Getting Back Our Stolen Bootstraps

Inspiring 2022 anti-fascist novel set in Minneapolis anticipated the 2026 Minnesota ICE invasion, kidnappings, assassinations, disappearings. How do workers resist an illegal armed militia and win back their rights with nonviolent protests and a general strike? This novel helps you imagine how to fight back to save democracy. The Minneapolis Shingle Creek community (Creekers) continues its campaign for workers' rights despite illegal harassment. So panicking wealthy Fat Cats step up aggression. Cops kill an influential community ally. Jail Creekers illegally. And Remove Creekers' lawsuits from court dockets. Creekers use their press contacts to break through a news blackout. Fat Cats then ban Creekers' meetings from the school. Creekers keep meeting. There is an explosion of fury about Creekers killed in Vietnam, industrial accidents, and railroad workers' wage cuts. The Creekers counter with demands for an increased minimum wage indexed to inflation. When the big daily paper locks journalists out, Creekers hire them and start their own daily. They help railroad workers organize a strike. The railroad hires scabs, but Creekers woo them away with union jobs. Creekers find a legal way to remove unsafe industrial equipment and win several large judgments in defamation lawsuits. That's when they get anonymous warnings the Fat Cats are training an armed militia to be used against them. The strike begins spreading. No rail traffic moves in Minneapolis. Working class allies from other communities set up a Peoples' Union to coordinate strike activity. They plan a march on City Hall from the four corners of town. Paid thugs attack marchers. Creeker women, trained in self-defense, disable and tie up the thugs, haul them to the countryside to walk home. Next day Creekers try to march again, but teargas-dropping helicopters attack. The day after when they march, 153,000 people surround City Hall. Afterwards, back home, the illegal militia attacks. Two Creekers are killed. But Creekers force the militia to retreat. The next day, the militia disappears five working class leaders. Creekers and their allies walk out of negotiating sessions. Fat Cat bosses are petrified. The state legislature intervenes. Creekers win more than 200 demands, backed by new state laws. Through all of this, the protagonist neighborhood organizer, Paul, has been working on his personal problem that made him unable to declare his love for Karen. At the Creekers victory celebration, Paul is finally able to make a love commitment to Karen with all his heart and soul. Midwest Book Review says Getting Back Our Stolen Bootstraps is "...a far wider-ranging, bigger-picture story... unusually rooted in a sense of time, place, and community." "Taking Away the Tracks," a short story excerpted from Chapter 8, was reprinted in Blue Collar Review. "I Have to Go Away," a song from Chapter 15, was reprinted in Which Side Are You On? Labor Day 2023 Poetry Anthology. Getting Back Our Stolen Bootstraps was the Winner Runner-up, Realistic Fiction, 2025 Pencraft Awards for Literary Excellence.