Water Protectors Lock to Enbridge Office Gates, Work Halted

From It’s Going Down

In the early morning, 6 water protectors locked to the gates of a key Enbridge office in Bemidji, MN in protest of proposed tar sands pipeline project Line 3. 2 chained their necks to the gate, risking personal safety for the hundreds of watersheds Enbridge proposes to send nearly 1M barrels of tar sands from Alberta through on its way to the shores of Lake Superior. Enbridge responded by closing its office for the day.

Wild rice season is nearing, when Anishinaabe people will take to their canoes to harvest the sacred food that is at the heart of Anishinaabe culture. Enbridge plans to send tar sands through dozens of wild rice watersheds, irrevocably impacting its growth and survival.

Line 3 is one proposed infrastructure project out of the Alberta tar sands, alongside TransCanada’s Keystone XL and Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain pipelines. Tar sands is the dirtiest fossil fuel in the world. Weeks ago, the Teck Frontier Mine, a proposed tar sands expansion twice the size of Vancouver was recommended by a board of Canadian environmental regulators.

“As an able-bodied and willing person, it is my duty to stand with Anishinaabe people who are putting their lives on the line every day standing up for all of us, for all of our water.” Kieran Cuddy said, while locked to the front gate of Enbridge’s office.

RIP Willem Van Spronsen

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

Rest in Power, Willem Van Spronsen.

May we learn from your direct action and build on it until every cage is empty.

A Minneapolis anarchist.

Free Cedar Graffiti In So-Called Minneapolis

From North Shore Counter-Info

Tonight, in response to the day of action called in response to the repression of rebel queers in Hamilton, a few of us went out of our way to decorate the walls of our city. For us, it was not a question of whether or not to act, but quite simply a question of how to act.

For those of us whose for whom living is inseparable from fighting against the cops, klan, and the world that reproduces them, we must learn recognize one another across everything that divides us—across borders, and across predicates. In this recognition, we learn in the very core of our being what it means to say “an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

And so for the question of how, we set out to tag a wall, and then another, and then another as our confidence grew.

Free Cedar and all rebel queers.

Forever fuck the pigs.

Harm Reductionists Demand Safe Use Space

From It’s Going Down

After 175 overdoses in two weeks, harm reductionists dropped a banner on the Little Earth trail overlooking Highway 55 demanding safe use space in Minneapolis. Opioid overdose deaths are preventable and the memories of those we have lost are our inspiration.

Safe use spaces, sometimes called supervised injection facilities or safe consumption sites, prevent overdose deaths and other health problems related to the criminalization of drug users and a drug supply poisoned by fentanyl. They provide the same injection supplies as needle exchanges, intervene rapidly when overdoses occur, offer help with safer injection practices, and generate supportive community so people can meet their health goals on their own terms. They are particularly important to drug users who do not have a place to live, yet these spaces are criminalized under federal law with penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

The recent surge in overdoses occurred after the June 3rd closure of the Navigation Center, a temporary shelter erected last winter in response to a months long encampment of predominantly Native drug users experiencing homelessness. 1000 opioid overdoses were reversed at the encampment with naloxone (Narcan) according to estimates from statewide distributors of the life saving medication. Workers at the Navigation Center diligently checked on active drug users in that space to rapidly respond to overdoses.

Native people across Minnesota are experiencing an ongoing genocide now fueled by drug poisonings and lack of housing. Native people are 6 times more likely to die from overdose than white settlers and 17 times more likely to experience homelessness.

The need for a safe use space is clear and need not wait for the state’s permission. As the death toll mounts, we challenge ourselves to build what the state will punish but not offer: sovereignty of body, health, and community by defending ourselves and our neighbors in a drug poisoning epidemic.

#endoverdose #yes2scs

Water Protectors Lock Down to Stop Line 3 Construction, as Enbridge Seeks Water Crossing Permits

From Earth First! Newswire

This morning, water protectors supported by Ginew Collective, Northfield Against Line 3, and others, halted work at an active construction site on the proposed Line 3 route. Three water protectors locked themselves to logging equipment while over a dozen concerned citizens rallied in support.

Great River Energy, Enbridge’s named utility provider for numerous pump stations it needs to power its tar sands pipeline, is logging through water crossings and wetlands next to the Line 3 route.

Enbridge has significant unmet energy needs to power the Line 3 route, and notes its partnership with Great River Energy in its application to the Army Corps of Engineers to bulldoze through wetlands and water crossings. Great River Energy specifies in its Army Corps application that it is building the electric transmission line to power Enbridge’s pipeline unbuilt pump station.

Minnesota has not issued the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) or DNR permits required for Line 3 construction across wetlands or water crossings. Minnesota announced the 401 water quality certification process will not be complete until fall 2019.

“Enbridge pretends to follow the process while it is busy bulldozing through our forests and wetlands,” said Frances Weatherall while locked to logging equipment.

“This is a years-long plan to send more dirty tar sands through Minnesota, don’t be fooled into thinking they won’t destroy as much as they can while they wait for their final state permits,” said Mollie Weatherall, locked with her sister on the same machine.

Jonas, who was also locked to a machine said, “This is a step towards decolonization, Enbridge is carving up the planet and our government doesn’t care. Today it’s my turn to put my body between the planet I want to protect and the attacks against our water, our climate, and Native sovereignty.”

Happy Birthday, Minnesota?

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

On May 11th, 1858, Minnesota became an official member of the United States of colonization. On this weekend of “celebration” in 2019, it’s clear we have no choice but to decolonize and build anew. As every day passes, it becomes more urgent. We cannot wait. We have little time left as the destruction of colonization harmed the land and water that gives us life. You need to walk no further than to the river right behind this bleeding statue to see it’s swollen banks. Those banks further downstream are currently flooding towns. In Iowa, these towns are flooded with both water and politicians. Politicians that promise a brighter future; that promise changes to reduce some harms. Words that are meaningless without radical change to end colonization, destructive capitalism, and the state itself. We can vote all we want in a crumbling empire and dying earth, but it doesn’t change enough to remove us from this path towards extinction.

The future is bleak, but life demands we struggle if we want to exist. May we struggle with those who push us forward and take actions that reduce harms. May we open our senses and be careful of all the distractions that blind us. Recently, the flood waters temporarily took back a colonizer statute in St. Louis. The flood waters won’t wait around for the next election.

Happy Birthday, flood waters. Here are our gifts. We won’t miss any statutes you take from us, but we grieve for the life that you take. In your path of destruction, may new seeds be planted if we have any time left at all.

Tripod Erected in Front of Enbridge Great Lakes Office

From Earth First! Newswire

This morning, water protectors erected a tripod in front of the Enbridge Great Lakes office in Superior, at the terminus of the proposed Line 3 tar sands pipeline. One water protector locked down to the top of the tripod, with a message for the Enbridge shareholders: Line 3 will never be built in Minnesota.

Across northern Minnesota, water protectors gathered in Duluth and Bemidji, in solidarity against Enbridge’s promises to its shareholders that Line 3 will be fully operational by the second half of 2020. Enbridge lacks state permitting.

Resistance against new tar sands pipeline expansion projects has been fierce. Delays or cancellations of the Energy East pipeline, Keystone XL pipeline, TransMountain pipeline, and Line 3 pipeline resulted in an announcement by the Alberta Premiere that tar sands production would be reduced by 8.7% for 2019.

When asked why they would take such a personal risk to their own safety, Anthony Graham (Chumash) said, “I stand in solidarity with my relatives up north and across Turtle Island. This is for the future. We have to be brave and fight. The oil industry is trying to grow when we know climate change is killing us. No more tar sands.”

Minneapolis May Day: Communication and Conflict

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

May Day in Minneapolis is a unique experience. May 1st is known around the world as an anti-capitalist holiday. This tradition exists here as well, although like many cities in the so-called United States it has been severely tamed. However, the big attraction is the first Sunday’s May Day parade and festival. These festivities instead primarily draw their inspiration from the far older pagan traditions of welcoming Spring.

This year, 2019, a call was made for “autonomous and decentralized” actions on May 1st, drawing on these twin legacies, pushing to give them “new life.” And indeed, as the sun rose on May 1st, anti-fascist graffiti was seen adorning the city. A banner against the police was displayed over a highway. One crew claimed numerous acts of sabotage and vandalism overnight. At the same time, several signs had the name Lake Calhoun erased, in defiance of the legal system’s decision. And these are only the actions that were publicized in some way.

To communicate about an action is to undo the silence imposed when the streets are tidied up. The term “social peace” is often used to describe ways in which conflict, particularly political conflict, is obscured in favor of appearing as a harmonious and smoothly functioning society. While actions indeed speak for themselves, communicating about them amplifies their words.

These coinciding events around May Day provided a clear opportunity experiment with this communication. On the night before the festival, posters with different reports about actions on or around May Day were wheatpasted around Powderhorn Park. The goal being, as the park fills with people on Sunday they will be able to directly encounter word of these actions, without having to follow certain hashtags or check certain websites. And by doing so, contribute an element of combative joy to the festivities.

Making May Day A Threat Again

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota


This May Day, we took to the night to capture American flags, sabotage rental bikes, and re-decorate the city in the name of our fallen friend, toor.

May Day has a long history, a history perpetually obscured by the leftist protest marches and sponsored parades. Yet underneath all of this, we know there is an insurgent legacy that still carries on today. May Day is our day to express the joy of living against the prevailing reign of death.

Toor’s memory lives on!

We are forever ungovernable!

– The 250 Crew

Everybody Hates The Police! May Day Banner Drop

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

On May Day 2019, answering the call for autonomous actions, a banner was hung over highway 94 in so-called Minneapolis.

Over the winter, the news reported the “crisis” facing police departments across the country. Fewer and fewer people are applying to join their ranks. They lament that it is a thankless job, while there is of course nothing to thank them for.

Here’s to reminding the police that nobody likes you.

Here’s to rebellious May Day.

Far-Right Mural Vandalized on Earth Day

From It’s Going Down

On the night of Earth Day the far-Right front group CFACT’s University of Minnesota mural was targeted with painted eggs. It seemed like an appropriate type of message to send them at the beginning of spring. Was it the Easter Bunny? Who knows?

We see through their psuedo-ecological front as the mural says “Free Market – Free Speech” and “Prosperity – Liberty – Nature.” The message is quite ironic considering the concept of Market and Prosperity are at war with Nature and Liberty or to say more simply that Capitalism exploits the Earth and All life that inhabits it.

They are funded by far-Right big oil billionaire bigots such as the Koch brothers whom are consistently destroying the earth. Over the past few years CFACT has brought many far-Right scumbag speakers to speak at the U of M such as Lauren Southern, Jeff Sessions, and Ben Shapiro. All have been met with opposition, but has is it been enough? We must shut these bigots down at all costs.

In a time of social, political, and environmental degradation the stakes are high. The situation calls for war against those who oppress us, against those who cage us, against those who seek to destroy us but we cannot only act in isolation. We call on you to join us whenever and wherever we can in solidarity, conspiracy, and revolt. We are together in random acts of liberation but also we are long overdue to meet in mass for the final collective act of revolution. We call on all people to come together to step it up fight back against all the forces of oppression. To carry out more acts of liberation, To organize, to disrupt, to destroy, to love, and to create a new world of true liberation for all.

Uprising at The Hills Youth and Family Services, Minnesota

From Perilous


A disturbance began when a detainee at the privately-owned and operated residential youth treatment center hit a staff member in the face. A spokesman for the treatment facility described the incident: “As another staff member helped the injured staff control the client, at least one other client joined the assault. As more staff arrived to assist staff dealing with the disturbance, some clients followed them there.”

At least one other detainee also attempted to interfere with staff. The event escalated until a large group of detainees had barricaded themselves in a room while other small groups were roaming the building.

A total of 21 law enforcement officers from multiple departments responded to the event as well as more than 30 staff members. Four detainees were arrested including an 18-year-old who was charged with obstructing the legal process.

A Belated Communique From February’s Ilhan Omar Protest

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota


On Sunday, February 17th a small group of right wing protesters rallied in downtown Minneapolis to protest Ilhan Omar over her controversial remarks. Naturally, their protest only gathered a handful of participants and took place in front of the wrong office building. Their protest was a total failure, their march cancelled, and one of their cars ended up with a smashed window, all while instigating internal divisions. While this is a clear victory for those of us who consider ourselves revolutionaries, it seems as if it, like many others against the right in Minnesota, have occurred through luck rather than strategic intelligence.

This occasion offers us the chance to reflect on the shifting political terrain, and have inspired the following brief notes. The ideas are still scattered, being just a single part of a conversation involving a multiplicity of perspectives.

If Donald Trump could be said to have accomplished one thing, it would most certainly be the blow dealt to the U.S. government’s legitimacy, perhaps the hardest seen in recent history. With his election, millions of people took to the streets to voice their refusal. The day of his inauguration we were plunged into a world of mass protest, scandal, and above all, uncertainty. Scrambling to pick up the pieces, Democrats have been split between on the one hand desperately clinging to civil order, and on the other appealing to the disillusioned through left-leaning politicians that claim to be the true face of resistance. And while they have ruffled some feathers amongst the older generations, the ruse succeeds in transforming the terrain of resistance into the political system, instead of where it needs to be: our lives.

In this sense, much of the momentum that arose in the last two years has been folded into the Mueller investigation and the valorization of various liberal politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or in this case, Ilhan Omar. Opposition towards the Trump regime has often carried along with it a defense of the neoliberal order before it was tampered with by the far right—or, for the more conspiratorially-minded, Russia. On the one hand, this offers revolutionaries a wide array of short-term tactical alliances in opposing the current state of affairs. But if we lose sight of the long-term goals, we’re setting ourselves up for inevitable failure.

What we mean is that the struggles against the far right, our democracy’s authoritarian tendencies, and building a better society are not separate. There is only one trajectory: that of building, step by step, an autonomous material force that can carve out space for other ways of living, short circuit the mechanisms of oppression, and destitute the forces of order—whether it’s the bigots attempting to rally or the cops themselves.

Anti-fascism is often presented as a duty, as a moral obligation to deny the far right access to a platform. But we know how ineffective and disempowering it can be to show up to a rally with such a small turnout that you could count it on your hand. Likewise, we have given up the stale practice of rallying on the weekend in the empty downtowns or capitol buildings. The importance of these actions by the right shouldn’t be overestimated.

This is not an argument to let right wing rallies occur unbothered, but to open the question of confrontation to allow for a more strategic dimension. If our energy is depleted reacting to the endless activities of the far right, it doesn’t matter who wins each physical conflict. In building a material force we learn to play to our strengths—we find methods of engagement that increase our capacity to act rather than diminish it. And, just as importantly, we can learn to let go of the sense of obligation to respond every time a right wing event is announced.

Enjoying the company of friends as we waited in so-called “Little Mogadishu” to pounce on right wing activists who would never arrive, we felt powerful. We had come together from so many different walks of life, ready to act collectively if the situation called for it. It hadn’t required an outpouring of resources to watch the right’s plans dissipate in front of their eyes, and risks were kept to a minimum. We intend to build on this success rather than let it fade to memory.

#CityPagesIsCancelled

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

Why does no one want to be a cop anymore? Because everyone is being such big meanies to them. At least, that’s what City Pages claims in the truly repulsive cover story of their latest issue, written by head editor Pete Kolz. Now if we wanted to convince you that this article is awful we could write many paragraphs dispelling all of the fucked up mystifications and outright bullshit crammed into it. We could slot in many examples, such as how it opens with a tear-jerking rendition of the racist and factually inaccurate myth of cops being the first line of defense for Western civilization against the barbarian hordes, liable to be gunned down at any moment by some ethnically-ambiguous youth, (ignoring the fact that being a cop isn’t even in the top 15 most dangerous professions in this country, just barely edging out grounds maintenance workers, who we are sure will be getting their sympathetic cover story in City Pages next week). Or we could delve into the fact that Petey sympathetically quotes Minneapolis Lt. Bob Kroll at length on the crisis of the “noble profession” 🤮 and about how frightened the trainings designed to make him scared of dark figures haunting the city streets made him feel. We’re sure Pete intended to mention Kroll’s infamous tenure as head of the Minneapolis police union, or, you know, the fact that he is an outed white supremacist. His editor must have just cut that part out because of space constraints; oh, wait…

Honestly though, we’re gonna save our time and yours and stop the rant about how bad the article is there. You can read it yourself, if you’re down with that kinky rage-reading shit like we are. Besides we’ve got something more fun in mind, a little game called #CityPagesIsCancelled. People have been playing this game for a little bit now, inspired by the publication’s previous fucked up takes on sex work, the surveillance state, and of course the police. This latest issue though really calls for us to step it up and start the largest round ever seen. The rules couldn’t be simpler: just walk into any store or bar that carries everyone’s favorite local ‘alternative’ weekly, pick up their stack and leave. It really couldn’t be easier, as no store clerk gives a shit about someone taking all the free newspapers, and usually those little racks are by the door out of sight anyway. Once you leave dump them in the next recycling bin you see (cause we’re eco-friendly like that), or light them up if you really want to go for those bonus points. Then don’t forget to document and share, cause virality is what we’re all about these days, right? And just like that you win, we win, and City Pages and Pete Kolz and the cops lose. Because while we would point out to Kolz that there are probably more reasons that people don’t want to be cops, reasons having to do with their position as upholders of a fucked-up enslaving, genocidal, ecocidal social order, we’d like to hope that he’s not totally off base, and that by making the lives of cops and their apologists just slightly more miserable we can throw a wrench into the workings of their terrible machine. If being mean to the police and their faithful defenders can bring on a recruitment crisis, then let’s get mean!

So go out there and get cracking, the game begins now! Move your feet, cause the longer you wait the harder it’s gonna be to rack up points. This very moment someone could be headed to your favorite ‘alternative’ hangout to incinerate those copies that should be yours! Go, go, out into this balmy spring day! #CityPagesIsCanceled #BeMeanToCops