An protest in Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens have been killed at the hands of immigration agents. | Photo: Shutterstock.
Restaurants across the country are announcing plans to participate in a general strike on Friday to protest the ongoing immigration crackdown.
Activist groups such as National Shutdown and General Strike U.S. are calling for Jan. 30 to be a day of “no work, no school, no shopping” to protest the Trump Administration’s deportation effort. The action comes a week after a similar move in Minneapolis, when an estimated 700 businesses closed for the day, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Over the weekend, however, a second shooting death at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents in Minneapolis has sparked a louder national outcry. Federal border czar Tom Homan is reportedly working on drawing down enforcement activity in Minnesota.
But the national day of protest was designed to coincide with a scheduled vote on Capitol Hill in Washington on a spending bill that would have included a measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.
Senate Democrats late Thursday reportedly struck a deal to strip DHS funding from the bill, in an effort to avoid a full government shutdown. Under the deal, DHS would be funded for another two weeks, while Congress negotiates guardrails for ICE activity.
Meanwhile, Minnesota restaurateurs have circulated a letter to Congress that Sean Sherman, the owner of the Minneapolis restaurant Owamni, said would be delivered on Friday with more than 1,000 signatures.
The letter demands that funding for DHS be withheld until changes are made, including the withdrawal of ICE and border protection agents from the Twin Cities and other cities, investigations into the civilian deaths, and an end to detention and deportation of American citizens.
The letter also calls for other measures, like requiring federal agents to show their faces and have visible identification, ending quotas for arrests, the codification of use-of-force standards, and other guardrails that would rein in the federal agency’s aggressive tactics.
“The American food industry depends on safety, trust and dignity,” the letter states. “When workers fear being targeted, racially profiled, surveilled, detained, or killed by the federal government, the entire system suffers. No industry built on human labor can function under terror.”
Restaurant operators across other cities are planning moves to stand in solidarity with Minneapolis, including cities like Los Angeles, Denver; New York; Portland, Maine; and Portland, Oregon.
For some, that means closing for the day, even though the loss of revenue could be a real blow.
“It’s no small thing for a small business to close for a day, but what we’re going through in this country calls for action beyond business as usual,” posted Little Egg restaurant in Brooklyn.
In Chicago, Kumiko announced plans to close for the day, but said hourly workers scheduled that day would still be paid.
In Los Angeles, the sports bar Untamed Spirits is also scheduled to close for the day to participate in the strike. Co-founder Janie Trinh told Eater LA that they debated because of concern about their staff. “But it’s not about business at this point,” Trinh said. “This is about community.”
Across social media, consumers are also being urged to stay home and boycott spending in general. If consumers follow through on the strike, some argue, restaurant traffic is likely to be slow.
The Independent Hospitality Coalition in Los Angeles in an Instagram post acknowledged, however, that many restaurants cannot afford to lose a day of business. So they offer other ideas to show support, including donating a percentage of sales from a dish or drink to an immigrant rights group or legal defense fund, allow customers to roundup their checks to donate, or simply by using the restaurant’s platform to express opposition to ICE.
Spice Waala in Seattle, for example, posted that more than 30 businesses there would be donating proceeds in various ways to send to restaurants in Minneapolis as gift cards so they could close on Friday and still support themselves through the economic blackout.
Chef Eddie Huang, who also writes the substack Canal Street Dreams, argues, “We have to take action that hurts the economy because that is all that will move the dial at this point.”
But he worries about the hourly workers living from paycheck to paycheck who would suffer.
“I have a few thousand dollars to my name at this point, but if an employee at The Flower Shop [where he is executive chef] wants to participate in the shut down Friday, I will give them what they would have made hourly,” he wrote.
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