COMMENTARY: I Refuse to Let My Daughter’s Future Be Built on Endless War

Brianna Kranz is a state worker and member of MN Labor for Palestine (submitted photo)

On the first day of an illegal war on February 28, 2026, a bomb funded with my tax dollars tore through a school in Iran. It killed over 150 people, mostly young girls. As I watched the video footage of the bomb’s aftermath, I was reminded of a song my seven-year-old daughter sings in her community choir. The song is about empathy, and how our paths to freedom are interconnected.

The song goes: “No one is getting left behind this time. We will get there together or never get there at all.”

As a mother, I can’t fathom any world where bombing little girls is okay or goes unpunished. This sort of distorted world is an extension of America’s imperial grip, which always manages to boomerang its way back home. We see it in an increase of racial profiling of Black and brown communities, expanded surveillance and force used during Operation Metro Surge, and in the generations of injustice faced by Native Americans and Americans of color.

I believe that in order to more effectively resist, the labor movement must continue to stand with people of every background and say no to funding endless wars and to ICE deporting our neighbors. I believe American workers can understand the intersected oppressive systems we participate in and can together push ourselves — and our elected officials — towards a path of liberty and justice for all. I believe we are capable of freedom that does not depend on bombing half the world.

American workers who traditionally stay out of geopolitical conversations are starting to notice just how connected our systems of oppression are. The US-Israeli coalition has bombed civilian areas — including hospitals and schools — in Iran, Yemen, and Lebanon, in part because they defend Palestine. In Minnesota, we know what it means to defend our neighbors from the violence of armed occupation.

To me, the movement to abolish ICE is inseparable from the fight for a free Palestine. This is because the playbook used to ethnically cleanse Gaza relies on tactics first deployed in America. These patterns of criminal conduct — violence, sexual abuse, and collective punishment — are not new; they have origins from the founding of this country.

Over the last 50 years, Israel and the United States have worked together through exchange programs to train and collaborate on strategies that ICE and local and federal police use. More recently the technologies used against protestors and immigrants were developed during Israeli assaults on Palestinians. Meanwhile, our state employee pensions, tax dollars, and consumer spending continue to flow into corporations and countries that profit from genocides and endless wars.

On Thursday, March 26, the Minnesota State Board of Investments (SBI) will meet. Led by Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Secretary of State Steve Simon, and Auditor Julie Blaha, the board will decide whether or not it will listen to Minnesota’s working class. State union workers like me have been pushing the SBI to divest our pensions from war. For several years now, we have been demanding that our pensions be reinvested in areas that ethically and directly support the economic development of Minnesota communities.

The SBI has previously refused to confront its legal and moral duty to divest from genocides and wars. Recent disclosures show a divestment in direct money to the Israeli government, which is a victory, but our pension funds still hold huge amounts in weapons manufactures, banks, tech companies and other corporations who profit from human suffering.

With the midterms approaching, we have an opportunity to elect leaders that reflect our values. We have to be clear that we will not support candidates who support endless wars. We will not support candidates who say they are against oppression yet continue to fund ICE and genocides.

Polls consistently show Americans do not want their tax dollars and pensions going to bombs and bullets that kill girls and boys and terrorize civilians. lmagine what could be achieved if our politicians listened to the workers of America. Imagine the increase in baseline quality of life, the reduction in poverty, and the improvement of essential societal support systems, like education and healthcare, that could be achieved if the billions of dollars invested in death and destruction annually were instead invested to support the working class.

Minnesotans are showing the world what collective power looks like. When federal forces arrived, neighbors protected one another, fed communities, and organized rapid responses to fight back. Dismantling oppressive systems happens not only in the streets, but at home in our hearts and minds. White Americans in particular must confront the uncomfortable truth that our perceived safety and our unchecked consumer culture is built on the suffering of others, whether it is rural Minnesotans or Iranian school children.

When we unlearn the impulse to police or colonize, and instead nurture our interconnected humanity, we will strengthen our collective path towards freedom fueled by empathy.

Love and solidarity are our most reliable moral compass. They reveal to us just how misguided our current path has become if our pensions continue to profit off of war. We must ground ourselves in the simple truth that our home — this beautiful earth full of songs and little girls who sing them — is sacred.

The future of our planet — and the plants, animals and people that call it home — are dependent on our actions in these moments. How will we respond?

Call and email today the members of the SBI board and executive staff. Demand the SBI divest our pensions from bonds that profit off of war, genocides, and weapons manufacturers.

A true reckoning is happening in the way we:

• understand interconnected oppressions,
• recognize that our tax dollars and pensions don’t have to fund genocides,
• and remember that when we engage one another, heart to heart, we know no one is getting left behind.

As workers, as parents, as Minnesotans, we are building a path forward. Let us demand that our elected officials join us in this fundamental call to humanity. May we get there together.

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