HOPE

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There are at least two things that connect Palestine and Minneapolis, this week. Violent occupation and hope. What is there to be hopeful about? More people oppose these violent government occupations today than any time in my lifetime. More people see the true purpose and methods of these occupations than ever have before. While that hasn’t moved the governments or officials orchestrating them there is power in an informed populous. We are united, despite being on opposite sides of the globe, in the shared humanity of our neighbors, whether they be in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or the occupied Twin Cities.

But where is our hope? Maybe front line protests or ICE Watch activity isn’t for you, for any number of reasons. But those folks protesting or watching ICE were previously volunteering at the library, or the animal shelter, or the food pantry. Now they’ve stepped up to fill a more urgent need.

You can backfill for them. Find a place locally to volunteer. Contribute to some mutual aid happening in Minneapolis or in your community. If ICE comes to your community consider helping with laundry or grocery shopping for your neighbors made afraid to leave their houses.

Most of us don’t have to start something or run something, someone else already has, we can just show up and help carry the load. Because it’s demonstrating that humanity, that care, that mutual love for our communities and our neighbors that is the ultimate rebuke of ICE’s terror squads. That is where my hope grows.

In the snippets that follow, my thoughts are italicized.

Palestine

This always was, always will be a land grab. That’s not to dismiss it, to ignore it’s extreme violence, to avoid calling it ethnic cleansing and genocide, but it’s what this has been about starting with the Nakba and continuing through today. And it’s important to remember, “god is not a real estate agent.”

“This community being established in Rafah will form the blueprint for how Israeli control could be deepened and rolled out further,” Whittall told Drop Site. “After Gaza was razed, starved, and deliberately blockaded over the past years, these ‘new’ communities built on the rubble of peoples homes are not only governance labs to test ultimate control and subjugation, but they are also the reincarnation of refugee camps. They are designed to contain a new generation of dispossessed Palestinians, effectively screened and corralled into shrinking Israeli-controlled zones in exchange for survival. Meanwhile, the so-called ‘red-zones’ remain under assault, increasingly cut off from a humanitarian system that is being deliberately obstructed.”

Following a meeting last month with Netanyahu, Trump apparently gave the all-clear to begin reconstruction in Rafah, regardless of the negotiations progress. The U.S. and Israel will now move to reconstruction without the Israel Defense Forces withdrawing or the International Stabilization Force being formed, building on the  directives  announced by Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, back in late October.

Plans Call for “New Rafah” Built in Israel’s Image — Without Palestinians

Phase two of the ceasefire deal includes a “smart city” with green spaces, AI grids, and no real future for Palestinians.

Minneapolis

Local Minneapolis news is covering the business shutdown that occurred yesterday including an incredible list of businesses that have publicly joined the effort. Many of these places “closed” for economic activity/business Friday but where still opening their doors for ICE Watch observers and those performing mutual aid to warm up, use the bathroom, etc. Solidarity in action, look for the helpers, fuck yeah.

"There are many places that are already shutting down or will need to because their team members are terrified to leave their home, or they have already been taken and shipped off. For this to be effective, we need the people who aren't living it day to day to feel it."

My goal today is to warn you that the U.S. has already been seized by the same camp dynamic. It’s not that I’m trying to tell you that bad things are coming, and you have to look out for them. What I’m saying is that the camps have already taken root and are on a fast-track to get exponentially worse. We’re already deep inside the process.

Yet there is power in that knowledge, because in some big ways, we can know what will happen next. We have models for how other societies have moved out of our current perilous state. And we have a ton of tactics we can use to fight back against the expanding harm directed at all of us.

I’ll add right up front that nobody sane now thinks the answer to abuses at Dachau was to give the guards more training.

...

You can’t reform a concentration camp regime. You have to dismantle it and replace it. We have a thousand ways to do it. And most U.S. citizens—particularly white ones—have the freedom to act, for now, with far less risk than the many people currently targeted.

To put it another way, the vast majority of men are only willing to engage in public violence if they feel like the people around them will approve of — and reward them for — that violence.

ICE Watch works because it surrounds men seeking approval with people loudly expressing their disapproval. And the noise has the added benefit of drawing large crowds of bystanders who can quickly outnumber the ICE agents, who then have to decide if they want to escalate a situation or perhaps abandon their activity altogether.

“In retrospect, I would have done it again,” Alice told me. “Like, it was the most miserable day of my whole life. But I would do it again because I think that people need to know how evil ICE is and that this is happening, and that this isn't about putting murderers and rapists away. It's about racism, it's about Nazism, it's about fascism, and we need to do anything we can to stop it.”

There is no hell hot enough…

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions happen, these Dems must be held to account for allowing this to continue knowing everything we know at this point.

I wish that the good neighbors of the Twin Cities didn’t have to shine a light for the rest of us. I wish that there was no call to be answered. I wish their kids were in school and that none of them were locked up in Whipple and that they didn’t have to tend to each other’s wounds.

I wish they didn’t have to, but they are. And because they are, the rest of us are dreaming more expansively. That too is how Overton Windows work. It isn’t just about moving them leftward, but cracking them open, showing each other, through acts of collective bravery, the full landscape of what we might build.