The “Freedom Road” that leads to communism

Minnesota socialists are flexing their muscles, both at the ballot box and in the streets.

Yesterday was Super Tuesday, primary election day for Minnesota and more than a dozen other states. In the Democratic presidential primary, Minnesotans, as expected, favored incumbent Pres. Joe Biden, with 70 percent of the vote.

Native-son candidate Congressman Dean Phillips finished a distant third and then dropped from the race.

In between, stood the unlikely candidacy of “Uncommitted” which received almost 46,000 votes (1/5 of the ballots cast, 18.8 percent). As reported by the Star Tribune, Minnesota will send 11 delegates to the national Democratic convention this summer in Chicago, officially pledged to the Uncommitted cause.

The effort behind Uncommitted urged voters to pull the lever as a protest vote against the current President’s policies regarding the war in Gaza against Hamas. The Star Tribune adds that,

The campaign is building on momentum from a similar push in Michigan, which earned more than 100,000 votes in the state’s primary last week. Both Minnesota and Michigan were crucial states in Biden’s 2020 victory.

The larger number of Michigan votes for Uncommitted represented a smaller share of the vote there (only 13.2 percent).

In Michigan, the uncommitted vote centered on the state’s large Arab-American population in Dearborn. About one-quarter of the statewide Uncommitted votes in Michigan came from Wayne County, which includes Dearborn and adjacent Detroit.

In Minnesota, almost half (47 percent) of Uncommitted statewide vote total came from Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis. More than one-quarter of Hennepin County voters chose that option.

Vote Uncommitted MN is an official political committee, which registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) just last month. Among others, the local socialists got behind the effort, posting this item on election day on Twitter (X).

In Minnesota, we have socialists and then we have socialists. The latter are more committed to direct action than working through the ballot box.

Last week police cited 14 people for scaling the fence at the Governor’s residence, which is temporarily located on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. The occasion was a pro-ceasefire protest. WCCO reports that the group behind that protest is a local nonprofit called the Anti-War Committee.

The official name of the nonprofit is the Anti-War Committee Education Fund. Incorporated back in 2004, the current leader is listed as a person named Meredith Aby-Keirstead. Her day job is teaching high school in Bloomington.

She was quoted in this Star Tribune article on the occasion of an earlier protest in St. Paul.

If that name rings a bell, AlphaNews reprinted a Free Beacon article last November on a Bloomington teacher’s support of Hamas. The Free Beacon included this detail in their reporting,

In 2010, meanwhile, the FBI raided the homes of Aby-Keirstead and other Anti-War Committee and Freedom Road Socialist Organization activists as part of a terrorism investigation. The committee refused to cooperate with the investigation, and the FBI went on to rescind subpoenas issued to Aby-Keirstead and other committee members. Aby-Keirstead told the World Wide Socialist Website that investigators were seeking her testimony about meetings she held “with activists in Colombia and Palestine,” and unsealed court documents later alleged that two Freedom Road Socialist Organization members told an undercover FBI informant that they raised money for terrorist groups in the two countries.

I have posted the 104-page search warrant from 2010 here. The Department of Justice did the redactions you see in this version of the document. Those searches, which included six addresses in Minneapolis and two in Chicago, launched litigation that dragged on for four years but does not appear to have resulted in any charges.

Contemporaneous reporting of the 2010 FBI raids included this piece from the U’s student newspaper, The Minnesota Daily. The Daily was interested because four of the suspects had University connections at the time,

The FBI raided six Twin Cities addresses Friday morning, including the homes of one former University of Minnesota student and three employees.

The Daily reported at the time,

“We did six federal search warrants in the city of Minneapolis,” FBI spokesman Steve Warfield said. “They are seeking evidence related to an ongoing joint terrorism task force investigation. It concerns the material support of terrorism. There’s no imminent threat to the community, and no arrests are planned.”

Back in 2010, in addition to the Anti-War Committee, The Daily mentioned another related organization, which is still around, Fight Back! News. Both efforts are related to a third entity, which goes by the name Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).

All three outfits list south Minneapolis mailing addresses. All three are active on Twitter (X), AWC, FRSO, and FB!N.

The 2010 FBI search warrant mentions both the Anti-War Committee and FRSO. Among other items, the FBI was attempting to learn how these individuals were able to afford international travel to South America and the Middle-East.

Always follow the money.