URGENT: Update from the Front Lines in Minneapolis

A friend provides details on how the resistance is organized and winning

My Fellow Democracy Defenders,

Minneapolis is fighting fascism with all its might. One of my dear friends has been organizing the resistance against Trump’s Gestapo. She sent a long letter to update us and give us hope. I have never paywalled a post before, but will do it today to protect him and her comrades.

Writing to you from Minneapolis with a message of both sadness and hope….

First, the national news has covered the headlines pretty well over the past couple weeks, and if you go down the Reddit or Instagram rabbit hole you can find lots of first-person footage that describes the illegal brutality and terror being enacted upon our community. What is impossible to convey is that it’s so much worse than what you see via social media. The media simply can’t tell the story of the hundreds of unmarked SUVs rolling around the metro on a daily basis, beating and kidnapping women, children, elderly, and citizens alike.

Every day, a dozen or more cars are left idling with doors open and smashed windows in subzero temps. Flashbangs are routinely being thrown into homes where no warrant exists, often times traumatizing families inside. Parents now instinctively know to shout the names of their children and school while being disappeared, hoping a bystander will go to that school to make sure the child isn’t left unattended for days at a time not knowing where their parent went. Chemical weapons are being used on peaceful bystanders to the point where we don’t even report it anymore. The same with automatic weapons being unholstered and pointed between the eyeballs of US citizens.

Schools with high immigrant populations have mostly closed, and children of color in predominantly white districts don’t come to school anymore. Where school is taking place, parents form human chains at pickup and drop-off—both to look for ICE activity and subsequently ensure they are taken due to “obstructing federal officers” instead of the children. The first death in ICE custody (Victor Manuel Diaz) has been recorded due to the brutality of the beatings during the arrest and lack of subsequent medical care, and there are more to come. Right now it’s chaos that is akin to the suspension of habeas corpus. Lawyers can’t get to their clients, and oftentimes ICE can’t find them.

Second, our learning thus far—should this come to your city at some point in the future—is that no one is coming to save you or your city. This realization was rock bottom for our city through this whole ordeal. Folks smarter than me can probably explain why, but my cheap-seats view is that state and local officials are prohibited by law from interfering with legal federal enforcement activities, and the current game of illegal chicken is deliberately designed to incite and escalate “blue on blue” violence as a pretext for martial law. So far, I believe our community understands the game and is denying victory through non-violent means, lawsuits, etc. In the meantime, we are left to grind it out in the streets.

Third, and most importantly, we are winning. Our rage has turned to resolve, and we are getting stronger each day. This story is equally under-reported outside the headlines about Walz, the National Guard, or ACLU lawsuits. We have thousands of people who have completed constitutional observer training in the past week, and the numbers grow with each day. We have thousands more average citizens who patrol the streets coordinating anti-ICE intel in real time, and without fail. Each time these goons step out of their cars, they are met with non-violent rage like I have never seen. They can no longer freely operate in densely populated neighborhoods due to the dozens of people who come out of the woodwork to tell them, in very impolite terms, they are not welcome in our city.

Every single person I know (no joke) is donating food, delivering groceries, contributing to GoFundMes, offering pro-bono legal services, constitutional observation, etc. People organize around schools and churches, their favorite restaurants—heck, even men’s league hockey teams. The administration has led us to believe this surge has no end in sight, and we are ready for it. We are rapidly organizing and looking out for each other, knowing that we can and will outlast this evil. And so, despite perhaps the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my years on earth, I offer a message of hope—not because I am toxically positive, but because each day I get to see ordinary people do extraordinary things, and because, like me, they believe our community will prevail.

Lastly, feel free to share my thoughts above with anyone curious what is happening, and if you feel compelled to help in some way, reach out to someone you know who has ties to Minnesota and tell them they are not alone.