Minnesotans have responded, during a period where our elected officials (at least at the national level, and largely state levels) have not. This is because in the streets, in their own neighborhoods, while their own children’s schools are being tear gassed by their own government, they aren’t holding up a finger to the political winds. They aren’t looking to follow where the smoke blows. They aren’t looking to polls to drive their actions. They don’t care about popular opinion. They care about their neighbors. They are acting now, because the time is now.

Our elected officials keep calling for accountability or justice but those are reactive stances. Mass deportation and occupying American cities is incredibly unpopular. But we needed our elected leaders to anticipate that and get ahead of it. You actually can move public opinion, not be moved by it. You can’t govern reactively, you have to get out ahead of things, and you have to address root problems. The root problem is a masked secret police force roving neighborhoods as terror squads, armed with military weapons and Nazi skull face masks. Sorry, Hakeem and Chuck but you can’t negotiate with that. Period. And you certainly can’t win if you start with, “Maybe, don’t wear the Nazi mask, pretty please?”

The thing about justice is that it should, actually, be blind. We oppose secret police attacking Somalis in Minnesota, not because of who they’re attacking or a deep love for Minnesota, but because we oppose secret police. Even if they were rounding up Epstein’s creepy pedophile ring. We oppose money in politics not because they’re funding candidates we don’t support, but because money in politics is corrosive of the entire system. We support universal rights to housing, healthcare, childcare, and a living income even though that means people we don’t like would benefit from those things too.

We need a change of leadership amongst our elected officials. It’s not about age, it’s about not living in the actual moment we are faced with. Hakeem Jefferies is only ten-ish years older than me. But the politics and country he talks about sound as foreign to me as if he were regaling us about the invention of the telegraph.

Principled stances require unwavering dedication to values. Our current leaders are unable to meet the moment and must step aside, because we need action now, not after the midterms.

Learning

Wired published an incredible piece, not behind a paywall, to try and help people understand their rights and the risks when filming ICE, but also law enforcement more specifically. Read this, attend local or Zoom trainings, make sure you’re keeping yourself, and others, especially those we’re trying to help, safe. Thanks to Matt Burgess, Lily Hay Newman, Maddy Varner, and Andy Greenber for this reporting.

How to Film ICE | WIRED

Filming federal agents in public is legal, but avoiding a dangerous—even deadly—confrontation isn’t guaranteed. Here’s how to record ICE and CBP agents as safely as possible and have an impact.

There are so many layers to Minnesota’s response to occupation. From school patrols, to food and laundry delivery, to pushing corporations to stand with their neighbors, aka their employees and customers. ICE Out Now MN has a lot of information and can act as a template for other areas that ICE occupies in the future.

Reading

A Day for Gaza in The Nation

The writers who have shared stories with us have done so in conditions that veer toward the impossible. They have written through hunger and grief, while huddling in makeshift shelters, and while listening to the thud of still-falling bombs—and they have done so, as  Engy Abdelal writes, because they want “to tell the world that [they] have a future just as… [they] have had a past.” What they have created, in the process, is not only a record of Israel’s ongoing violence but also a testament to what Gaza was—and might yet be.  

You should read all the stories they’ve published here, by Gazans, at great risk to themselves, so that we may hear their stories, just as I have focused on sharing those telling their own stories from Minnesota. You can sign up for free to get access, but also consider donating or subscribing.

A Day for Gaza | The Nation

Today, The Nation is turning over its website exclusively to stories from Gaza and its people. This is why.

From Minneapolis in January by Michael Bazzett in Poetry Unbound by Pádraig Ó Tuama

The answer is simple. Death 

has come here on holiday 
from the coast, yet its cousin 
Sleep remains in charge. 
Our nightmare is the waking.

I am sure that many are overwhelmed. Death and Sleep are characterised in the poem to great power. Michael Bazzett’s poem does not provide a solution, but I read two imperatives in it: Live. And Awaken.

“From Minneapolis in January” - by Pádraig Ó Tuama

A new poem by Michael Bazzett

Wall of Tears: 50ft Brooklyn mural pays tribute to children killed in Gaza by David Smith

The artist reflects: “You can’t not think about your own kids and your own families. I hope that might lead people to think about how they might help, even if it’s just, take a photo of the mural and pass it along on their social media to their friends and family because hearing something from someone you know is important.”

Wall of Tears: 50ft Brooklyn mural pays tribute to children killed in Gaza | Art | The Guardian

Installation remembers the names of over 18,000 children killed by Israel in Gaza between October 2023 and July 2025

5 Things White People Should Stop Saying Right Now by Lauren Jones, PhD

I know that people like to believe that their intent is what matters when it comes to words but it is actually impact that is important. Consider how these simple phrases may indicate your allegiance to White power and hegemony. Consider how they may (continue to) drive wedges between White and non-White communities. Consider how solidarity is so critical, yet so fragile. Consider your relationship to power and how marginalized people may already have some level of distrust because of that. We will win, but we will do so when we honor the breadth of each others’ identities and experiences.

5 Things White People Should Stop Saying Right Now

I'm a Black woman in Minneapolis and these phrases aren't helping

Letter From Minnesota: We Are Going to Win by Katherine Packert Burke

This is what America stands for. What it has always stood for. We have seen it in Gaza, and in the police killing of Black people. In the destabilization of Afghanistan and Iraq, in Guatemala in the 1950s and Chile in the 70s. We have seen it under Democrats and Republicans alike. We don’t need to hem and haw over the words: the boomerang has come back to us. Fascism is here.

Friends from out of state text me every few days to ask how I’m doing. I haven’t quite known how to answer. We’re scared, of course; we’re angry. We’re working on making our city safe. Finally, I settle on: it is stupid and evil what’s happening, but we are going to win.

Literary Hub » Letter From Minnesota: We Are Going to Win

Each morning, I get a Signal message counting up how many days our city has been occupied. It bears information, reminders for new members. There are estimated to be 80,000 of us in the city. The h…

Letter From Minnesota: Details From an Occupation by Angela Pelster

People are taking the smallest of steps forward not knowing how many others are up ahead. Or behind. To the right and left of them. Even though they can’t see the entirety of what they’ve added their single, tiny self to and can only hope it is enough. They’re trying to believe that their participation matters. That the body they’re building collectively matters.

And so, they keep moving.

Literary Hub » Letter From Minnesota: Details From an Occupation

At the “Ice Out of Minnesota” march in Minneapolis that took place a week ago today, it was impossible to tell how big or small the crowd was from on the ground. The sky was clear and the air so bi…

Literary Hub has an entire section of writing, poems, etc. written by folks in Minnesota

Whistleblowing Tulsi Gabbard in a Post-Truth World by Van Jackson

But unaccountability is not new; Biden appointees are going around as recently as this week bragging about how much they “helped” Israel militarily since October 7, 2023, and we have news that the State Department buried USAID reporting that Israel was rendering Gaza into an “apocalyptic wasteland” in 2024, to which the US responded by accelerating the wastelanding. Nobody but peace protestors went to jail for the Iraq war. The Epstein shit matters precisely because it’s the ultimate test of whether there can be any actual accountability in this world short of a revolution. It’s not looking good.