Thousands Flood 5th Ave. to Flip Off Trump Following Good’s Murder — Organizers Call For General Strike
Angry protesters flip off of ICE and the Trump administration outside Trump Tower on 5th Avenue during Sunday’s massive ‘No War, No Kings, No ICE’ rally and march. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
Sunday’s massive march south on 5th Avenue in response to the ICE execution of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis took protesters right past Trump Tower and provided many with the opportunity to express their anger and disgust towards the current administration in patented NYC style.
“Ass-hole,” they chanted as grimacing cops posted in front of the building looked on behind barricades. “Fuck you, Trump”, other protesters put in, middle fingers thrust high into the air. “You pathetic loser,” another vocal opponent began shouting.
Ahead of the march, Manolo De Los Santos, executive director of the People’s Forum, reminded the thousands gathered around the General William Tecumseh Sherman monument at the southeast entrance to Central Park that Renee Nicole Good was killed on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota last week because she “defended our collective sense of humanity.”
“Now, I have a question for all of you,” De Los Santos continued. “Do you think we need to wait until November to stop this fascist regime? We cannot allow for this fascist regime to go on as it has. Now is the time for the people to take the streets—not just today, but every day. It cannot be a question of voting for another Democrat or another Republican to fix our problems. We have to fix this problem now.”
January 20, De Los Santos reminded protesters, marks Donald Trump’s first year in office since returning to power following the 2024 Presidential Election.
Protesters gathered around the General William Tecumseh Sherman monument in Grand Army Plaza begin to march along 5th Avenue on Jan. 11.
“What message are we going to send him?”De Los Santos continued.
“Fuck Trump!” protesters immediately responded.
“But the best way to say, ‘Fuck Trump!’ De Los Santos added, “is a general strike. We need a mass shutdown of this country to tell the Democrats and Republicans we want democracy, we don’t want fascism,” he said.
But even at this stage in the game, protesters Work-Bites spoke to during the march down 5th Avenue where a lot more circumspect about calling a general strike.
“I think that we agree that would be wonderful,” Daphna Thier, a member of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee said. “Organizing a general strike requires a lot of work and I think we’re not quite there yet as a movement. I think it requires a lot of people learning how to organize in their workplaces. We’re working on that in the labor movement as best we can.”
Thier, who attended Sunday’s anti-ICE march on 5th Avenue with her husband and 5-month-old child, said the key is organizing during the “lulls in between the big moments.”
“We have to keep organizing even though the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] is in a difficult hamstrung moment,” she continued. “We have to keep organizing, legally unrecognized perhaps, but we can still exercise our collective power when we work with our co-workers and when we turn to our neighbors.”
The momentum around workplace organizing, according to Thier, has been building since the pandemic.
“Right now in the last year, there have been moments when there’s been a chilling effect. But overall, I think peoples’ appetite to build organizations has grown,” she said. “We’re seeing what people are able to do in their cities, and seeing a lot more election victories than we did the year before for unions. We’re moving in the right direction. I just think it’s going to take a lot more for people to understand what it takes to organize.”
Abolish ICE: Protesters lead march down 5th Avenue.
Last month, author Jeremy Brecher, co-founder and senior strategic advisor for the Labor Network for Sustainability, published a report called, “Social Strikes: Can General Strikes, Mass Strikes, and People Power Uprisings Provide a Last Defense Against MAGA Tyranny? In it he describes “mass actions that exercise power by withdrawing cooperation from and disrupting the operations of society.”
“The goal of a social strike is to affect not just the immediate employer, but a political regime or social structure,” he says in the report. “Such forms of mass direct action provide a possible alternative when institutional means of action prove ineffective. In all their varied forms they are based on Gandhi’s fundamental perception that ‘even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled.’”
Work-Bites also spoke to two women in their 30’s who agreed to share their thoughts about a general strike on condition of anonymity.
“It’s a multi-pronged approach,” one of the women who described herself as being involved in education said. “Everybody has a role to play. But we definitely need to have some kind of general protest I believe.”
Her friend, who identified herself as a 34-year-old social worker agreed.
“Maybe that’s what it’ll take for people to finally pay attention when things shut down,” she said.
When asked about the need for a general strike to oppose ICE and the Trump administration’s agenda, a fifth-year New York City Public Schools teacher who identified herself as “Nina” told Work-Bites that trade unionists like her need to stand with their unions.
“I think we need to stand with our unions and organize for our classrooms, for our students, for our families,” she said. “I’m a UFT member and that’s why I’m out here today.”
This week, noted commentator and former New York Times Middle East and Balkan Bureau Chief Chris Hedges wrote on his Substack page that the “iron doors have not yet shut”—but they are closing fast.
“There are still protests,” he writes. “The media is stall able to document state atrocities, including the Jan. 7 murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] agent Jonathan Ross. But the doors are closing fast.”
Sunday’s anti-ICE march along 5th Avenue saw participation from several establishment Democratic Party elected officials including Congress Member Nadia Velázquez [D-7th District], former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and others.
Before stepping off, however, one of the action’s other organizers, also told protesters, “We know the Democratic Party isn’t doing enough. That means they have blood on their hands, too,” he said. “After today we cannot just have a march and then go home. Organize, elect leaders to replace those who have blood on their hands.”
Two-term New York City Council Member Alexa Avilés [D-38th District] described herself as a “proud Democratic Socialist” on Sunday and told marchers that “Trump and his fascists goons do not care about human dignity” and will continue to divide the country.
“They do not care about life and the sanctity of that life,” the Brooklyn legislator said. “All they are here to do is plunder and get resources for their own good. We must not lose focus. He will continue to attack resources. He will continue to turn us against one another. We have the power. We will protect one another. We say yes to democracy. We say no to American imperialism and using our taxpayer dollars to kill other humans.”