Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz's Labor Department has approved a six-figure contract in 2023 to a group that has aggressively advocated for police defunding to promote a jobs law he signed last year.

The Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry in 2023 approved about $100,000 contract at the Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha (CTUL) to “increase workers' knowledge and understanding” of the safe time and earned sick law Walz signedstate records show. CTUL has an extensive history of anti-police activism, ranging from participation in the 2020 demonstrations over the death of George Floyd to a campaign it is currently waging to divert funding from law enforcement and none to “social programs,” according to materials published by the organization. .

CTUL's office, located a block from where Floyd died, was a “protest center” during the demonstrations over his death, seconds in Dissent magazine. Members of the organization distributed food, water and masks to the protesters, and some CTUL activists participated in the same protests.

CTUL organizer Valentina McKenzie spoke at one such protest, complaining that the police weren't doing enough to stop “wage theft” from “black and brown bodies” while wearing a “#Defund Police” T-shirt . seconds to a Facebook post.

“We protested,” another organizer of the group said in 2020, according to Dissent. “We fought to stop the police from getting any more, but they ignored us and they're still killing. Now, it's to the point where everyone is so angry – I don't think half of these shops would have been burnt or touched if we weren't so fed up”.

Demonstrators burned or otherwise damaged more than 1,500 locations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area during the unrest following Floyd's death, causing an estimated $550 million damages and kill two people in the process Walz has been criticized for receiving a request from the mayor of Minneapolis to deploy the National Guard to quell ongoing fires and looting in the city, but waiting until the next day to respond. seconds in the New York Times.

So far, Minnesota has paid about $43,000 of the $100,000 contract it awarded to CTUL.

CTUL's 2020 impact report stated how it had “become clearer than ever that the struggle for labor justice is deeply linked to the struggles for dignity and rights in other areas of our lives and identities” by participating in campaigns to “cancel rents and mortgages” and financing. police so that resources could be diverted to “programs that build community wealth and safety.”

CTUL finally got his wish as a Minneapolis City Hall Bloomberg voted to cut $28 million from the police department's budget in December 2020 informed. The following year, Minneapolis saw the highest number of homicides in more than two decades, along with a 21.6% increase overall violent crimeaccording to various points of sale.

After rising crime, the Minneapolis City Council in late 2021 restored virtually all of the funding it cut to the city's police department the year before, the Star Tribune reported. informed. While some in the left center world now to believe defunding the police movement was a mistake, CTUL stands firm.

The organization is currently current a “campaign to defund the police and reinvest those funds into other programs that actually keep communities safe, such as worker protections, additional wage theft investigators, and other social programs,” according to its website.

Minnesota business owners have said the Safe Time and Earned Sick Time Act CTUL used to help promote, which allows employees to earn one hour of paid time off for every 30 hours they work, has made their lives more difficult, Fox News Digital informed.

“Our business has been completely impacted by Walz. Ever since Walz has been there, it's been kind of a nightmare,” a local business owner told Fox News Digital, referring to the law. “It seems like it's really against small businesses.”

“I appreciate my employees and I love mine,” another small business owner told Fox News Digital, reacting to the law. “I feel like you've created a policy for my business when it's not viable for me.”

CTUL, the Harris campaign and the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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