reSee.it Video Transcript AI Summary
First speaker: Has America ever engaged in a general strike? Like, that’s enough. We’re not showing up to work tomorrow?
Second speaker: We’ve never had a general strike. But this Friday on January twenty-third, there is an ice out of Minnesota, day of action. It’s a shutdown day where people will be staying home from work, refusing to participate in economic activities. So a power and they’re calling on Americans across the country to show solidarity.
First speaker: One of the problems with Minnesota right now is you have people like Kristi Noem or the people who are heading up ICE saying that it’s not nonviolent resistance. They’re saying someone like Renee Good was actually a threat to those people or that filming an ICE agent—or documenting, which is perfectly legal—is a form of threat, and therefore they justify using violence in return to the threat of violence from these people. What do you do when what your nonviolent action is perceived as violence by the people who can use violence against you?
Second speaker: Declaring peaceful protesters violent or domestic terrorists or outside agitators is what autocrats all around the world do. That is their playbook, is to make people fearful and to try to undermine the legitimacy of protesters. So what are we seeing in Minneapolis right now? What have we seen in our history in this country? Think about the civil rights movement, profound state violence used against protesters. They prepared, they trained, they role played, they organized all to make that political violence backfire. Think of Selma, the peaceful march. So when peaceful disciplined protesters confronted the dogs, the hoses, the response—It revealed the cruelty when the disciplined protesters were faced with this form of violence. And so that’s how disciplined nonviolent resistance can make state violence repression backfire.