Protesters march through the streets of San Antonio on Saturday amid freezing temperatures and rain. Credit: Michael Karlis

Organizers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) are calling for a general strike in San Antonio following Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) fatal shooting of 37-year-old Minneapolis man Alex Pretti.

“Yesterday, Minneapolis held the largest strike in decades,” PSL organizer Corrie Rosen said Saturday during an impromptu protest at San Antonio City Hall. “They demand an end to ICE terror, and so do we. A general strike is what we need – tens of thousands of San Antonians standing up, getting it loud and shutting it down.”

Rosen’s shared the call to action shortly before roughly 100 demonstrators braved freezing rain to march through downtown to protest the federal government’s occupation of Minneapolis and its violent aftermath.

PSL organizers called on attendees to meet with union and local community leaders to make plans and organize for a possible strike.

Organizers told the Current Monday that the San Antonio strike could coincide with a larger national strike being planned by groups in Minneapolis.

Calls for a general strike in San Antonio come after Minneapolis residents on Friday staged what some now consider the largest U.S. economic blackout in 80 years.

Homeland Security officials argue that Pretti, a Veterans Affairs nurse with no criminal history, was a “domestic terrorist” who planned to carry out a massacre against law enforcement.

“Violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and to perpetuate violence — that is the definition of domestic terrorism,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said during a Saturday press conference.

While Pretti did have a firearm in his possession at the time of the fatal shooting, he was licensed to carry the weapon. What’s more, video footage contracts claims by Noem and other federal officials that Pretti brandished his pistol at officers.

Critics further charge the Trump White House has engaged in a repeat pattern of vilifying the victims of shootings by federal immigration agents as part of a broad effort to thwart investigations into the acts.

A federal judge on Monday ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to preserve evidence related to Pretti’s shooting after state authorities asserted that DHS blocked them from accessing the scene of the shooting. 

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Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...