BDS 

CANADA

A Powerful Decentralized Campaign Forced Scotiabank To Divest From Israeli Arms

A major bank sells its shares in Elbit Systems, in one of Canada’s biggest BDS victories to date

By Saima Desai, Harrison Samphir

 February 19, 2026

Source: The Breach

The calls to Scotiabank’s senior vice president were not going well. 

Since 2022, a Vancouver-based campaigner Angus Wong had been trying to raise concerns about the bank’s investments in Israeli weapons maker Elbit Systems. While working for corporate accountability group Ekō, he had written up the first petition calling for Scotiabank to divest from Elbit. 

Every time he got bank officials on the phone, he was met with dismissive responses. At one point, executives told him to stop “harassing” the bank, insisting there was nothing to discuss.

But then something shifted. 

Following a wave of protests for Palestinian rights—including a high-profile disruption at the Giller Prize gala in Toronto in 2023—Scotiabank officials suddenly got aggressive.

“They demanded I stop the divestment campaign,” recalled Wong, who has also been a board member of The Breach since 2024. “I told them, ‘I have never spoken to any of the organizers of those protests. I don’t even know who they are. The only way to stop this campaign is for you to divest from Elbit Systems.’”

This week, the years of activism culminated in a major victory. Scotiabank’s latest financial statements show the bank has sold its remaining 165,000 shares in Elbit, completing a full divestment from a company whose weapons and technology are critical to Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operations.

A decentralized campaign of protests, sit-ins, and cultural boycotts has been pressuring the bank to sell off its shares ever since Scotiabank’s significant stake in Elbit became public knowledge in fall 2022. 

While the bank has not acknowledged the role of that campaign—or made much fanfare of its divestment—Scotiabank’s 1832 Asset Management subsidiary gradually reduced its holdings beginning in late 2023, culminating in the sale of its last remaining shares valued at $83 million.

It marks one of the biggest victories in Canada for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, also known as BDS.

“The most significant outcome of this campaign, perhaps even more important than the divestment itself, is the recognition of the power of decentralized organizing,” said Wong.

In July 2024, organizers launched the Canlit Responds campaign, which saw hundreds of Canadian authors pull their work from consideration for the Giller Prize in protest against the award’s lead sponsor, Scotiabank. Credit: Canlit Responds

Retreat under pressure

For large corporations holding shares in weapons manufacturers or companies tied to Israel’s illegal settlements, divestment rarely happens all at once. Instead, “often their sort of ‘divestment strategy’ is this slow, trickling, staggered divestment,” said Maen Hammond, a campaigner and former colleague of Wong’s at Ekō. Hammond is Palestinian and currently based in the West Bank.

But zoom out from the quarterly statements, said Hammond, and “it’s obviously a direct divestment of this money in and around the timing of what seems to be a very effective grassroots, decentralized mobilizing campaign against the company.”

As recently as 2023, Scotiabank owned approximately $500 million worth of Elbit shares, making it the largest foreign shareholder in the weapons manufacturer. Over the following year, it gradually and quietly reduced its stake, halving it to about $238 million by March 2024. The fund briefly increased its holdings in early 2025 before continuing to sell off shares.

Scotiabank has faced intense waves of protests across Canada since Israel’s assault on Gaza escalated in October 2023. At the time, Scotiabank was the longtime title sponsor of the Giller Prize, one of the country’s most prestigious literary awards. That relationship became a focal point in November 2023, when activists took the stage at the Toronto gala to denounce the bank’s investments in Elbit, turning a marquee cultural event into a flashpoint in the divestment campaign.

In February 2025, after a year of sustained activism by a coalition of artists called No Arms in The Arts—including hundreds of Canadian authors calling for divestment—the Giller Prize ended its nearly two-decade-long partnership with Scotiabank. 

Scotiabank branches have also been the target of repeated sit-ins and vandalism, with activists painting messages on bank buildings including “DROP ELBIT,” and “GAZA IS STARVING.”

In a statement issued after Scotiabank’s full divestment was confirmed, the No Arms In The Arts coalition said that nationwide campaigns turned the bank’s Elbit stake into a reputational liability. “The campaigns against Scotiabank set a critical precedent for what is deemed a permissible investment by supposedly ‘neutral’ investors,” the group said.

“For over a year, Scotia’s senior vice presidents were dismissive in their interactions with me,” said Wong, “but then mass decentralized actions—including the Giller Prize disruption—happened, and they panicked and started divesting.”

BDS wins big

Inspired by the strategy that helped end apartheid in South Africa, the BDS movement applies economic and political pressure to the Israeli state to force it to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights. It has pushed governments, corporations, and institutions to shed their complicity in Israel’s occupation and violations of human rights. 

The Canadian BDS Coalition has logged a number of victories, including Hydro‑Québec cutting ties with Israel Electric and Air Canada cancelling a multi-million-dollar contract with Israel Aerospace Industries in 2017.

Elbit Systems has long been a target of the international BDS campaign. As Israel’s largest private weapons manufacturer, Elbit provides roughly 85 per cent of the IDF’s land-based equipment and drone fleet, according to the Database of Israeli Military and Security Export.

These drones and unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, have been widely used in assaults on Gaza stretching back over a decade. In 2014, a strike from a Hermes 450 drone made by Elbit killed four Palestinian children who were playing soccer on a Gaza beach. And in 2024, Israel used the same model to kill seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza—one of whom, Jacob Flickinger, was a Canadian citizen.

Elbit markets its military hardware and software to regimes engaged in violent repression worldwide, with weapons tested in assaults against Palestinians seeing a spike in global demand. Canada has awarded over $44 million in contracts to Elbit, procuring the company’s Hermes 900 Starliner aerial drone in 2020 and hiring Elbit to support an airspace monitoring project in 2021.

The international BDS campaign against Elbit has seen the U.K.’s Barclays bank, Norway’s largest pension fund, and a major Japanese trading firm divest from or cut ties with the weapons company. Scotiabank is the latest in a tide that’s turning against Elbit.

There are other BDS campaigns still ongoing in Canada, including against Indigo Books’ CEO Heather Reisman over her funding of Israeli lone soldiers; against companies selling wine, dates, and citrus produced in illegal settlements; and against the Azrieli Foundation, the Canadian charitable arm of an Israeli real-estate developer.

Canada spent $36 million to procure a “civilian” version of Elbit Systems’ Hermes 900 Starliner aerial drone, to be used for surveillance patrols in the Arctic. Credit: Visualizing Palestine

Risky business

In November 2023, Wong and Hammond had that call with the Scotiabank vice presidents, who demanded Wong stop the divestment campaign.

“It became clear that the bank was more concerned about the inconvenience of protests outside their offices than the ethical implications of their investments in Elbit,” Hammond recalled. “Three white female Scotia executives were literally crying crocodile tears—not over Elbit’s role in genocide, but because they had to walk past protesters to get to work.” 

Scotiabank has claimed that its decision to sell its Elbit shares was driven by routine investment reviews rather than pressure from activists. Wong, however, points to the bank’s incremental sell-off and its public responses to mounting scrutiny as clear signs that the protests forced its hand. 

When corporations divest, the response from Israel and its supporters has been swift and irate. When Airbnb announced in 2018 that it would de-list properties in illegal Israeli settlements, Israeli authorities and pro-Israel advocacy groups threatened the company with lawsuits. 

And in 2021, when Ben & Jerry’s released a statement saying it would stop selling ice cream in Israeli settlements, then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett vowed to take “aggressive action” and the Israeli government dispatched diplomatic envoys to pressure the company and its parent corporation.

In contrast, Puma and General Mills each quietly withdrew from partnerships in Israel without publicly attributing their decisions to human rights concerns.

“Having been involved in many of the biggest divestment campaigns, and talking to executives at Airbnb and Ben & Jerry’s who faced enormous backlash from the Israeli state, it’s no wonder companies like General Mills, Puma, and now Scotiabank are denying that their divestments have anything to do with protests or the BDS movement,” said Wong.

But this victory highlights a shift in corporate risk calculations, where grassroots movements can impose costs on running business as usual during a genocide.

The question now is not just where Canada’s BDS movement will turn its attention next, but how many more institutions will be forced to reconsider their investments in Israel’s occupation.

-with files from Tannara Yelland\\\\\Email

Saima Desai

Saima Desai is a journalist, editor, and indie media diehard. She works as the publisher of Truthout and is the former editor of Briarpatch, where she won a National Magazine Award. She grew up in a Hindu family in the suburbs of Toronto. You can follow her on Bluesky at @desaima.bsky.social.

How 3 Local BDS Campaigns Won the Divestment of Millions in Israeli Bonds

Under pressure from a new wave of local divestment campaigns, US states and municipalities that underwrote the genocide in Gaza are selling off Israeli bonds.

By Joseph Mogul 

February 13, 2026

Source: Waging Nonviolence

During one of the last fully in-person SBI meetings, Minnesotans hold up signs depicting Palestinian children killed by Israel and demand divestment. (Minnesota Free Palestine Coalition)

On Nov. 19, 2025, members of Break the Bonds NC, a coalition of Palestine Solidarity organizations, spoke at a North Carolina Investment Authority board meeting to demand the state pension fund divest from all Israeli government bonds. Immediately after the meeting, the state treasurer’s office emailed a link of the pension’s holdings to Ari Rosenberg, a lead Break the Bonds NC organizer. The $6.7 million in Israeli bonds that had been there in June were no longer in the portfolio. 

Rosenberg was in disbelief that only five months since the campaign’s launch, the state had already completely divested. But after receiving another email from the treasury confirming that the state pension fund no longer held any Israeli bonds, her disbelief gave way to elation. “I cried really hard,” Rosenberg said. “And then I recorded a message to my comrades being like, ‘You won’t believe this.’” 

She wasn’t alone. A few weeks prior, organizers in Minnesota and Michigan received the same good news: that state investment bodies had divested from or declined to reinvest in Israeli bonds. In total, the three states dropped approximately $27 million in bonds. 

But Israeli bonds remain a contentious issue in many parts of the country, including New York City, where organizers are pressuring comptroller Mark Levine not to reinvest after former comptroller Brad Lander divested in 2023. Mayor Zohran Mamdani opposes reinvestment, setting the stage for a potential showdown.

While the North Carolina campaign targeted sovereign debt bonds, which are issued directly by the Israeli government, organizers in New York, Michigan and Minnesota targeted another financial instrument, known as “Israel Bonds.” 

This investment vehicle originated in the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” when Israel was founded on the rubble of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages. During a time of economic insecurity, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, conceived of a financial instrument designed specifically for American Jews to materially support Zionism. 

Militarized occupation and genocide are expensive: The Israeli Defense Forces have spent $60 billion on military operations since Oct. 7, 2023. To foot the bill, the Development Corporation for Israel, or DCI, a de facto wing of the state that brokers Israel Bond sales, sold more than $1 billion in bonds during the 30 days following Oct. 7. Sales totaled a record $5.7 billion by October 2025, and just last month, Palm Beach County purchased another $350 million in DCI Bonds, boosting its Israel Bonds portfolio to $1 billion. Additionally, between October 2023 and January 2025, the Israeli Ministry of Finance raised $19.4 billion for its war chest through sovereign debt bonds — the financial instrument that the North Carolina State Treasurer divested from.

Israel Bonds “offer a slush fund that insulates the Israeli military and government from the logical, legal and righteous nonviolent economic pressure that institutions can act on to abide by international law,” said Dani Noble, national campaigns manager of Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP. 

The DCI website describes Israel Bonds as “an invaluable and strategic national resource, especially since bonds clients have proven time and again that when Israel is in the midst of a crisis, they do not walk away.” However, at least in some parts of the U.S., that seems to be changing.

Israeli bonds — both DCI and sovereign debt — have become a primary target for organizers seeking an end to local complicity in the Gaza genocide. According to Noble, there are at least 14 different divestment campaigns focused on Israeli bonds around the country, 13 of which started after Oct. 7, 2023. Public opinion is with them: An October 2025 IMEU Policy Project poll found that 76 percent of Democrats support a ban on purchasing Israel bonds.

While they differed in their organizing arena and the type of bonds targeted, the Michigan, Minnesota and North Carolina divestment campaigns shared some common features.

Finding the money

Before these campaigns launched publicly, divestment organizers developed research strategies that included public records requests and conversations with government officials. This research helped them hone in on specific targets.

Break the Bonds North Carolina — a coalition consisting of Muslims for Social Justice, Palestinian Youth Movement-North Carolina, Durham Educators for Abolition and Liberation, and two local chapters of JVP — formed in February 2024 on the heels of a series of municipal ceasefire resolution wins. Organizers initially conceived of municipal-level campaigns in order to maximize pressure on elected officials. But when they researched state investment laws, they learned that municipalities do not manage their own investments; instead, the State Treasurer manages them. Despite their eagerness to focus locally, Rosenberg said this research revealed they “had to do a statewide campaign, and so we switched to the state pension plan.” 

In Michigan, Matt Clark, a labor lawyer and longtime organizer in the Palestine solidarity movement, led the charge on researching Israeli bond holdings, starting in July 2024. He built rapport with a Michigan Treasury Department public relations liaison by presenting himself as a citizen curious about the state pension fund’s international bond holdings. “I didn’t say anything about why I wanted it; I didn’t say anything about Israel Bonds,” Clark said. “I just asked for any information on international bonds.” The treasury department offered to send the entire 90-page pension fund portfolio. Upon digging through it, Clark found Israel Bonds. 

The portfolio revealed that the pensions of 550,000 former and current state employees were invested in a $10 million DCI Bond, purchased November 2023 and expiring November 2025. Subsequent FOIA requests showed that the Michigan treasury had invested in Israel Bonds for 30 years. 

After receiving this information, Clark began talking with people across Michigan about a potential divestment campaign. He found it difficult to explain the abstruse nature of the Michigan retirement system and of Israel Bonds. “It’s hard to get people’s attention, especially when you’re trying to get your own head around it, but I knew that if I got into this it would become my life,” Clark said.

Eventually he connected with a group called Lansing for Palestine, based in Clark’s hometown. “I showed up to their meeting and didn’t know a single person,” Clark said. “I pitched them on an Israel Bonds campaign and was pleasantly surprised at how enthusiastic they were. And things really went from there. I was lucky enough to find people who were willing to also make this their life for a while.” 

Michigan Divest launched in October 2024 with a clear one-year timeline and a simple demand for the Michigan treasury: not to reinvest in Israel Bonds when they expired in November 2025. “It was pretty ambitious; you have to be kind of half out of your mind to think that you can even do this,” Clark said.

While these state-level campaigns were forming, a behind-the-scenes national network of Israeli bonds divestment organizers had coalesced to deepen each other’s research capabilities and share strategy tips, facilitated by JVP, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the Internationalist Law Center.

Matt Clark credits this network with helping Michigan organizers understand the different types of Israeli bonds, which was crucial to building a statewide strategy. “The technical knowledge about Israel Bonds was really essential,” Clark said. He learned that DCI Bonds are “illiquid,” meaning they are exceedingly difficult to trade before the bond’s maturity date — in this case, November 2025. Organizers knew they had a firm deadline to pile on the political pressure. 

Unlike the one-year campaign in Michigan, Minnesotans have been organizing for Israeli bonds divestment for almost two decades. Inspired by the launch of the BDS movement by Palestine civil society groups in 2005, an autonomous group of organizers in Minnesota got to work looking for a suitable target. Through public records requests, they found out that the Minnesota State Board of Investment, or SBI, which manages the state’s three largest public pension funds, held both types of Israeli bonds. A divestment campaign called Minnesota Break the Bonds launched in 2008. 

Building the base

For all three campaigns, signaling sweeping support for divestment was essential. Organizations in the Minnesota-Palestine solidarity ecosystem spent decades building a base of opposition to the state’s Israel holdings, including hosting teach-ins about the SBI.

Break the Bonds NC assembled a statewide coalition in just under one year. At events ranging from political rallies to farmer’s markets, they gathered 4,600 signatures for a petition to State Treasurer Bradford Briner demanding state divestment from Israeli government bonds. They also received 41 organizational endorsements, including from UE Local 150, a public service workers union representing thousands of pension holders. 

Labor played an important role in Michigan as well. Michigan Divest was endorsed by multiple local labor unions, including AFT 681 (Dearborn Federation of Teachers), AFT Local 2000 (Wayne County Community College Federation of Teachers), AFT Local 4751 (Lansing Community College Administrative Association) and UAW Local 6000 Region 1A Retirees Subchapter, which all represent state pensioners.

Clark also spoke about Israel Bonds at a Metro Detroit DSA meeting, where he collected signatures for a petition calling on the Michigan treasury to allow the DCI Bonds to mature without reinvesting. Michigan Divest flyered at multiple No Kings rallies across the state in October and collected signatures at a 2025 Pride event in Ferndale. Overwhelmingly, the campaign received positive responses from the public. 

“We felt like we really tapped into something, because people are watching this horrible thing happen on their cell phones and wondering, ‘What the hell can I even do?’” Clark said. “I feel like we were able to answer that question.” 

Inside-outside strategies take shape

All three campaigns pursued some combination of an inside-outside strategy. Michigan Divest emphasized “building a warm working relationship with key decision makers,” said campaign organizer Anna Martinez-Hume. The organizers’ warmth paid off, she said, and “they wanted to meet with us again and again. We had a laundry list of key questions, and worked with our coalition in strategizing meetings about what information we wanted to know.” Through these meetings, Michigan Divest learned that the chief investment officer, Jon Braeutigam, is solely responsible for managing assets that represent 1 percent or less of the state pension portfolio and that Israel Bonds fell within those parameters. 

That information helped them understand which official they had to convince and guided their outside strategy toward public investment board meetings. “When we showed up to the first investment board meeting, there was not an empty seat in the room,” Clark said. In subsequent meetings, support for Israel Bonds divestment was so widespread that the board had to book a bigger room.

In Minnesota, organizers began by pursuing a lawsuit against the state, on the grounds that the investments funded war crimes and made Minnesota complicit in Israel’s violations of international law. When the lawsuit was thrown out based on lack of standing in November 2012, the group shifted its strategy to a full-blown public pressure campaign targeting the four elected officials helming the SBI: the governor, attorney general, secretary of state and state auditor. MN BDS Community, a statewide clearinghouse for BDS information, formed in 2015 and adopted Minnesota Break the Bonds as its first campaign. 

“We had state employees and pensioners testifying before the State Board of Investment for years,” said Bob Goonin, a MN BDS Community organizer. Speakers from American Muslims for Palestine, JVP, the MN Anti-War Committee and other groups made the same case the lawsuit had — that the investments made the SBI complicit in international law violations, genocide and apartheid. 

“Especially since we’ve seen starvation used as a weapon of war, teachers have been calling out to the state board saying they don’t want to see children starving in Gaza when they are teaching children here,” Goonin said. 

Others appealed to the SBI’s fiduciary responsibility, citing recent credit downgrades that make Israeli bonds a risky investment. “Groups across Minnesota came at this from different angles, but it was really a coordinated effort,” Goonin said. As Israel’s genocide in Gaza escalated over the past two years, more and more Minnesotans protested at SBI meetings.

The SBI reacted by moving its public meetings to a smaller space without live public comment in December 2024. During the March 2025 public meeting, dozens of state troopers guarded the building entrance and blocked parking lots. Goonin saw all of this as a sign that the pressure campaign was working.

Beyond public comment meetings, some organizers focused on meeting with legislators and SBI board members, while others organized actions outside of the governor’s mansion.

In June 2025, before Break the Bonds North Carolina publicly launched, three pension holders with the campaign met with the state treasurer to develop a relationship and express their concern about Israeli bonds. “The treasurer said he was unaware of Israeli bonds and asked for info on them,” Rosenberg said. After organizers sent him information, “he said that he didn’t find the bonds compelling from a risk reward perspective.” Immediately after that meeting, NC Break the Bonds launched its campaign publicly and in October, the treasurer fully divested.

Bonds broken

Despite the Minnesota SBI, the North Carolina treasurer’s office and Michigan treasury each claiming the divestment moves were purely financial, organizers in all three venues claim they are a clear response to public pressure. “The community’s opposition to the state board holding these Israel bonds was a primary driver in their decision,” Minnesota organizer Bob Goonin said.

In Michigan, victory came in November when the chief investment officer decided not to reinvest in the $10 million Israel Bonds after they expired. Public records requests by Michigan Divest revealed that DCI’s national managing director, Larry Berman, had repeatedly emailed the treasury, pleading with the state to reinvest and even offering rates higher than those publicly available. 

“When I saw [the emails], my hair stood up, it was so creepy,” Clark said. “I felt like we saw a shark fin breaching the surface for just a minute. … We know that they’re paying attention. They realize we’re a threat.” The divestment movement in Michigan was threatening enough to break the 30-year financial relationship between Michigan and the state of Israel.

The win in North Carolina was equally significant, considering that the treasurer actively decided to sell the sovereign debt bonds. “I think it shows that these pressure campaigns work,” Rosenberg said. “Investing in Israel is just a bad investment for all the reasons. It’s a bad financial and a bad moral investment.” Rosenberg also believes that the consecutive wins across state lines suggest that state pension managers are communicating with each other. 

Making that financial argument was also critical in Minnesota, where organizer Karen Schraufnagel believes the most important factor was appealing to the SBI’s fiduciary responsibility. In October, public records received by the MN BDS Community showed that the SBI had sold or let expire all but $470,000 in Israeli bonds — from a peak of $13.3 million — at a loss of $830,000. 

Rosenberg acknowledged that these state divestment wins are “a blip” in comparison to the multi-billion Israeli bonds portfolio,“but every penny matters in this divestment strategy.”

“We recognize it’s really just a little bit of good news, but we needed it,” she added. “You really have to say this is a victory,” Schraufnagel concurred. “But it’s hard to feel enthusiastic when your feed is full of starving children. We have to say good work and go on to the next thing. Five minute celebration and then back to work.”

Across the United States, there are at least 11 other active Israeli bonds divestment campaigns, focusing on a range of institutions. Some campaigns are just launching publicly, such as in Maryland; others have been simmering for years, such as in New York state. “In the wake of the recent victories, we’re seeing unprecedented breakthroughs and possibilities in a variety of communities, from Miami-Dade County, Florida to Indiana, to New York City,” said Dani Noble, the JVP national organizer.

The three victorious campaigns are currently planning the next stage of their divestment strategy. The Michigan Divest coalition is scouring other institutions invested in Israel Bonds, while Minnesota and North Carolina are focused on their state pension funds’ investments in weapons manufacturers and other companies targeted by the BDS Movement for complicity in apartheid and genocide. Regardless of where it turns next, it is clear that the divestment movement is building momentum across the U.S. 

 

We’ve Had a Nationwide Immigrant Strike Before. We Can Do It Again.

By Eric Blanc

February 10, 2026

Source: Labor Politics

Image by Jonathan McIntosh/Wikimediacommons, licensed via CC BY 2.5

You don’t have to imagine what a nationwide strike in defense of immigrants could look like. It’s already happened.

Everyone looking to stop ICE today has a lot to learn from the explosive mass movement that culminated in the “Day Without an Immigrant” on May 1, 2006. The spark was H.R. 4437, the Sensenbrenner bill, which passed the House of Representatives on December 16, 2005. Sensenbrenner’s bill would have made it a felony for immigrants not to have papers, while also criminalizing acts of support and solidarity.

The threat was clear and the response spread fast. As one Los Angeles protest sign put it, “You’ve kicked a sleeping giant.” In the spring of 2006, between 4 and 5 million people marched in over 160 cities. And on May 1, over a million people walked out and poured into the streets across the country. Ports slowed; classrooms emptied; restaurants, shops, and job sites went short-staffed or dark. Chris Zamora, a marcher in Los Angeles, described what that collective power felt like on the ground: “It gives me chills to be a part of it. Thirty years from now, I’ll look back and say, ‘I was there.’”

The mass marches and economic disruption worked: Sensenbrenner’s bill was killed by the Senate in late May. It was a historic victory for the immigrant rights movement and the American working class.

History doesn’t repeat, but it is definitely rhyming a lot these days. Sensenbrenner’s nightmarish vision has become a reality under Trump. The good news is that today’s fights against ICE don’t have to reinvent the wheel—we just have to learn from the last time America’s immigrants flexed their power and came out on top. Here are some key lessons from the spring of 2006.

Let Youth Lead

Before May Day 2006 became a national work stoppage, the spark jumped where sparks often jump first: young people. Thousands of high school walkouts erupted across the country in late March, showing millions that non-violent disruption was possible.

Youth catalysis is a common pattern in social movements. But this dynamic is especially prominent among immigrants because children of undocumented parents more frequently have papers, more often speak English, and more often feel rooted enough to intervene in American politics. Unsurprisingly, one study found that over 51% of May Day participants were between the ages of 14 and 28. A century earlier, it was precisely this layer of second-generation immigrant youth that led the era’s mass strikes and unionization efforts during the Great Depression.

Young Latinos also took the lead in convincing their parents to join the spring 2006 actions. Señora Pacheco, an undocumented immigrant, recalled that she participated in one of the local marches—her first ever political action—after her 11-year-old U.S.-born son convinced her to attend. Similarly, one Chicago high schooler remembered the conversation he had with his parents on the eve of May 1: “I told them how me and my friends are going to go and, if they go, it would be better ’cause at least if one more person [goes], that can make a difference.” Initially “they weren’t that into it [but eventually] they were agreeing with me, then they started to talk to me about the other stories of how they worked.”

Working-class youth today remain the most important, and relatively untapped, conduit for organizing more broadly and deeply among working people against ICE and Trumpism. In fact, kids of immigrants are even more strategically central today than they were in 2006 because fears of speaking out are exponentially higher now. At a moment when undocumented parents are often justifiably scared to leave the house for weeks on end, the responsibility of their children to lead politically becomes even sharper.

We can already see glimpses of this potential. Though most young immigrants are not yet coming to our meetings or rallies, it’s significant that Zohran Mamdani got his strongest support among these demographics: 86% of young Latinos voted Zohran, 84% of young Black people, and 66% of young whites.

In Minneapolis, the first walkouts against ICE’s surge came on January 14, when thousands of St. Paul high school students walked out and converged on the state Capitol. And high school students were the only significant layer of the U.S. population to widely respond to the January 30 calls for a nationwide strike against ICE.

Connecting with and developing the organic leaders that initiated those walkouts is one of the key tasks for any anti-ICE movement that aspires to break beyond existing activists. (Left-leaning teachers should help connect walkout leaders to organizations willing to help them deepen their activism.) This means more than having token youth speakers at press conferences or non-profit board meetings; it requires providing resources and training to student leaders, involving young people in the decision-making of the broader fightback, and taking a cue from their more risky and disruptive inclinations.

Have Clear, Winnable Demands

Inexperienced activists sometimes think that raising more demands will broaden the movement by making sure everybody’s concerns are included. And radicals frequently double down on the most ambitious demands.

While the most appropriate number of demands is always context-specific, experience in 2006 and since shows that activating millions usually depends on centering a widely and deeply felt demand that’s also winnable. Laundry lists generally only appeal to the already-converted, and it’s hard to generate mass action around transformational policies that, however righteous, everyday people don’t think can be won anytime soon.

One reason the movement spread like wildfire in 2006 is that it was united around a clear, achievable demand: stop the Sensenbrenner bill. As PBS news coverage at the time noted, “That bill, known as H.R.-4437, has been the main point of protest for most demonstrators.” Those without financial cushions or immigration papers normally only take political risks in fights with a clear path to victory.

What’s our equivalent unifying demand today? If we want ordinary people to strike this year or 2028, what do we want them to strike for?

One initial difficulty organizing under Trump 2.0 was that his onslaught of attacks demoralized people (“what’s the point of protesting, he won’t listen”) and made it hard to focus mass attention around a particular fightback, since so many fires were burning at once. As such, the best we could do was No Kings marches and Fighting Oligarchy rallies that had a central slogan, but no unifying demands or concrete next-step campaigns.

But the horror of ICE’s siege has created a new dynamic, as seen in the January 23 strike  concentrated around the demand “ICE Out of Minnesota.” Similarly, organizations like the Sunrise Movement have begun scaling up winnable campaigns to demand companies like Hilton break from ICE.

If we’re going to have a real nationwide mass strike in the U.S., it probably won’t be around a long list of demands or ambitious reforms like Abolish ICE or Medicare for All, policies that are more appropriate for a presidential platform. Rather, we should orient to seizing whirlwind moments to scale up mass non-violent disruption for immediate-but-winnable demands like “ICE Out of Cities” or “Respect Our Votes” after Trump tries to steal the election.

Media Matters

Getting to scale in 2006 came from a feedback loop between local organizing and a media “air war” that made people feel they were part of something bigger. Unions, community organizations, student groups, and assorted radicals played a key role in anchoring the movement.

But Spanish-language radio was a particularly decisive accelerant, with two nationally syndicated DJs, Renán Almendárez Coello (“El Cucuy”) and Eduardo Sotelo (“El Piolín”), playing a central role in promoting the fightback. This radio push didn’t happen “spontaneously.” As one account notes, “After organizers convinced the DJs that this was an important moment, immigration reform and the upcoming rally were constant topics on their shows.” A survey of marchers at the huge May 1 rally in Chicago found that just over half had heard about it on TV or radio.

This “air war” was paired with loose, fast coordination on the ground. Foreshadowing digitally enabled movements to come—with all their scalable strengths and long-term difficulties  building sustained power—2006’s actions also went viral from below among young people via text messages, MySpace, and emails.

The problem now is that the media environment is far more atomized and Spanish-language media—recently taken over by finance capital—is much more hesitant to speak truth to power. In 2006, a few DJs could create shared rhythm across cities; today, attention fractures across feeds, group chats, and algorithms. Replicating that viral spread probably requires two things: first, movement organizations treating media strategy as core work—mapping the ecosystem, building repeatable content pipelines, and coordinating amplification rather than assuming it will happen organically; and second, the biggest platforms on the left—Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani—lending legitimacy and reach to campaigns that are already escalating on the ground.

This also means fights inside Spanish-language media organizations themselves. Their response to Trump’s horror show has been remarkably muted, reflecting the overall trend of corporate America to bend the knee to the new administration. Even before November 2024, the TelevisaUnivision leadership pushed positive high-profile coverage of Trump, prompting some Latino civic groups to publicly protest and demand changes. If 2006 proved what Spanish-language media can do when it acts like an organizer, the lesson for 2026 is that getting back to scale may require organizing the media.

Win the Normies

If you’re serious about building toward something like a general strike, you can’t just mobilize the already-convinced. You have to involve the mainstream masses, including people who don’t talk like activists or academics, who don’t follow movement Twitter, and who don’t want to feel like they’re joining a niche subculture fight.

The 2006 immigrant uprising learned that in real time, in part because opponents kept trying to frame immigrants as outsiders and criminals. Early on, that frame found openings. In Denver, marchers emphasized a familiar immigrant story—hard work, family, a better life—but the presence of Mexican flags and Spanish-language signs made it easier for anti-immigrant forces to paint protesters as “lawbreaking criminals unwilling to assimilate.” Organizers responded by sharpening a mainstream frame and a mainstream look: family, work, and belonging here.

After the March protests, a sea of American flags drowned out Mexican flags, not only in Colorado but across the nation. Rafael Tabares, a senior at Los Angeles’s Marshall High who helped plan that school’s March 24 walkout, insisted that his classmates “put away Mexican flags they had brought to the demonstration—predicting, correctly, that the flags would be shown on the news and that the demonstrators would be criticized as nationalists for other countries, not residents seeking rights at home.” This doesn’t mean everyone must perform American patriotism to deserve rights; last night’s beautiful Super Bowl halftime show by Bad Bunny showed how an expansive Pan-American vision can widely resonate in certain contexts and forms. But if you want your movement to win a majority, you have to think like a hardheaded organizer aiming at persuasion, not like an online poster fishing for likes.

Just as important was collective discipline, especially a conscious decision to avoid violence or property destruction. The marches were notable for having few arrests and virtually no acts of violence, and that mattered because mainstream coverage often scares off broad participation and sways public opinion by zooming in on the most chaotic image available, even when it’s peripheral.

Randy Shaw notes that in this respect 2006 differed from recent protests like the 1999 anti-WTO “Battle in Seattle” and the demonstrations at the 2004 Republican National Convention:

Although these demonstrations were primarily peaceful, media footage typically portrayed protesters battling police or engaging in conduct that detracted from their message. Activists often criticize the media for promoting such images, arguing that random acts are inevitable and cannot be controlled by event organizers. But such acts were absent from the immigrant rights marches of 2006.

If the goal is broad participation, you have to attract newcomers by making the action feel as safe and as collective as possible. Evelyn Flores, one of the student leaders, recalled that the sea of humanity she saw on May 1 spurred “the deepest emotions I have ever felt.” That feeling of collective power does far more to actually challenge the system than acts like vandalizing  an ICE office or throwing a bottle at a cop.

Emilia González Avalos of Unidos MN put the question well on the Dig:

Are we disciplined enough? Are we disciplined enough to remain non-violent in a peaceful escalation that takes risks, that takes sacrifice, so that we can protect the normies that are coming and being onboarded, so that they feel that they have the courage to march in below zero degrees and not shop, not go to school, not use services for a day?

Answering that question strategically is the bridge from protest to shutdown: not just anger, but collective discipline that keeps the door open for millions more to join.

This also means involving mainstream institutions like churches—and 2006 shows why. The Catholic Church mattered not only because of its infrastructure and weekly contact with parishioners, but because it could legitimize protest in moral terms and pull participation into ritual life. In Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony announced that “if the Sensenbrenner bill was enacted and providing assistance to undocumented immigrants became a felony, he would instruct both priests and lay Catholics to break the law.” Sometimes it takes a preacher to help a movement move beyond preaching to the converted.

Mainstream outreach also brings real tactical dilemmas and debates. Church leadership and major unions pushed for after-work May Day rallies that minimized job conflict, attempting to steer people away from midday disruption. Mahony waged a very public and divisive push for students to stay in class and workers to stay on the job on May Day. Debates over these tactical questions were sharp and often bitter. But you can’t avoid those tensions if you want scale; you have to navigate them with the bigger goal in mind: building enough mainstream participation, legitimacy, and discipline that a broader shutdown becomes thinkable—and then doable.

Don’t Wait for Union Leaders to Call Strikes

Unions like SEIU and UNITE HERE played a key role across the country in providing staff and resources to make local marches a success. But the call for a “Gran Paro” (Mass Shutdown) on May 1 did not come from the unions. It came from Los Angeles’ community-based “March 25 Coalition,” which in early April called for a national boycott and work stoppage on May 1: “No Work, No School, No Sales, and No Buying.”

Unions discouraged their members from participating in the May Day walkouts, arguing that they risked losing their jobs and risked sparking unnecessary backlash against the movement. As such, in cities like Los Angeles and beyond organized labor took the lead in organizing late afternoon actions accessible to those who went to work.

The labor movement’s unwillingness to support the May 1 shutdown led one March 25 Coalition member to complain that “the last weapon the worker has against the employer is the strike, and the very institutions [unions] that live or die by the strike” actively opposed the push for one. “I think it’s shameful that the supposed leader [organized labor] of the working class in America was telling [immigrants] that they should behave” and not strike.

This type of labor-community split was fortunately avoided in Minnesota. Again, it was not union leaders who took the lead: community organizations called for the January 23 day of Truth and Freedom—with its call for “no work, no shopping, no school.” But unlike in 2006, Minnesota’s progressive unions immediately responded by endorsing the day of action. This didn’t mean they explicitly endorsed striking—a move that would have constituted an open defiance of labor law. But unions like SEIU Local 26 did not discourage their members from calling in sick for the day and their endorsement of the daytime rally gave it momentum and legitimacy. The result was a powerful social strike on the 23^rd. There’s no reason other cities and other unions can’t replicate this playbook.

Towards a New Upsurge

Working-class advances in the U.S. don’t generally come through slow-but-steady rhythms. In most times and places, working people keep their heads down. Every so often, however, millions of everyday people suddenly force open the gates of the political arena. In such moments of upsurge, the impossible suddenly becomes possible.

The spring of 2006 was one such upsurge. So is today’s non-violent mass resistance against ICE in Minnesota. We can’t know when exactly such a nationwide upsurge will shake the United States again—or what exactly will trigger it—but we’re moving in that direction. The brazenness and unpopularity of Trump’s regime are a very explosive mix.

There’s no magic formula for awakening the sleeping giant. But ramping up our organizing today against ICE can hasten such a working-class upsurge and position us to seize it as fully as possible. And when that giant fully awakens, nothing can stop it.Email

Eric Blanc

Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big (University of California Press, 2025), and an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee.