50501 FRIDAY BRIEFING | JANUARY 30, 2026
This week we grieved, we organized, and we got ready.
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TL;DR
50,000 people in the streets, 10,000+ packed into Target Center during -20°F weather, hundreds of businesses closed, and 100 clergy arrested at the airport and closed with federal agents killing Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA, who was recording with his phone when he was shot. Over 1 million was raised for his family in a few days.
MONDAY: Alex Pretti Should Be Alive
Minnesota’s Friday economic blackout was an impoftant nonviolent resistance: businesses closed, clergy stood in solidarity, and an estimated 50,000 people refused to cooperate with what they believe is illegitimate force.
One day later, federal agents killed Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street.
Alex was 37.
He was an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA who spent his life saving people in their most vulnerable moments.
ABC News reconstructed his final minutes from five verified videos, he was standing with his phone raised, recording, when officers pepper-sprayed and pulled him into the street.
A doctor’s affidavit describes at least three gunshot wounds in his back. And many shots in under five seconds.
His family says the official account is “sickening lies.”
His community raised over a million in a few days.
What happened in Minnesota this week will go down in hisotyr.
The resistance, and the retaliation.
TUESDAY: You Are 50501: No Permission Required
50501 means 50 states, 50 protests, 1 movement.
A decentralized, volunteer-powered model that doesn’t wait for permission from institutions or party structures.
There’s no membership card and no single org that “owns” this.
What holds it together is clarity to uphold the Constitution, stop executive overreach.
The post walks through what you can do: 5-minute actions (calls, texts, verified sharing), kitchen-table actions (town halls, letters to editors, talking to people who are uninformed but not unreachable), and bigger commitments for those who can take them.
We also linked the official digital safety guide, the organizer resources page, and action tools like 5 Calls and Resistbot.
Movements are built by millions of tiny decisions.
If you can do something small today, do it.
WEDNESDAY: ICE Vehicles Don’t Look Like ICE Vehicles Anymore
Wednesday’s post became our most-shared piece of the week and for good reason. People are watching their neighborhoods and don’t know what they’re looking at.
The core problem: ICE is now designed to blend in.
Unmarked SUVs, civilian camouflage, agents who present as “police.”
You usually can’t ID them by appearance alone.
But you can recognize multiple similar vehicles staging together, coordinated movement, mixed convoys with one marked vehicle nearby, and fleet-spec styling (tinted windows, hockey puck antennas, blacked-out trim).
The post also hammered the most important thing to understand: most ICE arrests use administrative warrants, which do not authorize forced entry into a private home without consent.
A judicial warrant signed by a judge is different.
Know the difference.
Keep your door closed.
Ask to see a judge-signed warrant.
We linked the ACLU’s door protocol, the Immigrant Defense Project’s raid guides, and the SALUTE reporting method (Size, Activity, Location, Unit/Uniform, Time, Equipment).
If you see something, report it to your local rapid-response network or the national MigraWatch Hotline.
One calm report can buy a community minutes. Minutes can be everything.
THURSDAY: How to Organize a Protest
If you read this week and thought, someone should be organizing something where I am…this is your guide.
Write one sentence that states where, when, and what you’re demanding.
Choose a simple action you can run cleanly and run again.
Recruit your “Core 3” (coordinator, logistics lead, people/safety lead) because burnout will catch you fast if you try to be the entire organization.
Assign concrete tasks so people can say yes to something specific.
Build a safety plan so your community knows you thought about them.
Beautiful Trouble’s strategy vs. tactics framework, the Streetwise & Steady workbook for marshals, and the National Lawyers Guild legal observer program.
Everything a new organizer needs to run their first action responsibly and be ready to do it again.
The myth is that organizers are fearless extroverts with megaphones.
When really, most organizers start as someone who noticed the same thing everyone else noticed and decided to build structure around it.
THANK YOU
To everyone who reads, shared, donated, called their reps, reported ICE activity to rapid response, talked to a neighbor.
This newsletter is reader-supported. Your paid subscriptions make this publication possible.
If you participated today in any way…shutdown, support role, documentation, mutual aid, workplace organizing, childcare swaps, food support, share your experience below!
SOURCES
Reuters: US review of Alex Pretti killing does not mention him brandishing a firearm
Bring Me The News: List of Minnesota businesses closing Jan. 30
Business Insider: A general strike to protest ICE is attempting to go national
No Kings statement: escalating brutality + immediate organizing
Coming Up: February 17 | National Day of Lobbying
February 17 is a national pressure point: organizing in all 435 congressional districts while representatives are in-district. Showing up locally, visibly, and consistently.
Pressure works when it’s direct and organized.
And it works when it’s repeated.
This is a really important passage to read from the brilliant Robert Hubbell. Yes, long. But, it is important to know that Democrats are letting us down. They voted to keep the trains running for an autocracy. Chuck Schumer is not the leader for the moment. I encourage folks to read this to better understand what happened with the CR vote yesterday. If this passage resonates with you, please let your senators and Chuck Schumer know what you think and why. Thank you.
"Democrats made a deal with Senate Republicans to split the DHS funding bill from five other bills and agreed to a two-week continuing resolution to fund DHS. Although there may be a brief shutdown because of the need to recall the House into session, the deal has Trump’s approval. See Politico, Trump-blessed deal to keep government funded gets snagged in Senate.
The net effect of the deal is to keep the government open by passing 11 of the 12 bills necessary to fund the 2026-27 budget. That leaves only the funding for DHS on the table. Democrats hope to use the next two weeks to pressure Republicans to agree to substantial reforms to DHS and ICE. See NPR, How Democrats want to reform DHS — and why some Republicans are open to their demands.
Here is the short version of what happened: Democrats had significant leverage because they could shut down 6 of 12 agencies to force Republicans to reform ICE. By agreeing to pass 5 of those bills, Democrats have given away most of their leverage to force ICE reform. Their only leverage will be the threat to withhold funding from DHS.
It is possible that a continuing DHS shutdown will be enough of a threat to force Republicans to agree to meaningful reforms at ICE. That strategy will work only if the seven Democratic senators who capitulated to Trump last November hold firm this time.
I am skeptical that Democrats have the courage and discipline to hold out indefinitely on a DHS shutdown. I hope I am wrong.
But beyond my skepticism and hope is a more important issue: People are dying in the streets as part of a massive, peaceful, effective resistance to ICE. Senate Democrats could have taken a bold stand in solidarity with Americans who are risking their lives to defend democracy. Instead, Democrats are working with Republicans to keep the trains running on time for a lawless regime.
It would have been better if Senate Democrats had shown fire in the belly and solidarity with people in the streets. Instead, they let a moment of great leverage slip out of their hands because they were caught in the technicalities of passing legislation.
Chuck Schumer appears to have no idea what is happening in the streets across the nation. If he did, he would have explained to the millions of Americans risking their lives why this deal is the best way forward. Not in a press release; not in a leak to Axios or the WSJ; and not in a stiff, by-the-book explanation of the legislative process with tired, partisan jabs at Republicans.
People are dying, Chuck. For you. For your liberties. For your state. For a Congress that refuses to do its job. They are putting their lives on the line in the hope that Congress will rouse itself to act like the first branch of government and come to the aid of the Constitution.
We need someone in the Senate who can be our voice, our inspiration, our comforter, and our fellow foot soldier in peaceful protest and civil disobedience. That’s not Chuck Schumer. It is incumbent on every Senate Democrat to fix the leadership problem in the caucus, ASAP. The best solution would be for Schumer to recognize that he is not the leader we deserve in this moment and step aside. That would be a true act of leadership."
A tribute to Alex Pretti as a civil servant upholding the Oath to defend the Constitution. We honor all those killed by agents and in detention today as we strike and boycott!
https://rgilmartin.substack.com/p/a-picture-of-a-civil-servant