From Jenna Chernega, President of the Inter-Faculty Organization of Minnesota State Universities (IFO) and Vice-Chair of HELU
This report was written on Friday, the day before the Saturday, January 24 ICE murder of Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse who worked at the Minnesota VA Health Care system. – Editor
Let’s see. I can tell a little of the story.
I headed over to the march starting point early along with some of my colleagues from the IFO. We arrived with the HELU banner and signs at our meeting point at 1:30. AFT organizer Jesse Drews met us there and helped us get set up. Over the next 30 minutes, we handed out dozens of signs and watched as the Minnesota higher ed coalition gathered. It was hard to recognize people because we were all so bundled up and those of us with glasses had a hard time keeping our lenses from fogging up and freezing. At one point, someone came up to me and said, “Hi Jenna, it’s Will.” I turned to see a person with not an inch of skin showing and laughed because under all of that was Will Jones, President of the University of Minnesota AAUP chapter. We hugged and joked about the cold.
Some people came from great distances to march with us. Faculty President Derek Webb drove down from Bemidji, MN (about a 5-hour drive) that morning, to join the march. Coming from even farther was Sandor John, a Hunter College faculty leader from PSC-CUNY, who had flown in the day before with students for the march. He gave me a button from PSC-CUNY that said “Education Not Deportation.” I braved taking my mittens off to pin it to my coat.
There were march organizers handing out handwarmers, many of which were donated by UUP, Rutgers AFT-AAUP, MTA, and PSC-CUNY.
Chants of “ICE OUT” filled the air and someone was playing Prince on loudspeakers (we are in Minneapolis, someone is always playing Prince somewhere!). Once the march started, the size of the crowd became more apparent. Our group ended up slowly proceeding through the middle of the park and it took almost two hours to reach the march route on the street — there were simply too many people to move much faster.
I saw a banner from SEIU and lots of shirts and pins from AFT and AAUP. (Honestly, I didn’t see a lot of other union signs, but it might have been because we ended up near the back of the march.)
I have some mobility difficulties, so I eventually had to peel away from the crowd and head back to my vehicle. We heard that the arena had reached capacity and they were no longer allowing people into the rally although a few of my colleagues who were ahead of us made it in. It was an exhilarating day for many reasons. The opportunity to come together, to show the power of people and labor, despite the oppression of both the weather and the government, made it feel like we can do anything.
In Solidarity! Jenna
