You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.
Minneapolis was a major hub of racial justice activism in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd and then again earlier this year, aggressively protesting the anti-immigration actions of the Trump administration. Why Minneapolis? Michelle Phelps, a University of Minnesota sociologist, discusses the city’s activism in the latest edition of Right Now. She explains that the anti-ICE protests built on the infrastructure and some lessons learned from the 2020 activism. At the same time, she argues that too many on the left, both in Minneapolis and nationally, have wrongly concluded that the protests of 2020 were ineffective and resulted in a backlash that helped elect Donald Trump in 2024. In reality, Phelps says, backlash to racial justice movements are inevitable. Phelps is the author of “The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America.”
