle’s namesake, was a French general who, in the wake of the French Revolution, consolidated power to impose a dictatorship on France, crowning himself emperor in 1804. As a megalomaniac, he wasn’t satisfied with being just the Emperor of France—he wanted to be Emperor of the World.

In June 1812, Napoleon’s forces entered Russia: more than 450,000 men, over 150,000 horses, approximately 25,000 wagons and nearly 1,400 artillery pieces. In less than six months, about one million people died (including soldiers on both sides and civilians), making it one of the deadliest military campaigns in history. Napoleon’s men did not understand where they were, nor did they understand that trying to take a country like Russia in winter, if you were, from well, the south of France, wasn’t a sound idea.

Sort of like Minnesota in the winter. The Trump administration and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem are dead set on forcing Minnesota to its knees. In late January, as wind chills dropped below zero, Immigration and Customs Enforcement face a unified Minneapolis home team, which, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, has neighbors more organized and coordinated than ever to resist a federal invasion.

Things are even more complicated for the ICE troops who have amassed from various warmer locales. (For instance, Jake Lang, a January 6 insurrectionist pardoned by Trump who led a dud anti-immigrant demonstration in Minneapolis on January 17, is from Florida.)

Word is out that ICE agents don’t know how to walk on ice and don’t really like Minnesota. To address that, Trump wants to import some “paratroopers” from Alaska. According to news reports, 1,500 soldiers on standby are from the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, which specializes in cold weather operations.

If Trump deploys active-duty military forces domestically for law enforcement or to suppress unrest, he would likely be acting under the authority of the Insurrection Act, which was first enacted in 1792 but has not been significantly updated in about 150 years. The last time a president used the act without a state governor’s consent was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson invoked it to protect civil rights protestors after Alabama state troopers attacked peaceful activists at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Bloody Sunday.”

As operation “Metro Surge” expands across Minnesota with 3,000 ICE agents on the ground, and operation “Catch of the Day” launches is Maine, there is a daunting civil rights challenge for us all. To be clear, states like Minnesota and Maine are not even in the “top 10” states in terms of the population of undocumented workers. Border states with notable agricultural economies like Florida (with an estimated 1.2 million undocumented immigrants), Texas (l.9 million) and, of course, California (3 million) lead in those categories. The assault on Minnesota is clearly political. And tragic.

Here’s part of the problem: Minnesota has a long and proud history of social justice movements, which deserve credit for creating the Minnesota we know today—a white majority state that has opened its arms to immigrants. Perhaps that’s why MAGA hates us.

Let’s begin with the fact that Minnesota’s predominately white population came from immigrants themselves, who came in the 19th century from Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia. Today’s predominately non-white “new Americans” were brought in by the ancestors of those 19th century immigrants via Lutheran and Catholic social service agencies.

These church-based organizations have helped almost a half a million refugees to relocate—many of them political refugees from American wars—like the Hmong form Southeast Asia, Bosnians and the Somalis. Global Refuge, formerly Lutheran Social Services, puts it this way on their website: “We have spent decades nurturing community-based initiatives to support refugees, and we lead the field in refugee resettlement because of the incredible support we receive from our community partners.”

The immigrants welcomed by these agencies have made new businesses and are integrated into the Northern economies, and for sure the food systems. (A group of Congolese families in Fargo buy my goats.) Today those refugees need Lutherans to stand up, not stand back.

Minnesotans are social

From the People’s Party to the Nonpartisan League to the Farmer Labor Party (“Of, by and for the people”), to the Minneapolis General Strike of 1925, to the MacDonald sisters who helped found Women Against Military Madness to the George Floyd protests to the resistance to Enbridge’s Line 3, Minnesotans have a history of standing up for what’s right.

Remember, many of the first immigrants, came from Scandinavia, where values of the collective good drove policies like free health care and education, for instance. And, they are used to the cold, where surviving bitter winters requires support from neighbors.

They also transplanted their collective ideas. Cooperatives were the norm, where members and workers jointly owned a business and shared its benefits. Cornerstones of Minnesota’s economy like Cenex (originally the Farmers Union Central Exchange), SAMPO, and even Land of Lakes are all cooperatives. Minnesotans also appreciated collective organizing, especially on the Iron Range, where strikes led by Finnish and Slovenian miners in l907 and l9l6 sought better conditions. The Nonpartisan League and Socialists ran the government of North Dakota during the early 20th century, leaving behind the nation’s first state owned banks, grain elevators and more.

And we are a sentimental bunch. Take Eugene Debs, Indiana State Representative and a five-time Socialist Party candidate for U.S. President. There’s a town up north near Bemidji named after him, Debs.

Looking out for everyone—it’s a northern thing. That’s how we survive, how we take care of each other. It’s not a coincidence that Minnesota is among the top of the rankings for education and social services.

Today’s resistance movements follow in a long line of ancestors:

Meridel LeSeur, the prairie poet, spoke for farmers, women and workers. Born Meridel Wharton in 1900, she assumed the name of her mother’s second husband, Arthur Le Sueur, the former socialist mayor of Minot, North Dakota. Her best-known works include the 1932 essay “Women on the Breadlines” and the novel The Girl. Le Sueur’s association with communist organizations eventually led to blacklisting in the 1950s during the Cold War and then with the return of enlightened thinkers, her writing became popular again. Her stepfather Arthur Le Seur, after leaving his mayoral post, became the leader of North Dakota’s Nonpartisan League.

The MacDonald sisters are four Catholic nuns—Brigid, Jane, Rita, and Kate—from an Irish farm family. They joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in the 1940s and 1950s, and “did not lead lives revolving around rosaries,” but the teachings of Jesus. They have dedicated their lives to peace, becoming prominent figures in anti-war protests particularly at the Honeywell Corporation. Sister Kate died in 2023, at 101, and their collective courage is remembered in many places including a play “Sisters of Peace.”

The American Indian Movement was born in Minneapolis in l968, brought about by the dire conditions and repression facing many Indigenous people who had been forced to the Twin Cities by the theft of our lands and territories. Police brutality, including a practice of throwing Indian men into the back of police cruisers was met with opposition by founders like Pat Ballenger, Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt—Anishinaabeg from the White Earth and Leech Lake reservations. The American Indian Movement grew nationally and remains both an advocacy organization with many established institutions, including the Heart of The Earth School, Little Earth housing complex, AIM Street Medics, American Indian Opportunities and Industrialization Center (one of the largest Indian job training programs), and Indian Legal Rights Centers.

The Honeywell Project, formed in the late l960s to the l990s, focused on peace through corporate accountability. Honeywell, Minnesota’s largest military contractor, made cluster bombs and more, which maimed innocent Vietnamese people. Marv Davidoff, the “Peace Guru,” the project founder, was a friend of mine and an inspiration“”. Every week, there was a vigil outside of Honeywell offices, and on the Lake Street Bridge. On October 24, l983, 574 people were arrested, including Erica Bouza, the wife of then-Minneapolis Police Chief Anthony Bouza, who provided coffee and donuts to his jailed wife and her comrades.

Honeywell officially stopped manufacturing cluster munitions and other banned weapons like anti-personnel landmines and chemical/biological weapons, stating it as a policy in their official defense fact sheets. But its former defense division (now Alliant Techsystems (ATK)) is still doing rotten things.

The Willmar 8 were eight female employees of the Citizens National Bank in Willmar who went on strike on December 16, 1977, over charges of sex discrimination. The tellers and bookkeepers were repeatedly asked to train junior male employees who would then be hired over their heads. Although their actions did result in a National Labor Relations Board decision in their favor, only three of the women returned to the bank.

The General Assembly to Stop the Powerline (GASP) was a coalition of farmers who did not want a big 400 kilovolt line to cross their land in central Minnesota. The farmers began their opposition in 1974, a year after the Minnesota Power Plan Siting Act was passed, when utility easement agents arrived in Pope and Grant counties. In 1973, the Cooperative Power Association (CPA) and United Power Association (UPA), two rural electrical cooperatives that sold power to about two-thirds of Minnesotans, announced plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Underwood, North Dakota, and connect it to a converting station in Dickinson, Minnesota, a small town 17 miles west of Minneapolis To make that 425-mile connection, the utility companies needed to also cross 170 miles of farmland in western and central Minnesota.

At first, the farmers appeared at governmental hearings and in court proceedings to oppose the powerline’s construction. When those methods proved unsuccessful, protesters employed more confrontational methods. On January 5, 1978, Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich (DFL) authorized sending up to 175 state troopers to Pope County to control protests. Although the farmers did not ultimately win, their fight lasted for almost a decade. Once the towers and lines were installed, that infrastructure became a target of vandalism. At least 9,500 insulators were shot out. Vandals found that they could cause towers to fall to the ground by cutting tower legs. From August 1978 through August 1983, 16 towers were toppled.

The Northern Sun Alliance was a coalition of anti-nuclear groups active from 1977 to 1989. Their efforts were largely focused on the Prairie Island Nuclear Plant, located on the Prairie Island Dakota reservation. Proposals for more on-site storage of nuclear waste in the Mississippi River flood plain were met with tribal opposition and community opposition to what was then Northern States Power, now Xcel Energy. As a result of this struggle, Xcel is mandated by the state of Minnesota to fund renewable energy projects in their territory.

Movements to protect and rename sacred sites in Minneapolis and St. Paul continue to grow. And don’t forget Standing Rock (now the 10th anniversary of that resistance movement); 10,000 people showed up against big oil and for the Native people. Times change.

Minnesotans do not approve of police brutality. That’s clear. The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, witnessed by three more police officers, was filmed. The Minneapolis Uprising began on May 26, 2020, and the rage continued for several days. In response, Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) activated the Minnesota National Guard, the largest deployment of the state’s forces since World War II. By early June 2020, violence resulted in at least two deaths, 604 arrests, and more than $500 million in damage to approximately 1,500 properties—the second-most destructive period of local unrest in U.S. history, after the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. On May 2, 2023, the conclusion of the last criminal case for the four Minneapolis police officers responsible for murdering Floyd fulfilled a key demand of protesters that Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao were legally held accountable.

And then there is Line 3. Minnesota’s last occupation by a paid military was during the construction of Enbridge’s Line 3. The state deployed about $8.5 million worth of police financed by the foreign corporation in Calgary, Canada, Enbridge. Despite massive opposition to the pipeline (70,000 people testifying against Line 3, and 4,000 in favor), the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission gave approval, and then Enbridge gave lots of money—over $3 million to the Minnesota DNR for enforcement, and a lot to local police forces in Cass County, Hubbard, and more.

Some 4,300 workers came from elsewhere with lots of armed security and surveillance. The occupation was broad across the north, and many Minnesotans came to join the Anishinaabe and local landholders in the resistance to big oil, particularly tar sands oil, one of the dirtiest oil pollutants on the planet. Enbridge began construction in earnest in January 2021 with the support of Gov. Tim Walz, who deemed this a project of “critical infrastructure,” which should proceed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The militarized occupation of the North was carried out in the deepest of winter. Minnesota arrested over a thousand people; most of those cases were dismissed. Tragically, the pipeline went in, but alliances were born, and institutions like the Giiwedinong Museum, which I helped found, dedicated to the story of the Water Protector Movement and Anishinaabe history remain. The museum is in the former Carnegie Library-turned Enbridge office in downtown Park Rapids, Minnesota. Of the 1,000 Line 3 arrests, the last legal case just had a hearing in Minnesota this January.

Minnesota is indeed used to conflict.

In the Deep North

The executions of Alex Pretti and Renee Good shocked and galvanized Minnesotans throughout the state.

Here in the Deep North, towns like Park Rapids (pop. 4,142) the county seat of Hubbard County 188 miles northeast of Minneapolis and Moorhead (pop.44,505) the county seat of Clay County 233 miles northeast of Minneapolis, have had robust turn out for No Kings Day.

Lyn Pinnick from Moorhead is a veteran of the Line 3 battle. Since 2016, she has been working with Indivisible organizing her neighbors and more. Hundreds of people are turning out, thousands, in these small northern towns, and on the bridges over the Red River.

That’s all the work of a lot of community people, meetings with coffee and lemon bars, and support systems for neighbors. I’ve been really impressed with these community members. Pinnick, always gracious, posts on Facebook: “Thanks to each and every one of you for working to unrig our democracy and fight the cruel and inhumane dangers we face today of fascism. ”

Then there are recovering Republicans like Scott Erlenborn from the Park Rapids area who posts on the Hubbard County Indivisible Facebook page:

I am the person that has been protesting with the upside-down flag for the last two weeks at the highway 71 & 34 intersection. I am not immature, confused or caught up emotionally in some false narrative from the liberal media. I know world history. I understand the grave danger this nation is in at this present moment with this president.

I march each day not because I hate my country, but because I love it and hate to see what is happening to it. When drivers yell at me antagonistically “God bless America”, I give them the thumbs up, and say “Yes, God bless America!”, because I want God to continue to bless this nation, and under Trump I know that will never happen.

An ancient proverb says, “An evil man will burn down his nation to rule over its ashes”. That is what is happening in America today. That is what we are presently witnessing. That is why I march.

Resistance like that in Park Rapids, is replicated throughout the state. (See “Voices of ICE Resistance Across Minnesota”)

There’s a lot of things that the new wannabe Emperor doesn’t know about my territory. We have a history of standing together. For Trump and Noem, this may be their Russian Winter. We will see.

My great uncle Napolean LaDuke rests under a blanket of snow but reminds me always of the price of empire. And, in the meantime, I want to thank all those courageous and principled Minnesotans who sing, sled, and stand for our neighbors and our territory. Continue. History is being made.

Winona LaDukeMore by this author →

Winona LaDuke is Anishinaabe, a writer, an economist, a hemp farmer and a Barn Raiser Contributing Editor. LaDuke is a leader in cultural-based sustainable development strategies, renewable energy, sustainable food systems and Indigenous rights. She is a co-curator at the Giiwedinong Treaty Rights and Culture Museum in Park Rapids, Minnesota, and owner of Winona’s Hemp.