How to Support Minnesota

Dear Organizers:  

Minnesota is currently under siege from the federal government in a lawless, militarized ICE operation that is daily violating the constitutional rights of citizens and residents of our state. The Trump Administration has also sought to freeze Minnesota’s childcare, healthcare, food assistance, and small-business loan funding, and has used the Department of Justice to investigate our Governor, Tim Walz; and the Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey for “obstruction” of federal operations on the ground. 

The surge of ICE agents and CBP [US Customs and Border Protection] is the largest to have happened in the country, with over 4,000 federal agents on the ground in a 3.5 million Metro region. For context, ICE had 800 agents on the ground in Chicago, which is 9 million people. That means there is no escaping them. A drive to the store? ICE. Walking your kid to school? ICE. Trying to go to Walgreens? ICE. They have gone door to door. They stake out our schools. They have tried to invade our daycares. They hover around bus stops. They stage in Target and Home Depots. They have set up checkpoints on interstates to ask for identification. 

And what is ICE’s operational strategy in Minnesota? Racial profiling mixed with snatch-and-grabs. Abductions. In the beginning, it was faster than you can even blink (now we know how to bog them down). Standing at a bus stop, they [ICE agents] roll up, they attack someone, shove them in a car, and drive off. They rove around in big SUVs, looking for immigrants to abduct. And for anyone who deigns to ask a question, [or] demand their rights be respected, they inflict verbal and physical abuse along with tear gas and, in many cases, detainment at Whipple Federal Building at the Minneapolis Airport. Any person can be, at any time, pulled over by car and asked for identification or “papers.” If you do not comply, they have broken car windows, dragged people out, and detained them. They have followed people home, staked out particular residents they feel are opposed to them, and attempted to bully and threaten them, in some cases, with lethal violence. For one legal observer, they recently said to her, after they broke the windows of her car and abducted her, that she was “making bad decisions” like “that lesbian bitch.” Patty O’Keefe. Look up her story.

This is a test. They seek to subjugate an American state that dares to oppose the vision, the worldview, the agenda of the MAGA Regime. And, if they are successful here, this will be the strategy for other states around the country. 

But, the people of Minnesota are rising to the occasion. On defense, Minnesotans have built an extraordinary network of legal observers and neighborhood/school teams that respond immediately and effectively to any ICE Operation in the Metro area. Mutual aid, legal defense, and support for immigrant families are vast and extremely well-organized. A broad-based protest movement is activated and acting with discipline and clarity about not being used by the Trump Admin to be “bait” for further repression.

Here is our website that has toolkits for organizing and explains the Week of Action, our common demands, and tools for organizing.

Now, the offense is being launched, and we could use your help.

Labor, Faith, and Community organizations; immigrant rights organizations; and movement organizations such as Indivisible, Sunrise, and Women’s March are calling for a national week of action, culminating on January 23. In Minnesota, we are calling for No Work, No School, No Shopping, a day of direct action, non-violent non-cooperation, and a mass march through Downtown Minneapolis. We have 120+ labor unions, community organizations, small businesses and communities of faith endorsing our ICE OUT: A Day of Truth And Freedom.  Leading up to that day, we will be having direct action on major companies such as Target, Enterprise, Home Depot, and Delta. And then we will stage a direct, non-violent action on January 23rd. 

WHAT WE ASK OF YOU:

1. Our companies are your companies

Our companies are the same companies that have been silent, complicit in the face of MAGA. We need a national 4th Amendment campaign to demand that corporations in America speak out to Congress to pull back ICE, protect the rights of small businesses and human beings, and defect from the Trump regime and agenda. They should call Congress. They should call Trump. They should use their power to protect themselves, their workers and the people who live in America. Your organizations could stage direct actions on Target stores, Enterprise (they rent cars to ICE), Home Depot. 

2. Congress

Our Congress is not playing its appropriate constitutional role in checking the executive branch—to say the least. We want Congress to step in. Democrats should stage a showdown over the upcoming DHS funding. ICE should not be funded until further notice. Obviously, those of us who have faced them on the ground understand that ICE should be completely dismantled. In the meantime, we can ask for investigations, suspension of funding pending investigation, pending Supreme Court rulings, etc. Your organizations can call, meet with, and do direct actions on your Congresspeople. For Dems, you should tell them to go to the wall. For Rs, hold them accountable for sitting back while masked, armed, domestic militia is harrassing, abusing and violating the constitutional rights of Americans. 

3. Join us on Jan 23

Host a march, a vigil, a student walk-out, whatever works for you, in solidarity with Minnesota and for all Americans. 

4. For people of faith: We are calling for a Day of Prayer and Fasting.

• The 23rd will start with a prayer service being hosted by Faith in Action at 8:30am CT. We will close the day with a prayer service in North Minneapolis at 7pm. 
• This will be a national call to prayer and an invitation to take a day to suspend the grind of everyday life to lament, mourn, honor human life, and call into focus the gravity of what is unfolding for human beings, families, and our common life as Americans. It’s that serious. 

Here is a social media toolkit: This has graphics for social media. Feel free to download, use, make your own. 

In closing:

I have learned as much or more about organizing in the past 10 days as I have learned in the past 10 years. I have learned that people will take great, great risks to defend themselves, their neighbors and one another. I have learned that our job as “architects” is to build the larger containers for people to act and, when the moment calls for it, they absolutely will. I have learned so much about courage in the face of great fear, real threat and extreme uncertainty. 

And I have learned they cannot win. They definitely will never take Minnesota. We are one of the free states, and they know it. Because too many people know what freedom is and know when someone is trying to subjugate them, and they will fight back—with mom patrols, with food banks, with underground ride systems, with whistles and posterboard signs and iPhones. And even when they murdered someone in the middle of the street just a few blocks from where George Floyd was murdered, the movement surged, more defenders, more legal observers, more drivers, more neighborhood patrols emerged. Undaunted and furious, people have flooded city council and county board meetings, called their congresspeople, and demanded action. For those of you who know City politics, there is even a temporary truce between the anarchists and the cops. We all fucking hate ICE. Popular front is a theory until you see it. 

If you have questions, let me know. Many of the national movement partners are also going to be sharing materials and calling for days of action on Jan 23rd—please join us. 

Sincerely, 

Doran Schrantz

Minnesotan

Featured image: Kimmie Dearest