Samuel Freedman, “Return of the Silver Shirts”
It is intolerable to a Pelley or Smith or Trump that a city that was once nearly entirely white, Protestant, and Northern European could transform into a polyglot hub with large Somali, Mexican, Hmong, and Vietnamese populations. It is intolerable to MAGA that liberals and progressives hold nearly every elected office of consequence in Minnesota, and that they have vociferously—sometimes profanely—rejected white solidarity to defend minority communities. It is intolerable to MAGA that civil society continues to thrive in Minneapolis through liberal religious congregations, vigorous labor unions, vibrant ward politics, and engaged neighborhood associations—the very groups that have mounted the sustained, nonviolent opposition to ICE’s invasion. It is intolerable to MAGA that Minneapolis never chose Pelley’s way or Smith’s way, and now rejects the MAGA way.
Some dude in Minneapolis who has to work in the morning, “This is nuts“
This is nuts. And yeah, you’re right in the middle of this shit. What the fuck is going on? Dude, this is insane. … I’ve never protested in my life. My brother, my brother’s here, he does it all the time. I’ve never … I got, dude, like I said, I’m far enough away but close enough and I sit in my cushy house and look at shit and get mad and I, yeah. They’re just trying to fucking scare people and, you know, but but but why shoot people? No, but you know what really pisses me off? Is that they detain people, cuff ’em, and then still beat the shit out of ’em. They tell you it’s immigrants, only immigrants? It’s fucking anybody. I have friends that got detained and all they were doing was fucking driving home from work. What the fuck? … I’m not fucking paid to be here like everybody fucking says, what the fuck is that? I gotta work in the goddamn morning just like everybody else. I’m just here trying to stand up for community, dude. We’re all human beings here. I don’t give a shit who you are, where you came from, what color you are, it doesn’t fucking matter. This is wrong.
[Note: this is a transcription because the Bluesky post wouldn’t embed here, but be sure to click through to watch the video.]
Anonymous Minneapolis resident, “Dispatch from the occupation”
The following dystopian scenario plays out in the open dozens of times per day in the Twin Cities: Multiple masked and armed agents in combat gear amass in unmarked cars outside a house or business. A bystander notices and alerts the neighborhood. A dozen or more neighborhood residents appear within minutes to legally observe, legally film the encounter, legally make sure the targeted people know their rights, and legally warn others by blowing whistles and honking car horns.
The targeted people ─ again, almost all of whom are U.S. citizens or in the U.S. legally ─ are abducted and frequently sent to jail in Texas or Louisiana or elsewhere within 24 hours; hopefully the neighborhood observers were able to get their name and a phone number for a friend or family member. The neighborhood observers, peacefully practicing their legal rights, are labelled terrorists by their government. Or, worse, they are also abducted by federal agents and detained at the (federal) Whipple Building at Fort Snelling (ironically, the site of the largest mass execution by the U.S. government in our nation’s history in 1862) for many hours before being released with no charges made against them. This is our federal government terrorizing its citizens.
Angela Denker, “I Am a Minneapolis Mother and Pastor, and I Know Where I Stand”
This is praiseworthy: Real bravery trumps its cowardly imitator every single time. The pen is mightier than the sword—the biggest assault rifle, the heaviest body armor, rippling muscles to mask crippling insecurity inside. You cannot fake being brave. And so ordinary Americans, mothers, fathers, children, teenagers, immigrants, pastors, put their bodies together and stand as a line against the onslaught of tyranny.
Where do you stand? With them, or with the Lie?
Autistic Abby, “Respect”
Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.
David Dasharath Kalal, “When a racist refusal of the Eucharist becomes a tool for competing nationalisms”
He does not want to receive the Eucharist from anyone who is non-white, he says, going on to invoke the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and the need to keep “our churches ours.” And when he reaches the end, he delivers the thesis: If this makes him a “bad Catholic,” fine — he would rather be that than let America “turn into India.”
“I guess I’ll go confess this to my priest, but I’ll continue doing it. That’s the compromise, okay.”
“That’s the compromise,” he says — confession without repentance, acknowledgment without restraint. It is not a moment of shame, but of resolution. He knows this choice violates church teaching, but he has already decided which authority matters more.
Christy Staats, “Still Asking ‘Who is my neighbor?'”
There has been pressure to close lawful channels of immigration for the last year. There have been moves to strip lawful immigrants of their immigration status and render them deportable. We have watched legal channels for immigration close. Ideas like “restitution,” a long-backed policy of Christian organizations in the Evangelical Immigration Table that would have offered a pathway to legal status and to pay a restitution for the 10 million undocumented immigrants that reside in the U.S. aren’t even approachable conversations right now. Instead it is how do we stop the recision of TPS so that the lawful Haitian immigrants in Springfield Ohio don’t lose status next month? We are redirecting members law enforcement groups across the country towards immigration enforcement, the group of people who have the lowest crime records in the US. How will we be more safe if we allocate those resources away from solving serious crimes in our country and focus on the group of people with the lowest criminal records? (Immigrants including undocumented have long been charted as committing the least amount of crime.) How do we stop ICE from running rampant in our cities as a rogue, undertrained, masked set of bandits, arresting immigrants indiscriminantly? We can’t get to immigration reform or find solutions for long complicated subjects like our undocumented population when there is chaos and little being done to focus on solutions that serve the labor force and values needs of the U.S. It’s hard to focus on solutions when every day we are seeing immigrants treated without dignity in such heart wrenching ways.
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