Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, as well as Trahern Crews, Local Founder and Organizer of BLM Minnesota, and local organizer Jamael Lydell Lundy, were arrested last night.

“These arrests in Minneapolis are a blatant attempt to silence those who are documenting and protesting the immense cruelty of the Trump administration’s fascist tactics. They have arrested faith leaders, activists, students, teachers, and anyone else who dares express their disagreement with this administration in an effort to protect their communities. A tactic of authoritarianism is crushing dissent, and we are witnessing this play out not only in Minnesota but around the country.

This administration will do anything to prevent people from seeing the evil and violence they are inflicting on our communities every day, and their intentional failures to address rising costs of food and healthcare, skyrocketing rent and utilities, and the devastating impacts of climate change, as half the country is currently enduring a record-breaking ice storm and cold front. It’s their hope that the threat of arrest, abuse, and deadly violence will silence journalists, that the fear will push people off the streets and back into our homes so they can continue kidnapping and terrorizing our people without resistance. 

In the face of this repression, care and people power are the only ways efforts of resistance can endure and defeat these right-wing attacks. Much of that has begun to develop organically in cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, and Washington DC, but more support is needed. That’s why we’re developing Community Care Networks in key cities across the country. In partnership with local organizations, these networks are meant to help develop and expand local connections, meet each other’s needs as the right decimates social programs, and build political power together to resist fascism and win back control of our communities, our systems, our courts, and, eventually, our nation. We will continue to show that an ethic of care is the answer to the cruelty of empire.

M Adams and Dr. Amara Enyia, Co-Executives, Movement for Black Lives