• Every day the news is grim and appalling and frightening.
The cowardly murderer Jon “fucking bitch” Ross is still at large, unprosecuted and uncharged.
“ICE Detained a 5-Year-Old Minnesota Boy and Used Him as ‘Bait.‘” The child and his father were legal asylum-seekers following all American laws, but they were immediately sent to a concentration camp in Texas where they will be mistreated and then deported without legal representation or due process. Six people have died, some violently, at ICE detention facilities so far this month.
The federal government is going after a Black woman pastor for preaching the only true gospel sermon ever heard in one sick white Southern Baptist church.
ICE has decided — secretly, because they know how flagrantly illegal this is — that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to them.
Minneapolis and St. Paul, home to more than 3 million Americans, are under siege from armed hooligans of the MAGA regime, forcing schools to close and nonwhite churches and mosques to cancel services as nonwhite residents are unable to leave their homes without carrying papers proving their citizenship — papers which still won’t keep them from violent detention and harassment.
It’s a horror show.
• But also, the news from the Twin Cities — from the response of everyday, ordinary people — has been beautiful and inspiring and a wonder to behold. The scope and scale and depth and effectiveness of their massive, nonviolent, noncompliant response is far beyond anything I would have hoped or imagined.
“Neighborliness is a lived theology in Minnesota.”
Examples abound of projects across the Twin Cities of people organizing to provide food for neighborhood children, offering accompaniment to immigration court and standing witness as people are detained. We are operating out of this common category of neighbor, and in this day and age of toxic division, the simple category of “humanity” holds people together and fills them with courage.
Churches — the decent ones, not the diabolical boot-licking kind — are turning into distribution centers for neighbors unable to safely shop for groceries and necessities.
It seems like everybody everywhere has a whistle, and that neighborliness and solidarity are, if not unanimous, at least shared by the overwhelming majority of residents regardless of race, religion, class, or prior political inclination.
Here, for example, is Jack Jenkins’ story on “How one conservative Christian family is pushing back against ICE.”
“But also I feel like Christians should be the first people to fight for this,” Ben interjected, as Sam nodded. “What have we been taught our entire life? Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked. This is basic, basic stuff. Christians have always been people who are supposed to be there for the marginalized, the people that are being hurt by systems, the people that don’t have a voice.”
Suddenly, Sam’s phone lit up with word of ICE vehicles in a nearby suburb. Ben pulled out of the parking lot, with Sam monitoring chatter over group chats. As they drew close, Sam jumped on a group call with several other ICE monitors, their voices overlapping as they tried to direct one another to the ICE vehicles.
And here is a Bluesky thread from Margaret Killjoy, describing the “tragic beauty” she has encountered in Minneapolis:
I came to Minneapolis to report on what’s going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is “just what is the scale of the resistance?” After all, we’re all used to the news calling Portland a “war zone” or whatever when it’s just some protests in one part of town.
I got in late last night. First thing this morning, I saw cars following an ice vehicle down the street, honking at it.
Later, we didn’t drive more than three blocks before we found people defending a childcare facility. (The idea that people have to defend a childcare facility… let that sink in).
Half the street corners around here have people — from every walk of life, including Republicans — standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes responders.
I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I have never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is not accepting what’s happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman for participating in this, and all that did is bring out more people, from more walks of life.
It’s genuinely a leaderless (or leaderful) movement, decentralized in a way that the state is absolutely unequipped to handle. There are a few basic skills involved, and so people teach each other those skills, and people are collectively refining them.
Before I came, I asked a local friend if the cold (it’s going to be -20 or so in the coming days) would stop people from coming out. “No, we’ll be there. It’s ICE who can’t handle it.”
Today I talked with a 76 year old who’d been standing in the cold for hours guarding her neighbors. I was getting kind of chilly, even in the new winter gear i bought for this trip (and I live in the goddam mountains myself).
She didn’t even have a hat on.
Another person put it: “we’re Minnesotans. We’re excited to get out our real winter gear out of the box for the year.”
He was an audio engineer whose kid went to school in the area. No way in hell was he going to let anyone come for the kids on his watch.
Another friend put it to me like this: “ICE has made the classic Nazi mistake. They’ve invaded a winter people in the winter.”
I don’t want to paint a rosy picture, because it’s a city under siege. People are being abducted all the time. One person told me about watching 1-2 abductions a day, just in her own work following ICE.
But when I asked an organizer what they wanted to see out of press coverage, they told me they wanted people to see the beautiful things they are building here, and not just the worst stories of the worst of ICE’s crimes.
What people are doing here is beautiful. It’s a tragic beauty, but a real one.
I’ve been here 24 hours, but already with what I’ve seen, well, I genuinely believe we’re going to win. People here are well aware that what happens here impacts the entire country, that it sets the tone for resistance. ICE is angry, ICE is terrified, of how deeply unpopular it is.
I’ve never seen a population more united. If people can hold onto that unity, if people can accept that different people will have different ways of confronting fascism, if we can remind NGOs and orgs that they can join but not control the resistance, then, well, people here will write history.
• I was disappointed to read that author/pastor Philip Yancey confessed to a long-term extramarital affair and has resigned. Yancey, 76 (!), accepts that his betrayal of his wife and his marital vows “disqualifies him from ministry.” It does and it should — even if it seems almost a relief to hear of a clergy sex scandal involving a consensual affair with an age-appropriate paramour.
But the worst thing about Yancey being disqualified from ministry is that most of the white evangelical leaders condemning his actions do not also think that David Easterwood has disqualified himself from ministry by serving as an acting field director for ICE in its violent, lawless ethnic cleansing campaign in the Twin Cities. It does and it should disqualify him from ministry.
And it does and it should disqualify Easterwood from decent society. Better a millstone be tied around his neck, etc.
If I wound up sitting next to Philip Yancey on the train, I would tell him I was disappointed in him because I recall reading his columns years ago and found them thoughtful and inspiring. We would talk about that disappointment and how he let so many people down.
If I wound up sitting next to David Easterwood on the train, I would jump up, yelling “Hey everybody! This is that David Easterbrook guy!” and then everybody on the train would yell at him and flip him off and we would make the train stop and force him to get off and walk, and the fact that we stopped the train first before throwing him off would be an act of undeserved mercy.
Anyway, here again is the one thing I’ve previously posted about Philip Yancey:
• The title for this post come from “Let the Church Roll On/I Won’t Be Back” from the self-titled album from Mercy Seat. That was the acoustic punk/gospel band featuring Gordon Gano and Zena Von Heppinstall. Back in the ’80s I failed to convince many other people that Von Heppinstall’s vision of “speed-gospel” was the future of music, but I will still occasionally argue this point, because it should be.
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