Yesterday we saw the biggest general strike and non-violent protest in decades in Minnesota.
This morning federal stormstroopers beat and murdered another person.
Peaceful protests are NEVER going to be enough.
[Fascists] aren’t going to stop because we don’t like [what they’re doing]. They do it because they know we don’t like it. They will stop when we stop them.
All of their systems must be shut down entirely. ESCALATE. Organized sustained SYSTEMIC resistance and self-defense are our only options.
There is good news. Believe it or not, they aren’t remately prepared for a mass uprising.
– Butch Ware
via social media
January 24, 2026
via social media
January 24, 2026
When I shared the above on Facebook, some questioned if Butch Ware is advocating (or could be seen to be advocating) violence when he says that “peaceful protests are NEVER going to be enough,” and what we ultimately need to defeat the threat of fascism in the U.S. is “organized sustained SYSTEMIC resistance and self-defense.” I read “resistance” as primarily the strategies of the general strike and economic blackout . I read “self-defense” as the type of things already happening in Minnesota – community members coming together to provide food, clothing, safe shelter, and other essentials to those who are feeling too scared to leave their homes.
Okay, so going deeper . . . The first thing thing I’ll say is that the forum of X or BluSky or any tweet-like platform is not the best for presenting and exploring important and often complex ideas and strategies. Such platforms encourage the sound byte, the quick “like,” and then it’s on to the next one. So I get it how Butch’s comment may leave some wondering what exactly he’s talking about.
Second: Butch Ware’s area of study and expertise is Black revolutionary movements and history; he advocates for building sustainable, peaceful alternatives to our current system of unfettered capitalism, oligarchy, and war; they are alternatives rooted in African, Indigenous, and Abrahamic traditions. He has extensively studied African history and Islamic intellectual history, and cites Malcolm X and Kwame Ture as his political influences. In light of this, Butch is aware that violence has been employed by certain individuals and movements to advance liberation. He is also aware that the UN has declared as a human right the taking up of arms against oppression. All this being said, I don’t read in Butch’s statement a call to violence.
Butch grew up in Minneapolis, and he praises the Minnesota general strike of April 23 and the peaceful marches and rallies that accompanied it. But such one-off events aren’t ultimately going to defeat fascism. Such efforts and strategies (the general strike in particular) must be escalated so that they last for days, weeks, months – however long it takes to shut down the machinery of the state and the machinery of commerce. Then we’ll see the funders of our increasingly fascist government withdraw their support of the government. Money talks, after all. And if those who make money from the system – BIG money – start seeing their profits collapse, they’re going to demand change. It then becomes our – the people’s – opportunity and responsibility to demand real, lasting and transformative change. No more tweaking around the edges of the system (as Democrats love to do), and no changes just to satisfy the corporate and billionaire funders of our government. No, we need MAJOR systemic changes. There’s no going back to the way things were before the rise of Trump. Why? Because that way of doing things helped get us to where we are today. And the majority of Americans know this. Look at how deeply unpopular BOTH major political parties are. People are hungering for systemic change – a changed system; a turning around of things, a revolution, in other words. Trump lied and said he’d give the country that type of change, said that he’d “drain the swamp.” He NEVER meant it. And the Democrats (apart from a very few like Bernie Sanders, Marianne Williamson, Nina Turner, and Zohran Mamdani) like to speak the talk of “hope and change” but are far too beholden to their corporate donors to enact the transformative politics that this moment calls for. Butch agrees; that’s why he’s running as a Green in the race for California governor. According to Butch, BOTH parties of the corporatist/oligarchic duopoly (“Team Blue Genocide and Team Red Fascism,” as he likes to say) need to be ultimately abandoned.
So, Butch Ware and others are saying that electoral politics ALONE and peaceful protests ALONE are not going to get us to the place we need to be; are not ALONE going to defeat fascism. Elections can be rigged, and protest movements can be co-opted and/or crushed. This doesn’t mean we have to resort to violence, though for some it might be an appealing option. History, as journalist and author Chris Hedges reminds us, shows that “most revolutions succeed not through violence but through national strikes – the ability to essentially shut the country down.” From my knowledge and reading of Butch, I’m pretty sure he would agree with Hedges.
Related Off-site Link:
Pain, Anger, Action in Twin Cities After a Second Fatal Shooting by a Federal Agent – Hannah Ihekoronye (Minnesota Public Radio News, January 24, 2026).
Alex Pretti Remembered as Kind, Competent and Quiet – MPR News (January 24, 2026).
Video Contradicts Department of Homeland Security Claims About Killing of Alex Pretti – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, January 24, 2026).
Vigils Across Minnesota Remember Alex Pretti – MPR News (January 24, 2025).
As “Loyal Agents of Nazis” in GOP Murder Citizens, U.S. Is at “Turning Point,” Advocates Say – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, January 25, 2026).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
THE STRATEGY OF THE GENERAL STRIKE
• “Most Revolutions Succeed Not Through Violence But Through National Strikes”
• Nina Turner: Quote of the Day – January 12, 2026
• General Strike for Peace (2007)
TRUMP’S FASCIST OCCUPATION OF MINNESOTA
• Omar Fateh: Quote of the Day – December 4, 2025
• Photo of the Day – December 5, 2025
• Susie Hayward on What’s Happening in Minneapolis
• Doing What We Can to Stop Unjust Arrests of Immigrants
• Great Event, Great Sign, Great Nails
• Christmas Eve Musings
• May We Do Likewise
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like” – January 7, 2026
• “It Was Murder”: 12 Powerful Responses to the Death of Renée Nicole Good
• Omar Fateh: “Folks Are Waking Up”
• A Good Faith Appeal and a Grim Response
• Why Minnesota?
• Chris Hedges on ICE: “I Have Seen These Masked Goons Before”
• Steven Donziger: “Let’s Get Real . . . ICE Is a Domestic Terrorist Organization”
• Historian Kyle Dekker: “It’s Not Nazi Ideology We Are Fighting. It’s American”
• Knowing Our Rights
• Mike Figueredo on Why Trump Might Be Pushing the U.S. to the Brink of Collapse
• Dispatches from Occupied Minnesota
• Marianne Williamson on How to Psychologically Endure This Moment
• What Moral Clarity Looks Like in Minnesota This MLK Day
• Nemik’s Eulogy for Renée Nicole Good
• “ICE Out!”: The Minnesota General Strike – 1/23/26
BUTCH WARE
• Introducing California’s Gubernatorial Candidate Butch Ware
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – June 5, 2025
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – January 30, 2025
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “This Is a Tragic, Heartbreaking Moment in the History of Humanity”: Butch Ware on the Gaza Genocide
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• Butch Ware: “You Can Actually Vote Your Conscience”
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler”
THE RISE OF FASCISM IN THE U.S.
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”
• The “Creeping Fascism of Trump’s America”: A View from Australia
• Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• Jason Duchin: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• James Greenberg on the Identity Politics of MAGA
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
THE FAILURES OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
• Mike Figueredo on the “Political Malpractice” of the Democratic Party
• Ted Rall: Democrats Are Not “the Left”
• Exposing the Dark Money Network Secretly Funding Establishment Democratic Influencers
• Progressive Perspectives on Kamala Harris’s Book, 107 Days
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• Howie Hawkins: “The Democrats Are Not the Answer to the Trump/Fascism Problem”
• The Longstanding Fault Lines Within the Democratic Party Have Surfaced Again in Minnesota
• Jeff Cohen on How Obama’s “Corporate Liberalism” Led to the Rise of Trump
• Progressive Perspectives on Bernie Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy” Tour
• Eric Fernández: Quote of the Day – May 14, 2025
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
SIGNS OF HOPE
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Chris Smalls: We Need to Escape the “Two-Party Plantation”
• Kshama Sawant: Independent Working-class Campaigns Can Succeed
• The Rational National’s Take on Zohran Mamdani
• Omar Fateh: “We Need to Meet the Needs of Working People”
• Something to Think About – July 25, 2025
• In His Efforts to “Build a City That Works for All,” Omar Fateh Secures a Key Endorsement
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love” in Responding to Trump’s Dismantling of Democracy
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”
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