Minneapolis Strong: The Twin Cities Say ICE Out!

During particularly strange times in which it’s become somehow acceptable for masked secret federal police to execute people in the streets of an American city, I find inspiration in the expressions of solidarity. I also find inspiration in places full of great people. One of those places is the city of Minneapolis, irrespective of whatever propaganda Fox News is spreading on any given day.

Tens of thousands of protesters showed up to march through subzero temperatures on Saturday, demanding an end to the terror ICE has imposed on the city in the pursuit of fulfilling Donald Trump’s campaign promise to launch the largest deportation effort in American history. This promise has been stymied by the immigration enforcement agency’s inability to find qualified recruits— or respect the rule of law.

You may recall that, several thousand years ago, in 2020, I had convinced Matterport to throw me a couple of dollars to create virtual tours of spaces of small businesses. The idea was to highlight a vibrant local economy during a time when a lot of people weren’t interacting a whole lot in human form.

We know that during COVID, the rich got a lot richer, and a lot of working people struggled (thanks, tax code!). This eventually took me to the Twin Cities, and I was able to scan some small businesses ranging from Aki’s Bread Haus to the Somali-owned Afro Deli.

The responses I got from business owners ranged from mild confusion (Aki’s) to “not quite sure I get it, but sure!” (Eclipse Records in St. Paul) to positivity combined with a bunch of awesome food (Afro Deli).

I had a lot of fun with the Matterport project. I also learned a lot. I had determined that I was going to pay off the cost of the equipment and make enough money to live while finishing my degree, which required a level of sales hustle, whether to try and sell scans or to try and get people to let me scan their space gratis. This was exhausting.

It was also confusing to understand why people wouldn’t want free marketing for their business, but the question of how Matterport is a technology that could never really figure out what it was meant for, is perhaps a story for another day.

The important part of the experience for me was being able to make random new connections with business owners in a pair of cities I have for a long time known and loved, during the particularly weird conditions of the COVID pandemic.

I’m thinking about that a lot now.

I’m thinking about Abdirahman at the Afro Deli, who was so jazzed about the project, and who generously fed me as I was climbing around buildings for days with bunch of equipment.

I’m thinking about Roger Cummings, Chief Cultural Producer at JXTA Arts in North Minneapolis, with whom I got to hang out for the better part of a day and tour their charming erstwhile facilities but also their spectacular new ones as they work to build both community and make art.

I’m thinking about my college friend Kate, who lives in South Minneapolis and has had a front row seat to the good, the bad, and the ugly in the city over the past several years. I’m thinking about Brady, my college roommate who grew up in an inner suburb and showed me a vast menagerie of dive bar venues for guitar rock, record stores trafficking in vinyl, and weird hipster gems. I’m thinking about the first person who introduced me to the Twin Cities many years ago and took me around to charming vintage clothing stores, Pizza Luce, and related esoteric lore about local economy and culture.

I’m thinking about Renee Good, who was murdered by one of Trump’s nativist Gestapo goons, a guy who brought his imperial war from the Middle East back to a prosperous city, only to violate agency policy and end the life of a mother. Especially looking at this as a new dad, I am thinking about the horrifying possibility of any child, not least of all my own, facing the reality of a parent not coming to pick them up from school because they were murdered by their own government, only to have that same government immediately and publicly vilify them after their death.

I’m thinking about Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse for the VA, who was also murdered by ICE. The narrative from DHS and the White House has already been that this was a murderous thug who came to the protest to try and murder federal agents. There is, to be clear, zero evidence to back this up. There’s even a video floating around showing Pretti delivering an impromptu eulogy for a veteran who died in the hospital. Holding a cell phone at a protest and standing on the sidelines shortly before being charged by a bunch of white supremacist goons doesn’t exactly suggest that the victim was much of a terrorist.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose a friend or a partner only to have them be vilified by the State. Or to see the State’s loyal army of white supremacists, nativists, and authoritarians gleefully provide a multi-million dollar funding stream to pay reparations to the killer.

I’m also thinking about some of my closest friends from the Twin Cities,  most of whom I met through Grinnell College, many of whom are really struggling with what’s been going on. Minnesota showed up to march in solidarity in spite of subzero temperatures, while protests have taken place in other cities, too– to say that we are tired of these acts of state terrorism against our communities as they distract from the president being a presumed child rapist and dismantling the institutions and alliances that have made this country as prosperous as it is today.

And we’re going to continue to show solidarity with Minneapolis and beyond. Because this is the way a civil society becomes a barbaric one. And we can’t allow the slide in that direction to continue. We do not make America great by vilifying refugees or immigrants. We do not make it great by embracing punishment, revanchism, or state violence as solutions. We make it great through expressions of solidarity with people who produce the things of value in this country– and those people are not tech oligarchs or pundits, but rather mothers, nurses, families, artists, teachers, and workers.

We’re going to continue that. And I’ll be thinking of all my people in the Twin Cities and beyond as we do.