We will be talking about the bravery and love of Minnesotans for decades

But the good people of that state still need your help right now

Photo credit: Ellen Schmidt, MinnPost

Let’s be very clear. Nobody actually knows what it means for ICE to announce an end to Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities. With this particular administration, there are plenty of reason for caution, confusion, and fears of another shoe still to drop. Perhaps the streets of Minneapolis and Saint Paul might finally grow a bit calmer. Perhaps families can once again send their kids to school, show up for medical appointments, or shop for their own groceries. We hope, but we don’t know. We are not dealing with trustworthy actors here. But, blessedly, we are dealing with cowards, and the thing you need to know about cowards is that whatever they claim behind lecterns, they always retreat in shame.

We don’t know if ICE will repeat its occupation in another city, or if their tactics will change. We don’t know what will be required of us— everywhere— moving forward.

But here are two truths worth holding at once.

The first…

One way or another, ICE will eventually leave Minnesota. They will do so in defeat. Their mission, which has and will be left unaccomplished, had nothing to do with arrests. It had everything to do with performance. The goal was to charge into Minnesota on the backs of a manufactured conservative outrage cycle about Somali fraud. The hope was that while previous occupations (Chicago in particular) didn’t go their way, this one might be different. The administration would win back the voters they’d lost over the past year, thanks to a few staged photo ops and some good old fashioned manufactured consent.

Their hope was that their propaganda from the frozen streets of Minneapolis and Saint Paul would win the day, that various tough guys would stare at the camera and assure us, the red blooded American viewing public, that they had removed monsters from our streets. The protestors would be easily dismissed: as blue hairs, as banshees, as terrorists, as wine moms.

But they failed, and not for lack of trying. They failed because they expected their long guns and fascist puffery to leave Minnesotans cowering in fear. They failed because the residents of the Twin Cities are as imperfect as the rest of us, but in their best moments they have always taken pride in being neighbors. This is shovel one another’s walk country. This is bring a hot dish when your buddy comes home from surgery country. Again, it was not and is not a perfect beloved community, but it is the kind of place that, when the gun thugs streamed in by the thousands, folks from all walks of life were triggered instinctually. “You wonder if we love our neighbors here? YOU’RE GODDAMNED RIGHT WE DO! WE’RE GONNA LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS SO HARD.”

The Minnesotans kept caring, and the regime didn’t know how to respond. They tried literal murder, but that didn’t quell the crowds. They tried lying about the murdered, lying about the deported, disappearing more and more people into Whipple. They tried disguising themselves, changing their tactics, pumping more toxins into the air— both literal and figurative. None of it worked. The spreadsheets kept connecting neighbors to neighbors. The groceries kept being delivered. The whistles kept blowing.

Across the country, outside of the MAGA base, very few people believed the regime’s lies. Support for ICE, already dropping, tumbled even further. Something primal was triggered in the rest of us, as well. “We know what it looks like to be a neighbor,” millions of us marveled, “we may fail at it ourselves, but we know it when we see it… and we know not to hate it… those neighbors love each other….And we do too.”

We were supposed to turn on each other, and love our supposed protectors. That was the regime’s plan. And very few— even in this country, where white Americans in particular have often been more than happy to take that bait— actually did so. And that’s literally an honest to God miracle. One that didn’t happen by accident, but because neighbors in the Twin Cities zipped up their parkas, wiped away the tears and lit their hearts on fire.

ICE lost. The Minnesotans won. That’s the first truth.

Here’s the second…

The aftermath of war and collective trauma never feels like a victory. If you are lucky, as I am, to be in personal contact with activists and neighbors in the Twin Cities, you know that this moment doesn’t feel triumphant. They are exhausted. Their heads have been on swivels. They’ve mourned thousands of neighbors disappeared, thousands of kids traumatized, millions of lives disrupted. They’ve had to bury their dead, literally. And yes, they held their city together, but at a tremendous cost.

Money is not all that matters, but it is one way of quantifying disruption or stability in our lives. And by all accounts, the people of the Twin Cities are stretched thin in every way, including financially. Small business are devastated. Tens of thousands of people haven’t been able to work. Mutual aid has knit communities together, but so many neighbors have given so much to each other that they too are now broke.

At some point, “normalcy” will be declared in the Twin Cities, but the trauma will remain. Neighbors will still be disappeared, as is happening in the rest of the communities. They’ll just be disappeared quietly. Fear will not dissipate merely because the gun thugs aren’t roaming the streets. Minneapolis in particular will be a city transformed, both by beauty and by tragedy.

I have no doubt that the good neighbors of the Twin Cities will keep loving each other through what comes next. But I do have some fears. I’m terrified that they will feel abandoned by the rest of us, once the news cameras turn away. I worry that there will be some of us (particularly those most cocooned by various privileges) for whom life will go back to normal. I fear that we will forget what it felt to have our own innate neighborliness sparked by and for each other.

The other night, I was texting some of the most brilliant activists I know, a pair that has been so kind in letting me into their lives these past two months. If you’ve been following my writing about Minneapolis, you’ll know them as the anonymous group that organized a fundraiser to pay their neighbors’ rent. So many of you contributed, and I and they are profoundly grateful for your help. There are literally hundreds of neighbors still in their houses because of your generosity.

As we processed all the trauma that hasn’t and won’t go away anytime soon, though, my friends shared that just in the past couple days, there have been over two hundred new requests for assistance from the fund.

ICE may go away. I hope they do. But the needs of the community that stopped it its tracks will continue.

What, though, of our attention? Will it, too, dissipate?

You know where this is leading. And yes, it would mean the world to me and hundreds of people in a city I love if you could contribute to this fund right now. After you do so, you can tell me how much you gave and where you live using this form, so that we can keep track.

The word on the street is that tomorrow there’s a holiday about love. What I’ve learned the last couple months, from one city in particular, is that love in action is profound and wondrous, but also fragile. It is brave and hardy and resilient and it works overtime. But it doesn’t protect you from the scars. It doesn’t stop the sting of tear gas. It doesn’t hold back the heartbreak. It is the most beautiful gift we can give each other, but there is always a need for more.

Love to the Twin Cities. Love to neighbors everywhere. Love to you all, for keeping your hearts on fire.

End notes:

1. loveletterstominnesota.com continues on, as well. Keep contributing!

2. Here’s that link again to donate to the Minneapolis rent fund. And yes, after you do so, please let me know here what you gave and where you live so we can celebrate the additional funds we’ve raised

3. Other announcements: Portland, I’d love to come hang out with you next weekend (including for a POTLUCK) but please register if you can come— link in the image below:

   

4. You all, the silliest/funniest/best gift I’ve ever received (a song, about all the things I can’t shut up about, set to the tune of Golden from Kpop Demon Hunters) was given to me by Sarah Wheeler on our latest episode of This Week in Breeders and I think you’ll really enjoy hearing about it

   Finally, please give your money first to Minneapolis, but if you have a bit left over and do care about sustaining this newsletter and my organizing work, I’m always grateful for paid subscriptions and love showing my gratitude by sending you cool merch (look at this picture of my very cool friend Ingrid wearing the “love harder” shirt to event with Bernie). Thank you for considering.