Northwoods Socialist Collective

Outrage has swept across the United States and around the world in response to the emergence of the details of a horrific gang rape in a frat house at Cornell, one of the country’s most prestigious academic institutions. A short week later, almost on the other side of the country in Arizona, the story broke that a candidate for Congress had been raped by two men while fixing road signs for her campaign. Separated by thousands of miles and differing circumstances, they illustrate the pervasiveness of sexual violence in our society. As Cornell and the local layers of police and government trade blame and make excuses for failing to investigate the case thoroughly when it first occurred in 2024, students are demanding answers, with anti-rape rallies called at Cornell and in solidarity at other institutions. In doing so, they join forces with broader movements against sexual violence and gender oppression that have been taking up this vital struggle around the world. What they teach yo...

“ The idea is to get all the information on the total population so that law enforcement can identify the small active minority and keep them separated from the passive majority. Then, second, to target that small minority, in order to eliminate the insurgency – and, third, at the same time, to work on the general population and win their hearts and minds. When those mechanisms begin to be used at home, they constitute a new mode of governing that works on the entire domestic population .” – Bernard E. Harcourt All over the United States, grassroots opposition is growing against expanding mass surveillance, data center construction, and the ongoing crackdowns on immigrants and democratic rights. Technologies like Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) face opposition in town and city halls around the country. Community members from all walks of life are organizing networks to raise awareness about ICE activities in their neighborhoods. After a year of ICE and CBP violently occupying...

Duluth is home to the only abortion clinic in northern Minnesota, the WE Health Clinic.  In fact it has traditionally drawn patients from a huge geographic area, spreading from the Red River Valley to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  But since the overturn of Roe vs Wade, sometimes patients come now from across the country, even from places as far away as Texas. In many ways Minnesota has become an oasis where reproductive rights are still legal, and still accessible - if you can afford them.  To help make sure that nobody is turned away for lack of funds, the HOTDISH Militia runs a robust abortion fund.  And starting this year, it now offers funding to any patient in need of assistance getting an abortion anywhere in Minnesota, not just Duluth.  But to keep the fund solvent requires constant fundraising.  While the WE Health Clinic does a lot of fundraising on its own, the HOTDISH Militia hold a variety of fundraisers too - all of them designed to be acce...

On September 19 about 30 labor unionists and concerned community members gathered at the Duluth Labor Temple to hear Cal Robinet.   Cal is a union electrician and one of the Minnesota 15.  If you haven’t heard of them, they are a group of activists and union members in the Twin Cities who were arrested and charged with felonies alleging that they were engaged in conspiracy and obstructing ICE officers. As Cal pointed out in his presentation though, the real reason for these bogus charges is that the Federal government was looking to make an example of activists who were involved in the epic mobilizations of around half a million people against “Operation Metro Surge”, which was ICE’s attempt to abduct and intimidate immigrant workers throughout Minnesota. The MN 15 were arrested this past June.   They were grabbed in a series of absurd over the top scenarios which saw the activists dragged from their homes in the middle of the night with dozens of heavily armed Feds, ...

On August 13 of this year, the federal Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)  filed a report  detailing an investigation in Minneapolis dated four days after the murder of Alex Pretti. But this document wasn’t an investigation into the murders by federal agents into the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It was about “violent opportunists” in Minneapolis that had “exploited… protests as cover to attempt breaches of federal properties and have perpetrated multiple assaults against federal officers tasked with protecting these facilities.”  The operation, dubbed “Operation Puppet Master,” gathered information on groups and individuals who were never accused of crimes, a line they crossed to intentionally repress political expression and free speech.  Additional  documents  filed in the District Court in Minnesota detail that HSI went far beyond the investigation of individuals pursuing violent tactics against the federal government. Inv...

Homeland Security investigators secretly recorded conversations, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records for labor unions and progressive groups as part of a wide-ranging surveillance effort during Operation Metro Surge, according to court documents filed Thursday morning.  The documents , first reported by The New York Times, were filed by a defense attorney in the federal case against 15 Minnesotans accused of conspiracy to impede or injure a federal agent. The feds’ surveillance programs, dubbed “Operation Puppet Master” and “Operation Whipple Shield,” go far beyond the 15 people indicted.  Homeland Security agents used administrative subpoenas — subpoenas issued by the federal agency rather than a judge — to obtain financial records from organizations including the labor unions Service Employees International Union and Communications Workers of America; Voices for Racial Justice, a longstanding racial justice training organization; and Sun...