I have been trying to get my thoughts in order for a few weeks, with the escalating violence in the Twin CIties weighing heavy on my heart and mind. I normally consider myself quick to respond, and I normally can do so with more eloquence than I feel capable of right now. I will try nonetheless, despite my brain feeling scattered and my heart feeling broken. I also feel angry and empowered to act. People so much braver than me are being murdered in the street, tear gassed, and physically harmed by ICE agents. The least I can do is continue to talk about their sacrifice, and to entreat more people to have eyes on Minnesota.
I wanted to start with a poem that reminds me of the promise of America: In 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote The New Colossus to raise funds for the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, a statue that was a gift from France to celebrate the hundred year anniversary of American independence, to honor America’s hard-fought battle to abolish slavery, and to be a link for friendship and diplomacy between sovereign nations:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
“The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame” feels like a premonition of the chaos that has descended in Minnesota. The intersections of highways I-94 and 35-S may not be an air-bridged harbor, but they frame the communities that have been shaken by violence and discord over the past few weeks and months. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul have long been a shining beacon to immigrants, a sanctuary city for the tired, the poor, for those yearning to breathe free for decades, welcoming the persecuted and the oppressed.
As someone who is part-Boulderite, part-Minnesotan, I feel called to write to my hometown paper to talk about the violence and federal occupation of my current home, Minneapolis.
Despite what DHS, Noem, or Stephen Miller may say, America is a nation of immigrants. Minnesota is a state of immigrants. In the 1890s, more than 40% of Minnesota’s population was foreign-born. In 1896, official ballots were printed with voting information in nine languages. This has continued with policies that welcomed Hmong refugees in the 1970s and 1980s and Somali refugees fleeing civil war in the 90s. Many of these refugees that Minnesota has welcomed are fleeing horrible wartime conditions, and refugee camps that exacerbate the trauma of war. I am proud to live somewhere that welcomes those in need, those seeking better conditions than what they leave behind.
Minnesota is FAR from perfect and still has a long way to go on cultural competence. We have plenty of people who do not welcome these immigrants. But I will be damned if I don’t see an outpouring of love for this community at every place I have turned recently. People care about openness and inclusion here, we care about protecting our neighbors.
I, too, come from a line of immigrants who chose to leave their countries of origin (namely Norway, Ukraine, and Germany) in the early 1900s for economic reasons. Half of my brood settled in Minnesota originally, in the cold northern climes that reminded them of their northerly homes. On my mother’s side, my great grandmother worked in New Jersey textile factories and never learned English, but she provided for her family and gave of herself for her children’s future, and through another circuitous loop, ended up again in Minnesota. Minnesota has time and again been an island in the storm for my own family over generations, for me as I’ve come into my own as an adult. I owe my life to people who went looking for a land of opportunity, I owe my existence to people who were brave enough to leave their known homeland for a chance at a better future. I find so much affinity with those today who seek better conditions for their families and loved ones, and who want to come to a land of opportunity, whatever their reasons may be.
In addition to descending from immigrants, I am the granddaughter of antifascists, the daughter of antifascists. My grandfathers on both sides fought Nazis during the second World War. After the war, one grandfather went on to teach at the Air Force Academy and helped to design nuclear energy generating stations in space. The other had eye damage from dog-fighting with German bombers and received a permanent plaque at the Air Force Academy for it.
I think we should all be against fascism; fascism is a government characterized by totalitarian control, alikeness, and total submission to the state. Fascism, based on the Latin word “fasces,” meaning bundles. I like to think of the fascia under our skin, the bundles of tissues that are all alike. Fascia, when there is too much of it, when it’s inflamed, it gets tight, pulling our bodies out of alignment. Fascism, in the same sense, suffers from the illness of “sameness.” When we bundle together, particularly on arbitrary lines like race, or blind loyalty to a leader, we risk the weakness of sameness, the brittleness of false consensus. We risk getting pulled out of alignment as a nation. Minneapolis feels strong because of our collective differences, we feel strong because of our unique contributions. These encroaching federal officials claim they have to use the Insurrection Act to quell civil disorder, yet the only disorder I observe starts and ends with the federal occupiers.
I am also a Patriot. I love this country and feel inordinately blessed to be a part of it. I have done nothing for my citizenship, other than win the lottery of birth. I am grateful for the rights and privileges conferred to me, freely, because of my citizenship. In the words of the great author and activist, James Baldwin, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” I write this as a love letter to the nation, to the state that I now call home, and to the idea that good, moral people who seek justice and non-harming are the moral center of this nation. The healers, the mothers, the immigrants seeking better lives, these are the people I want to surround myself with, these are the people who enrich our community.
I critique the unjust federal occupation of Minnesota, whereby ICE agents walk our streets with impunity. I criticize the descent into authoritarianism, whereby 250 years of constitutional rights do not matter. It is abhorrent that the political right, the party consistently championing the rights of the 2nd amendment, are so quick to discuss limiting the rights of gun owners when a conscientious liberal is the lawful owner of the gun. It is abhorrent to hear our government discuss pepper spraying and tear gassing crowds of peaceful protesters whose only crime is exercising their 1st amendment right. These are not crimes, but blessings that were hard-won by our founding fathers, the original American protesters who stood up to tyranny, who listed, among their facts for declaring independence, “keeping standing armies” in times of peace, without the consent of our legislatures, make “judges dependent on his will alone,” “refusing to pass laws for naturalization of foreigners…to encourage their migration hither.” These are the very things our founders fought for, and Minnesota does not take these words lightly. To dissent and to protest, is within our national DNA, it is the most American thing you can do to show your love of life and country.
Over 1,000 ICE agents were deployed last week, joining 2,000 ICE agents already on the ground. 3,000 paramilitary troops walk and drive around the Twin Cities. These ICE agents far outnumber our local police, and that is the point. They are bullies, they are intimidators, they puff out their chests and believe they are above the law. They stop and frisk people of color and arrest and detain lawful U.S. citizens. People are being told to carry their documents everywhere. Passports and proof of citizenship are required for travel abroad, not for walking down main street. I wasn’t around in 1850, but I imagine that Minneapolis in 2026 is how people in the northern states after the Fugitive Slave Act passed Congress. ICE agents look and feel like modern-day slave catchers, rooting out undocumented people with no criminal records (73% of people currently detained by ICE have no criminal record), people whose only crime is crossing a border in search of a better life. Or, in the case of many recent immigrants, their Temporary Protected Status (TPS designation, ordered by the Secretary of Homeland Security) was suddenly ended or not extended, as if people’s home countries are suddenly safe to return to. This puts people in a 60 day limbo, where they must drop everything and leave the country or otherwise be here without documentation. Talk about pulling the rug out from under someone, our DHS is handicapping any immigrant’s ability to get a leg up, to pave a better path for themselves and their families, and is actively harming them by risking deportation to unsafe homelands, or by separating families with disjointed, disorganized “immigration control.”
Slowly, and then all at once, we have slid into totalitarianism and authoritarian control. People smarter than me have covered this. Pema Levy at Mother Jones covered this in October, discussing the dual state of Nazi Germany. “The Dual State” is a theory created by a Jewish labor lawyer who fled Germany after the takeover by the Nazi Party, Ernst Fraenkel. Levy’s insightful article covering this is absolutely worth a read, but to summarize briefly, the dual state is one where some semblance of rule of law is preserved in the “normative state” (characterized business law, contracts), while the state has increasing power to punish dissenters and place individuals into a “zone of lawlessness” in the “prerogative state.” In the “normative state,” things appear to function within the normal rules of engagement, the rule of law. However, falling out of favor with the dominant regime or party, or dissenting in any way can slide one into the prerogative state, whereby no laws apply.
It is here where people can be disappeared for unknown crimes without fair trials, where people can be publicly executed in the street, where agents of the state, like ICE, can operate with impunity.
This is what Minnesota feels like right now. We see Alex Pretti, a gun owner and law abiding citizen. An ICU nurse, a healer. His first amendment right to constitutionally observe federal law enforcement with a camera was infringed upon, because the agents didn’t like that Alex stepped in while ICE agents were pushing a woman around. His second amendment right to bear arms is what ICE agents claim was justification enough to violently take his life. He wasn’t arrested, because there was nothing to arrest him for.
Seven agents kneeling on his chest and kicking him in the face was not enough. It took three shots to his back to place him into this zone of lawlessness. His only crimes were exercising his first and second amendment rights, and ICE agents decided that was enough to end his life. Seven men were so afraid of a man holding his phone, who also happened to be carrying a lawful, licensed gun, that the mere presence of a gun meant he lost his life. To me, this sounds like the prerogative state. Alex’s first and second amendment rights did not matter to these officers who spoke an oath to “Protect and Defend the Constitution.”
To be abundantly clear, I do not believe that Alex Pretti “violently brandished his weapon” or that he “assaulted” ICE agents. I believe that he was armed only with a phone and was honorably caring for his community while ICE kidnapped yet another community member. I do not believe that Renee Good was aiming for an officer with her car, but simply trying to leave the scene of an ICE action, performing a three-point turn that was interrupted by a trigger-happy, untrained ICE agents like Jonathan Ross, who calls women he shoots in the face “fucking bitches.”
Life is sacred, and the lives of Renee Good and Alex Pretti were cut short. This is a shame that cannot be made whole. It would be a small grace, a small shred of justice, if their killers can be delivered to justice in a court of law, to have a full, unbiased investigation, and to have a grand jury of their peers decide on the legality and just-ness of their actions.
To see so much callousness and dehumanizing language over the loss of human life from the political right makes me sad, dispirited and angry. Many of these statements are coming from the “Pro Life” party, all while willfully submitting to the idea that some lives are worth less, that some murders are not crimes, that agents officially operating in their duties can do whatever the “mission” commands, even when that “mission” is so horribly misguided and immoral.
I call on Governor Walz to protect our state. He says “put up or shut up” to this president and this administration, yet he only does weekly press conferences and tweets, decrying the actions of ICE. I want to see the agents who have indiscriminately fired shots into people’s backs and faces held to account, who shoot rubber bullets at protester’s legs held to account, tear gassed people at point-blank range in their faces held to account. I want to see arrests made for these ICE murderers, I want to see Walz put the weight of the nation behind our beliefs in fairness, in justice, and in doing the right thing.
Bureau of Criminal Apprehension needs to be able to conduct a fair, unbiased investigation into the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
DHS and ICE need to back out of Minnesota, and ICE needs to stay out of other states. Nobody should be exposed to these trigger-happy fools who have 8 weeks of training. Nobody should be locked up without cause, with administrative warrants that they are falsely using to gain entry into people’s homes, skirting their 4th amendment rights to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.
I want our elected officials at the state and federal level to remember that Minnesota is a tax donor state, and to not take this federal occupation lightly. We pay $50 billion more to the federal government than we receive. I’m not advocating for not participating in common defense. But there has got to be a time when push comes to shove and we use our bargaining chips instead of waiting and wringing our hands. I’m advocating for state’s rights and defending our ideals of sanctuary for those who seek it.
I have some asks, if you have made it this far.
Please, consider donating to any of the great organizations supporting on the ground efforts. I have personally donated to Immigrant Defense Network, which provides legal support to people being detained by ICE and Unidos MN. These are good organizations led by immigrants who are front line. Stand by Minnesota has a plethora of other actions, organizations to donate to, and GoFundMes for rent assistance and stabilizing families. This goes to things like legal help for people detained by ICE, groceries, rent assistance, and other things. It can be extremely hard for people to even go to the grocery store when, by doing so, they risk a run-in with ICE. I cannot emphasize enough how their presence escalates tensions in the community.
Please, call your representatives!! This is a small act of advocacy, but these people LITERALLY WORK FOR YOU/US. Make them earn it. Tell them you do not support the federal occupation. You have city council, state representatives and state senators, U.S. Congresspeople, and U.S. Senators. Tell them to get ICE OUT of Minnesota and out of any state where they seek to sow discord.
Naomi Kritzer also wrote a great blog post on what to do if you’re outside of Minnesota. TLDR is write op-eds, speak out, donate your dollars to organizations in the Twin Cities, and hassle ICE-supporting businesses. Home Depot, Target, Enterprise, Hilton, and Delta have all bent the knee to ICE, DHS, and the Trump administration; they are complicit with these unjust and immoral actions. Do what you can to take a stand against corporate citizenship that seeks to profiteer off of the chaos in the Twin Cities.
I’ll leave with the words of the Preamble to the Constitution, because those words mean something to me: Promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
It’s pretty hard to promote welfare when there’s a boot on your neck. Help us get this unjust, bullying occupation out of our state, help us help you keep you and your neighbors safe.