Minnesotan Resilience w/ Doran Schrantz

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: Welcome to Block and Build a podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host of the publisher of Convergence, Cayden Mak. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the impacts of rising authoritarianism. While building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win this week on the show, we’re going back to Minnesota.

[00:00:26] Mainstream media may have moved on, but we are revisiting the amazing organizing efforts to peacefully block Trump’s assault, the mistake these past few months that you may have missed, and examining the ways that ICE and CBP are updating their tactics in response to that organizing, I’m joined by Minnesota based organizer and the former Chair of Faith in Minnesota Action Pack Doran, to discuss these trends and conditions on the ground in the Twin Cities.

[00:00:47] But first, these headlines. Most of us woke up on Saturday morning to the news that the US attacked Iran again, of course, with no congressional oversight. This is in spite of the fact that negotiators for Iran were starting to make concessions in talks last week, in addition to hitting several military targets, this first round of American and Israeli missiles also hit a girl’s school in southern Iran killing at least 165 and injuring nearly 100 more.

[00:01:13] I wish I had something punchy to say about this, but I just have anguish. Iran retaliated by attacking largely US and Israeli targets in the region, and Israel responded with strikes on Lebanon. The threat of this violence spiraling outward is pretty dire. And despite Secretary of War, Pete Seth’s claim that, and I quote, we didn’t start this fight, we really fucking did.

[00:01:34] Speaking of Vol Pete, last week’s polling indicates that something like six in 10 Americans say they disapprove of military action in Iran. So he’s been working overtime to try and retroactively make the case for these attacks. This foul work is being aided and abed by both the media, which has switched into breathless war coverage mode, and many members of Congress who, in spite of this excursion’s unpopularity, are happy to point out that the Iranian regime is anti-democratic and therefore inter American intervention is good actually.

[00:02:02] All this feels a little like a shitty remake of a movie from 25 years ago. You are not alone, except this time they’re not even bothering to be consistent in their reasoning. Trump has jumped between claims of establishing democracy, ending a nuclear program, one that he’s previously claimed to have destroyed.

[00:02:18] Protecting Americans. They’re really just spitballing reasons and hoping that one of them is gonna stick in the minds of overwhelmed Americans. Trump officials are simultaneously claiming that the war will take a few days and isn’t about overthrowing the Iranian government. While Trump now claims it may last weeks and is definitely about overthrowing their government, meanwhile, three American F 15 fighter jets were shot down by Fred Fire.

[00:02:41] All the pilots ejected and no one was killed in the incident, but. It’s worth noting these jets cost about $60 million each, so that’s about $180 million, which is a little bit less than it would take to wipe out the entirety of public school lunch debt in the entire United States, which again, shouldn’t exist, especially in a country that can spend billions of dollars on a war that most of its people don’t even want.

[00:03:04] The other frankly weird story related to this that I wanna touch on is the fact that Anthropics text, extruding machine clawed crashed on Monday morning due to surging demand. This is because there are a bunch of people who’ve been praising Anthropic, CEO for saying that he doesn’t want his tools used for actual military strikes as if Anthropic doesn’t already have a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense that they signed last summer, and as if we didn’t hear all kinds of smoke about the military using Claude as part of the attack on Venezuela earlier this year.

[00:03:36] I just wanna take a second to disabuse us of the notion that any of these AI firms are on the side of humanity. The reality is that they do not have a consumer facing business model that actually works as a result aided by our jingoistic political environment. They’ve opened the door to the biggest non-consumer market there is.

[00:03:53] Quote unquote, defense. If you have a contract with the military or with Homeland Security or whatever, you are in the business of dealing death. You are making money off the Trump administration’s white Christian nationalist agenda and drawing an arbitrary line in the sand about quote unquote combat operations is dishonest hair splitting at a moment when we need to refuse this fascist death cult.

[00:04:17] Sound on Tape: Hey everybody. This is Maurice Mitchell, national Director of The Working Families Party. I read and give to Convergence because it has become a home for me to engage in critical analysis, find practical advice for organizing and strategy and inspiration in the belief that a better world is not only possible.

[00:04:37] We can build it to make either a one-time donation or become a sustaining member. Visit convergence mag.com/donate. You can find a direct link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.

[00:04:55] Cayden Mak: I find that unsettling how quickly mainstream media headlines and narratives moved on from Trump and DH S’s, so-called Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. The removal of Greg Bino and the quote unquote drawdown was a concerted attempt to force our attention to move along. In spite of the fact that there are still a disproportionate number of agents on the ground in the state, there are some obvious other reasons why we can’t just move on.

[00:05:18] This operation yielded two highly visible extrajudicial murders of peaceful American protestors by the state. No one was held accountable. Communities are still grieving the loss of Renee Goode and Alex Preti, as well as the kidnapping and disappearance of thousands of their neighbors by DHS. The operation brought us, perhaps the closest its country has come to Civil War since the last one ended, but the administration has tried to leverage the nature of the attention economy to force us to dust off our feet and move on like it never happened.

[00:05:46] Internally at Convergence, we think a lot about the importance of being slow media, as well as preserving historic and institutional memory as a counterweight to the hypernormalization of this dizzying MAGA brand of fascism, the administration pushes to normalize the violence being visited upon communities all over the country.

[00:06:03] We continue to see stories of abuse and overreach from DHS, which aren’t making it above the fold in the mainstream press. Like the story of neural Amin Shah Aam, a nearly blind Rohingya refugee who lived in Buffalo, who spoke almost no English, and he was dropped off by border patrol agents five miles away from his home and was found dead five days later, presumably after wandering the freezing city alone.

[00:06:26] So we’re going back to Minnesota as the subject of this episode because Minnesota still has lessons for us. I was joined last week by longtime Minnesota organizer and the former executive director of Faith in Minnesota Action Pack Doran. We discussed what she and her neighbors have experienced and continue to experience from Trump’s DHS invasion in their state, including some crucial warnings and lessons for all of us.

[00:06:48] Have a listen,

[00:06:55] do Thank you so much for making the time to talk to me today. 

[00:06:58] Doran Schrantz: You’re welcome. I’m really happy to be here. 

[00:07:01] Cayden Mak: I mean, one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you at this juncture is it really seems like the administration and DHS, and in a lot of ways this is enabled by mainstream and corporate media, that they can just kind of paper over what has been happening.

[00:07:15] In Minnesota and in the Twin Cities over the past several months by getting rid of Greg Bino, maybe like relocating some officers and act like nothing happened. But what are things on the ground like right now, um, in Minneapolis? 

[00:07:30] Doran Schrantz: Um, so your point is, is well taken in the attention economy and in the cycles, you know, um, Minnesota has moved out of the kind of center of the tension economy and.

[00:07:44] Mainstream media cycle. So here’s what we can gather so far, and I just wanna, um, name explicitly that the lack of transparency of DHS writ large and whether, how many people they’re detaining, how many people are being deported, who’s in Texas, who’s in the Whipple building in Minnesota. I mean, it’s just like, this is overall a story of a fundamentally like secretive agency that’s operating domestically.

[00:08:11] E, every piece of data that we have about what is currently happening has to do with like personal witness and organizing and sort of gathering ba basically the sort of system of our own citizen data collection and. Essentially our own like counter surveillance of uh, DHS, how they’re operating. So it’s hard to know for sure, and I guess it’s secretive.

[00:08:35] And then the second thing you would say is that, I don’t know, when they don’t lie. It’s basically trying to relate to a federal agency that’s fundamentally non-transparent and lies. That being said, what we can see from the ground and, and what I’m gonna report on is specifically there are, um, the rapid response networks, uh, people who are doing legal observing.

[00:08:58] Uh, there is a guy named Nick Benson who basically, uh, watches at the airport every flight that leaves out of Signature Aviation. There is online citizen ice witness maps. So we kind of put those pieces together along with reporting to say what’s happened. So here’s what I, here, here’s what the picture looks like.

[00:09:18] They got rid of Eno Homan did. Do two things. It seems. One is there are absolutely less officers on the ground, but there are still, we get think five, 500 to 600 officers, uh, operating on the ground. To give you some perspective about that, presurg levels would actually mean 150 ICE agents for the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

[00:09:47] So right now we have 500 ISA agents operating pretty in a consolidated way in Southern, um, basically the suburbs of the metro and perfects of Southern Minnesota. What it looks like is kind of concentrated activity in particular places. So it’s not done. So there’s that. And then secondly, there are less deportations.

[00:10:08] So we see less people being flown out of the Minneapolis airport, shackled people that have been counted literally by citizen data collector. And we however, saw an increase in detainments of legal observers. 

[00:10:24] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:10:25] Doran Schrantz: And. I would argue that one of the sort of massively under-reported stories that has very significant implications for the country is the amount of surveillance that’s going, domestic surveillance that is happening.

[00:10:40] There are lots of reports of legal observers, citizens being chronically surveilled. By ICE officers or FBI agents or people in weird dark cars. It’s like an X-Files episode. 

[00:10:57] Cayden Mak: Honestly, really scary. I mean, it’s, oh, 

[00:10:59] Doran Schrantz: it’s really scary. 

[00:11:01] Cayden Mak: It’s really, really scary. It does sound like. Yeah, an XFiles episode over like some comic book shit, like, it’s very weird.

[00:11:09] Doran Schrantz: Yes, it’s very XFiles. There are like people in dark cars and we don’t know why they’re staking out a particular house. Like in fact, one of the, I won’t like, it’s, it’s a little complicated right now. Upset culture in Minnesota is very high. So I 

[00:11:24] Cayden Mak: imagine, I mean, I imagine these are also part of the point of doing this kind of tailing of observers and activists is to make people scared and, and fight each other.

[00:11:34] Doran Schrantz: Yes, and, and then if another under-reported story, I mean obviously a lot of, there was a lot of reporting on Don Lemon being arrested, but sure. There were actually 39 charges that Pam Bondy flew to town to do this kind of performative charging of 22 people who, I don’t even know that they were all legal observers, but they were people who had been previously detained and released with no charges.

[00:12:04] And then sort of performatively arrested them all along with Don Lemon Levy Pounds, Georgia Fords like that. So there was a total, I think we’ve counted, there was a total of kind of 39 performative charges. Most of those people, the court cases, like they don’t have much of a court case, which is a little bit of pattern of this entire experience.

[00:12:26] It’s like law fair as propaganda, as opposed totally to we think we’re actually gonna win in court and the law fair as propaganda. Strategy is absolutely about, I mean, there’s like no other way to make sense of it other than both trying to capture a media cycle, spread a message, but also intimidation and repression.

[00:12:45] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:12:46] Doran Schrantz: So if you have both the law, you have the kind of like, it’s like if you look at all the pieces, it’s like law fairs. It’s like all the parts of the federal government, government that are being weaponized for a strategy from the DOJ to the FBI to DHS, and then. I don’t know what other word to put on this.

[00:13:05] It’s not the government, but it’s kind of like the MAGA propaganda machine. 

[00:13:08] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:13:09] Doran Schrantz: So you have all those things operating at once to create an assault on the first, fourth, and probably 10th amendment of Constitution of the United States, you know? For three months. Those built basic kind of constitutional rights and freedoms are essentially suspended.

[00:13:30] Then the surveillance question, I feel like some of this is trickling out, like there’s been coverage in Wired, there’s been coverage in various places about how Palantir facial recognition. 

[00:13:40] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:13:41] Doran Schrantz: Lots of quotes and recordings of ice agents taking pictures of legal observers. The amount of staking, like sitting out in front of people’s houses.

[00:13:50] Um, the chair of the school board in Columbia Heights, which is where Liam Ramos was taken from, it was kind of like this big media firestorm. She has ice agents, the chair of the school board has ice agents sitting in front of her house three times a week. Just staking her out. 

[00:14:06] Cayden Mak: Yeah, 

[00:14:07] Doran Schrantz: because she dissented.

[00:14:09] Cayden Mak: Yeah. And, and like, how else are we supposed to understand that? But just straight up intimidation. 

[00:14:14] Doran Schrantz: It’s intimidation and repression. Yeah, and I think we have yet to see or fully understand the scope of what is happening inside DHS when it comes to list making. 

[00:14:27] Sound on Tape: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:28] Doran Schrantz: Building this domestic terrorist list.

[00:14:31] There’s many, many Minnesotans who are reporting that they have lost their TSA pre-check and global entry. Who were legal observers or had some kind of encounter with an ICE officer. So there’s, it’s like we don’t know for sure due to the lack of transparency, and we don’t, we don’t know. But what we know is, uh, federal agents took pictures of people’s cars, took pictures of people’s faces, said that they were being put on a list.

[00:14:55] We know that human being. Have been surveilled, staked out, had like threatening phone calls, ice officers coming to their homes and looking through their windows. And then Homan himself has multiple times said the thing that we’re gonna do here is punish the agitators. And then the other thing I’m kind of intrigued about in a more intellectual sense and horrified as a person, I really believe that they had a framework in January and February, especially as they began to encounter a resistance.

[00:15:27] So their, their methodology and strategy was counterinsurgency. 

[00:15:31] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:15:31] Doran Schrantz: So they were treating up a sort of population, essentially. They were, they, they, they, they began to see, regardless of their messaging, that they had population-wide resistance to their presence. And that that population wide resistance also had an organized component.

[00:15:52] Mm-hmm. So therefore, what this is, is a hostile population. That is a counterinsurgency and we have to use urban warfare. We have to use surveillance. We have to treat these people essentially as like enemy combatants. And there’s several quotes in various places that you can see that indicate. I shouldn’t say, I know that for sure.

[00:16:12] That indicate that that’s the framework that DHS was using for Minnesota. 

[00:16:17] Cayden Mak: Sure. 

[00:16:18] Doran Schrantz: Which explains a lot. 

[00:16:18] Cayden Mak: Well, I mean, to that point I think that like a lot of the movement media and a lot of the independent press has really made, made it very clear that a lot of the work that organizations like Faith in Minnesota, like Isaiah, like state, like all of these community organizations that have been working to build governing power, progressive governing power in Minnesota is like an essential element in the sort of like scaffolding.

[00:16:48] That has like allowed this like community mobilization to happen. Are like organizations also seeing some of this direct repression? Like it seems like there’s a lot of focus on Yeah. Like individuals on individuals. Yeah, 

[00:17:02] Doran Schrantz: I know. Which there’s a little bit of a pattern of. I mean, I have, I’m not like, um, exhaustively familiar with like sort of what are the different boundaries that they’ve tested in different court cases to try to set precedent for this domestic terrorism stuff.

[00:17:17] There’s been some targeting of organizations like in Texas, but what I noticed in this case is that it felt more like they were targeting individuals. Although Unidos, Minnesota, and I think one other organization got an I nine thing. I don’t totally understand that. It’s, it’s called an I nine audit from the IRS, and then they had to go deliver their paperwork to Whipple in person.

[00:17:44] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:17:45] Doran Schrantz: So there was a little bit of organizational targeting, but not a ton. It was mostly, it’s been mostly individuals. And then the other intriguing thing is that a lot of the legal observers report being interrogated when they were detained. 

[00:18:02] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:18:03] Doran Schrantz: So legal observers, I, I’ll be interested to figure out if we can finally get the hard numbers.

[00:18:09] There were of unlawful detainments at Whipple. Whipple is the federal building that’s near the airport and it was essentially the central staging operation and the detention center for their operation. And Whipple. There was a US citizens portion of Whipple and people report. When they were detained, hours at a time, no access to a lawyer and some interrogation.

[00:18:34] Mm. And the questions that they were being asked had to do with who else are you connected to? Who’s organizing this? And also, we don’t know how to find the undocumented people. Could you help us? 

[00:18:47] Cayden Mak: But so it seems, it seems like they are, they are really interested in building kind of interpersonal networks.

[00:18:52] Doran Schrantz: Maybe it’s easier, the legal tools maybe are easier to go after individuals than organizations. That’s one theory I have. 

[00:19:01] Cayden Mak: Or, or it’s like a, I think that in a lot of ways, after Renee Goode was murdered, there was sort of this like, just like enormous up swelling of. Like engagement that they were like, oh, this is perhaps, you know, maybe this is giving them too much credit, but like this is something that is like, uh, evolving out of the like, scope of any one organization or even a network of organizations.

[00:19:26] Doran Schrantz: I mean, that’s true. 

[00:19:28] Cayden Mak: Yeah, because that’s what was happening, right? Like that’s, 

[00:19:31] Doran Schrantz: I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re incompetent and don’t really understand the scaffolding of what they were up against. Yeah. Or there are legal tools that the legal, that you have a better case in court going after individuals for a obstruction.

[00:19:47] So like there’s a bunch of different ways that you could charge people. So one is this person is obstructing a law enforcement operation interfering, obstructing. That’s the one that the ICE agents always quote. The other one is potentially a RICO charge. So there could be conspiracy 

[00:20:03] Sound on Tape: because there was a lot of conversations 

[00:20:04] Cayden Mak: with lawyers 

[00:20:05] Doran Schrantz: and a lot of conversations like sort of thinking about what the potential consequences are and risk management.

[00:20:12] Cayden Mak: Well, and, and when we look at like Stop Cop City in Atlanta as maybe a template Exactly for this. Like this is not exactly, this is not wild speculation. This is like a playbook, right? Like no, 

[00:20:22] Doran Schrantz: there’s the Atlanta story and then there’s this crazy, um, Texas story where there was a protest outside. 

[00:20:28] Cayden Mak: Yeah, we talked about this last week.

[00:20:30] The, 

[00:20:30] Doran Schrantz: yeah. Okay, got it. Yeah. 

[00:20:31] Cayden Mak: Prairieland 19. Yeah. 

[00:20:32] Doran Schrantz: Yeah, exactly. The Prairieland 19. I don’t think they have much of a case in Minnesota at all. 

[00:20:38] Cayden Mak: Yeah, it doesn’t, I mean, I, I cannot imagine that this is going 

[00:20:42] Doran Schrantz: anywhere. No. Everybody was very clear about the legal boundaries. And what became, I think so effective about the movement was, um, it was not only nonviolent, like people have lifted that up a lot, but it was also, I think when the exercising of a constitutional right became a political act in and of itself.

[00:21:03] And became the contested terrain. So can you stand on a corner and watch for ice and record them when they operate or not? Can you, I mean, like that is the first amendment right? It’s absolutely protected, and they are doing everything they can to criminalize being watched. So being watched, criminalized, protest, criminalized exercising of the First Amendment, which is where that fight was happening.

[00:21:30] But then the other place, fight that was happening, sort of this contest, the way I put is like a struggle over like, is this a right? 

[00:21:36] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:21:37] Doran Schrantz: Was the fourth Amendment a huge part of what was going on on a day-to-day basis? Is, can you enter this building? 

[00:21:43] Sound on Tape: Mm. 

[00:21:43] Doran Schrantz: And most of the small businesses, hotels, like a lot of the contest that was going on and the organizing was educating people about their Fourth Amendment rights.

[00:21:53] You do not have to let somebody in if they don’t have a warrant. And a lot of what happened is that they would come in anyway and the only way to get them out was a kind of direct confrontation. Do you have a warrant? Do you have a warrant? Do you have a warrant? You get out, this is my property. So that was happening in restaurants, small businesses.

[00:22:13] There was contests over parking lots. Can they stage on a piece of private property? And so a lot of what was going on, I think. In our exercise, like the sort of foundation of the exercising of the movement, or quote unquote, the resistance was nonviolent and a commitment that we are gonna exercise the rights that we have.

[00:22:37] And if you try to criminalize the First Amendment or the fourth Amendment, it puts them on not great ground. 

[00:22:43] Cayden Mak: Both, both legally and, and in public opinion. Like, yeah, narratively, it looks real bad. 

[00:22:49] Doran Schrantz: It looks really bad. Like, and I, it was kind of funny, I was just talking to somebody who doesn’t live here and I was like, you know, regular people in Minnesota have kind of embraced the Constitution talking about these fundamental freedoms.

[00:23:04] And that what happened in Minnesota was a suspension was an attempt to, through violence, surveillance and law fairs, propaganda to suspend the constitutional, civil and human rights of American citizens and residents. 

[00:23:19] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:23:20] Doran Schrantz: And anyone who lives here for two months. 

[00:23:23] Cayden Mak: This is, I think this is also like an interesting set of observations because it’s like.

[00:23:29] The detention, the kidnapping of non-citizens is still occurring. And there’s this, there is this escalation that I hear you describing against people who are not necessarily the like prime targets of like homeland security for like deportation and detention, but that there’s like an opening of kind of a new population that they’re interested in.

[00:23:52] Here is like, 

[00:23:54] Doran Schrantz: I think there were three things going on. So the first thing that I think is really important for people who are not on the ground to understand is that this was not a law enforcement operation. 

[00:24:05] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:24:06] Doran Schrantz: What I mean by that concretely, it just takes a minute. So you and I, I’m assuming, disagree with the policy that would say people who have orders of deportation, even if they’ve lived here a really long time, or people.

[00:24:25] Who have some crime should be subject to expensive, aggressive, lethal detainment and detention and deportation. That is militarized, 

[00:24:39] Cayden Mak: right? 

[00:24:39] Doran Schrantz: We’re against that. If that were the policy, the thing that’s so shocking about what happened in Minnesota is it was not even that. So what I mean is most of the pictures that you, a lot of the pictures that you saw of detainments.

[00:24:55] Were random. There was no law enforcement paradigm. 

[00:24:59] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:24:59] Doran Schrantz: Meaning we have a list of people and then we are doing enforcement to go find those people, to detain them and deport them. It was more roving around doing racial profiling. So many, I think it’s now up to 2,500 court cases where that person was literally unlawfully detained.

[00:25:21] They are that what they’re, they’re they’re guilty of is being brown or black and being on the street. 

[00:25:25] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:26] Doran Schrantz: That is not law enforcement. That’s not immigration enforcement. 

[00:25:31] Cayden Mak: That’s racialized harassment is what it is. 

[00:25:34] Doran Schrantz: Racialized. Subjugation. 

[00:25:37] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:25:37] Doran Schrantz: That is state terror. 

[00:25:39] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:25:40] Doran Schrantz: So the best description of what happened in Minnesota is Masha Sen’s article in the New York Times, that that was state terror.

[00:25:47] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:48] Doran Schrantz: Now. Secondly, the things that they did target. This is like the part that is the mo. It’s just like mind numbing to me. So they did do some targeted enforcement. Some of that targeted enforcement was an experiment to say, can we arrest and deport to Texas very, very quickly? People who are lawful refugees and denaturalize them when we get them to Texas.

[00:26:10] Cayden Mak: This is, and this is specifically about targeting largely Somali and then also Southeast Asian communities, 

[00:26:15] Doran Schrantz: Somali, Eritrean. Uh, Hmong, uh, li because the, the, the problem that ICE had coming to Minnesota for a political stunt was that there are very few undocumented immigrants here. We’re a refugee settlement state, so most of the immigrants who live in Minnesota have status, but they have.

[00:26:40] Liminal status. So it’ll be like they have, they’re on the path to asylum or they are have a youth visa, or they are literally legally here, but they happen to be Eritrean and they have a refugee status. And so this thing called the Paris Program, uh, rounded up a hundred refugees. And sent them to Texas.

[00:27:04] So, uh, someone I know very well who’s in the movement had five. She’s Eritrean, so she had five of her family members picked up and ended up in Texas. They are legal residents of Minnesota, but what they were trying to do is get them to Texas, to friendlier courts to say, can we take a, can we actually strip them of their legal status?

[00:27:23] That is a Steven Miller project. Yeah. So that is ethnic cleansing. So it’s a mix of ethnic cleansing and. Racialized state terror. That was the operation in Minnesota. So the only way you can do that is if you suspend the constitutional order of the United States. 

[00:27:46] Cayden Mak: Straight up. Yeah, 

[00:27:47] Doran Schrantz: straight up. And then the third thing that happened is that anyone who resisted.

[00:27:55] Meaning you legally observed. You’re patrolling. You’re a teacher who tried to get the kids back in school when they like invaded the high school. You’re a pastor at a church when they’re like lurking around your parking lot and you say, you can’t be here, or I’m recording you, or I am not going to interfere, but I am going to record every aspect of that detainment that you’re doing in the middle of our fucking street.

[00:28:21] Those people then became subject to state violence. Tho those are the, those are like the stepping stones of the different kinds of people that got swept up in this or, or who were targets. So then if you’re a person who lives here, because the saturation was so high, meaning you have 3,500 agents in a city that you can get anywhere within 10 to 15 minutes, 800 agents were in Chicago with 9 million people.

[00:28:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. I think the, the density is, is kind of hard to, it’s 

[00:28:51] Doran Schrantz: high per capita. Per capita. 

[00:28:54] Cayden Mak: Yeah. The density is a little hard to wrap your brain around. 

[00:28:57] Doran Schrantz: You could not go to, you could not walk outside your house without seeing them. 

[00:29:01] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:29:02] Doran Schrantz: So anyway, the reason I’m laying out those things is the gravity of what happened that has the implications for every American, every resident, and every Ameri like citizen.

[00:29:15] You know, I’m using that word broadly. 

[00:29:16] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:29:18] Doran Schrantz: Is way beyond I think what has been fully absorbed, except by a few people. So I think it’s been, I think Marsha Gson absorbed it. I think Timothy Snyder absorbs it. I think. Interestingly, the bulwark is like very honest. 

[00:29:36] Cayden Mak: They like, they like the constitutional rights and I respect that about, you know, yeah.

[00:29:39] Doran Schrantz: They’re like, this is really bad. You know, like 

[00:29:42] Cayden Mak: this. That’s, that’s something useful for them to do right now, you know? 

[00:29:45] Doran Schrantz: Yeah. It’s, it’s, 

[00:29:46] Cayden Mak: there’s a role for them to play here. 

[00:29:47] Doran Schrantz: I, and I think the shock to the system, to the population in Minnesota where it’s like, wait, I can, my freedom of movement. My ability to walk on the street, my ability to drive from here to the grocery store, my ability to send my kids safely to school, my ability to feel safe at all in the envir where, where I could be subject to random violence and that there would be no accountability for that violence.

[00:30:17] Like there is no recourse at an experience that many Americans have not had, you know? Yeah. Especially white Americans and. It was a test of something like profoundly dangerous that I think were just. Starting to absorb and, and I, the worry I have about the media attention moving is not so much like, oh, it’s still bad in Minnesota.

[00:30:43] I think the worry I have is more do people comprehend the precedent that this sets? 

[00:30:50] Cayden Mak: Hmm. 

[00:30:51] Doran Schrantz: And how willing this administration is to abandon like all these boring words that mostly conservatives use. Rule of law, the constitutional order. 

[00:31:01] Cayden Mak: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. It, it feels like there’s something going on here that’s like, I don’t know, like you’re challenging something for me around our, even like our sort of like in intra movement discourse about this, that is like our sort of like dubiousness about like state power and policing has actually in some ways like.

[00:31:28] Not set us up well to like fully wrap our arms around the implications here. And I think that that’s like, that’s something that I’m gonna be sitting with beyond this conversation for sure. 

[00:31:39] Doran Schrantz: Yeah. I think Taha Nay Coates recently said something helpful about this. He said, what happened? What is happening with ICE and DHS is.

[00:31:49] Is not unprecedented. Meaning people in America have experienced state terror in various ways. Obviously the Confederate South, Jim Crow, George Floyd, you know, I mean it’s, or indigenous people. That’s not unprecedented. But this manifestation is new and I think applying familiar paradigms or familiar.

[00:32:17] Experiences can be helpful. Like, oh, this is like this, but I also think it can be blinding. 

[00:32:25] Cayden Mak: Sure. So applying those, applying those comparisons with care, 

[00:32:29] Doran Schrantz: it has to be substantive. The application, I mean, it has to be, we have to do it with care and with depth, you know? Yeah. Like this is not just like things I’ve seen before.

[00:32:39] It’s not, yeah. It’s a new form of using state terror and lawlessness. And just force to suspend the rights and freedoms of everybody in order to advance basically to, to. Ensure compliance of a population. 

[00:33:00] Cayden Mak: Yeah. ’cause that, that also feels really different than say like, you know, antebellum slave codes.

[00:33:07] Right. Which are like written into the structure of the law are specifically about controlling black people, enslaved people, and free black people where 

[00:33:16] Doran Schrantz: you go people and then, yeah. And the underground railroad, which is harboring, sheltering, and freeing people, like all of those are precedents for this.

[00:33:26] Cayden Mak: Sure. But there’s, there’s something, there’s something that is a shift is, is a shift about this and that. I mean, it also sounds like the shift is palpable in the way that people are like feeling through this moment too, locally. 

[00:33:38] Doran Schrantz: It certainly is here. The other thing that I’ve also been trying to communicate is the scale of the activation of people in Minnesota.

[00:33:48] Like I would bet 60 to 70% of people. In the Twin Cities in particular, were activated around some form of surviving, supporting, helping. Volunteering, protesting, legal, observing, organizing. You know, I mean, it was a civil society-wide mobilization, as if a hurricane, it was like bigger, bigger. It was bigger than George Floyd.

[00:34:24] It was bigger than COVID. And so the question is like why like the, you know, I think we might be asking that question for a long time, like what is the motivation? But I would probably put the motivation in two buckets. So one is like, has there been a case where a dominant ethnic group called white people that like did this much to protect and preserve multiracial democratic society in their place?

[00:34:50] That’s a great question. I don’t know. And secondly. So I think there was a drive, like a, like a, like a profound sense of violation that someone I live, work, and pray with is being targeted. Mm-hmm. Like this is my neighbor, which became the language of the movement. Defend and protect your neighbors is really deep.

[00:35:11] It’s almost pre politic. 

[00:35:13] Cayden Mak: Right. 

[00:35:13] Doran Schrantz: It’s not a political ideology. It is just like, wait, but that’s my guy. 

[00:35:17] Cayden Mak: Yeah, totally. It’s like, it’s like these are the kids, kids 

[00:35:19] Doran Schrantz: stay 

[00:35:19] Cayden Mak: with you. 

[00:35:19] Doran Schrantz: Kids just come to my school and take fricking kids. Like no. 

[00:35:23] Cayden Mak: Right. 

[00:35:23] Doran Schrantz: No. And so the mutual aid network and the support for people who were the most targeted, which is true by this effort, which in the beginning I think everyone felt was immigrants of, uh, precarious status.

[00:35:42] Then became people of color. So that was drive, that was a driving motivation. And it’s like worth understanding over time, like why did that happen and what were people, why were people so motivated by that? But the second thing that I think was a very driving motivation was my rights are being threatened, like on a very fundamental, almost like brainstem level.

[00:36:02] Like you can’t just like drive on my street and stop me in my car. Can you like. How many times? I mean, the first like three or four days I was living through this, I was like, yeah, but they can’t do that. Like why did they even stop Renee Good’s car at all? That’s not their jurisdiction. Like the real question is not what the angle of her steering wheel was.

[00:36:20] The real question is why were they on Portland Avenue at all? Yeah, 

[00:36:22] Cayden Mak: yeah. What were they doing? 

[00:36:23] Doran Schrantz: Why would they have, what jurisdiction did they have to tell her to do anything? 

[00:36:28] Cayden Mak: Totally. 

[00:36:29] Doran Schrantz: Like they didn’t have that. That’s that’s, they’re not local law enforcement. They don’t get to tell somebody, me, where I can, my car or where I can stand on the sidewalk or like where I can move or like whether or not I can stand in front of my kids’ school and say, you can’t come in here like that.

[00:36:44] That is, they’re not supposed to be able to do that. 

[00:36:48] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think the, the thing that you’re pointing to about this being pre political is like, these are the building blocks of like a truly majoritarian. 

[00:36:56] Doran Schrantz: They are 

[00:36:57] Cayden Mak: movement against this kind of overreach. 

[00:37:00] Doran Schrantz: Yes. And in the email that you guys published, I was like, you know, I’ve, I’ve been in like a million theoretical discussions about the popular front.

[00:37:07] It makes sense. Yeah. 

[00:37:09] Cayden Mak: Yeah. It’s like, I feel like there is also a level on which some of the, some of the, like, there’s some muscle memory around like George Floyd uprisings that like, yeah. I don’t know. It’s, it’s like interesting to me to see how this, this situation has kind of like rearranged some of the like core assumptions.

[00:37:29] Doran Schrantz: It was an experience where there was a temper there. There literally was, there was a common enemy. 

[00:37:37] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:37:37] Doran Schrantz: And everyone knew who the enemy was. So there was less like of the factional, factional patterns of our interests being in contest with each other. I think it was authentic that local law enforcement, like in many cities around the metro area, were ambivalent at best about ice.

[00:37:59] And some against it. 

[00:38:01] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:38:02] Doran Schrantz: Because it’s also an invasion into their jurisdiction. 

[00:38:07] Cayden Mak: Right. 

[00:38:09] Doran Schrantz: And it certainly makes them look bad. They pulled over off-duty officers who were black. Multiple times. 

[00:38:15] Cayden Mak: Mm. 

[00:38:17] Doran Schrantz: So they were also Yeah. And the cops were, no, we’re the outfit, they were fair game. So there’s that dynamic.

[00:38:22] The thing that I wanna say about this that was, so it was also, it was incredibly scary to fully reckon with this, was there was a period of this, um, occupation in which people felt anger at their local elected officials. At Governor Walls at Jacob Fry. Mm-hmm. It’s like, why can’t you save us? Why can’t you do more?

[00:38:48] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:38:49] Doran Schrantz: To stop this from happening. What that really is though, is a reckoning with it. They couldn’t, or that would’ve been extremely complicated. And so there was, it’s like there was a moment, at least I remember, I felt this way. What is like they cannot, this is going to be civil society. That’s going to do civil society.

[00:39:11] That word, like all these parts of civil society in motion with the scaffolding and all of its different parts, is if there’s any hope of pushing them out of our state, it’s going to be that. So the choices that we’re in front of elected officials are deploying other armed forces, 

[00:39:30] Cayden Mak: right? 

[00:39:31] Doran Schrantz: To fight federal armed forces.

[00:39:34] Cayden Mak: Which sounds a whole lot like starting a civil, the Civil 

[00:39:36] Doran Schrantz: War pretty much, 

[00:39:38] Cayden Mak: right? 

[00:39:40] Doran Schrantz: The other thing that is, was a very real threat was the Insurrection Act. 

[00:39:46] Cayden Mak: Right? 

[00:39:48] Doran Schrantz: Like that was very real. So if I am gonna deploy the National Guard to protect people, does that mean they’re gonna go up to fighting? Like are they going to use force?

[00:40:02] Is that insurrection? 

[00:40:05] Cayden Mak: Hmm. 

[00:40:07] Doran Schrantz: If you’re the governor, you better think really long and hard about that. 

[00:40:10] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Because that’s, that’s also something that rapidly then spirals completely out of your anybody’s control. Yeah, 

[00:40:16] Doran Schrantz: that’s exactly right. So 

[00:40:19] Cayden Mak: that’s frightening. 

[00:40:19] Doran Schrantz: I don’t know, may that is something that like another governor, or if this escalates.

[00:40:28] I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a governor, but I, it feels like this should be a conversation that Newsom and Polis and 

[00:40:34] Cayden Mak: Sure. Whoever, Pritzker, whoever. 

[00:40:38] Doran Schrantz: But people were like, they should have sent out the guard. And I’m like, 

[00:40:43] Cayden Mak: to do what? Right. Like the question is to do what, 

[00:40:45] Doran Schrantz: you know, what are they gonna pull the seven ice agents off of Alex Pretti?

[00:40:52] The CPB in particular is a violent, they are. Psycho 

[00:40:59] Cayden Mak: the Border Patrol. 

[00:41:00] Doran Schrantz: Oh my God. Yeah, they, so when the thing that there was a noticeable difference when Bovino and those 800 border patrol people, I think they were the most escalatory and violent. Um, anyway, I, I, so at that time I’m like, yeah, the Border Patrol will shoot back.

[00:41:19] Cayden Mak: Yeah. I mean, they all think they’re cowboys, right? Like they’re 

[00:41:23] Doran Schrantz: Exactly, 

[00:41:23] Cayden Mak: they all think they’re cowboys 

[00:41:25] Doran Schrantz: and completely immune. We have total immunity. 

[00:41:28] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:41:29] Doran Schrantz: That’s what they were told. 

[00:41:30] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:41:31] Doran Schrantz: The guy is, the whistleblower right now is coming out. Who said they, they, they told people it’s secret, but we’re telling people to violate the constitution.

[00:41:39] That was how they were trained. 

[00:41:40] Cayden Mak: No, there’s, there is, there’s a lot. I think that. Deserves some like real serious chewing on here. Strategically, I do wanna shift our conversation. 

[00:41:51] Doran Schrantz: That’s why, that’s why I’m like certain, you know, like I’m phone to them too. We have our cat, we have our partisan thinking. Sure.

[00:41:56] We have our like organizer thinking, we have our lefty thinking. And there’s aspects of this, this dynamic, both what it really means to build popular front majoritarian resistance slash. Proactive, pro-democracy, whatever you wanna call that. And then, but also like what are the roles of elected officials?

[00:42:19] What are the roles of Democrat? Like, what was at stake? What are the, what’s the gravity of the decisions that get made in this context? And, and I think part of the reason it’s hard to think about those things is are we on the brink of a civil war? I don’t know. It’s 

[00:42:32] Cayden Mak: totally, totally. Well, I wanna shift your conversation a little bit because I know that earlier this month, you, in February, uh, you and about 50 other Minnesotans went to DC ahead of this Senate vote 

[00:42:43] Sound on Tape: we did 

[00:42:43] Cayden Mak: to continue DHS funding.

[00:42:45] Um, and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the trip, like who came with you, uh, what you were able to communicate to Congress during that trip and, and kind of what that exp whole experience was like. 

[00:42:55] Doran Schrantz: I mean, it was crazy. So. Uh, I wanna just like shout out my, my co-organizer of that trip, who’s Ana Milligan, who is the director of something called Groundwork in Minnesota, but longtime organizer worked for Ilhan, like amazing organizer and political leader in Minnesota.

[00:43:14] So the two of us decided about a week before the DHS vote that we thought we should bring. 50 minutes. 

[00:43:24] Cayden Mak: Amazing. 

[00:43:26] Doran Schrantz: I pulled that off, you know, and most of the staff from a lot of organizations were pretty consumed. So it was, you know, I had a, a visceral experience doing logistics for this. That being said, uh, we had about 50 folks who went and it was a broad cross section of different kinds of leadership.

[00:43:45] Civic leaders who were on the frontline of this, you know, and they’re not the only ones. So it’s a, it’s a cross section and it’s not, not everybody. Um, examples would be one Leon, who is the owner of Leo’s Towing, who through the month of January turned his towing company over to towing, uh, cars of abducted people and getting them back to their families.

[00:44:12] Oh geez. Or to somebody. Yeah. One of the most haunting experiences that Minnesotans had were abandoned cars. So it’s like you would be driving down the road and there would be a car with the windows smashed out. Sometimes the lid that could was still warm. It’s like the evil rapture. Yeah. 

[00:44:32] Cayden Mak: So creepy. 

[00:44:33] Doran Schrantz: So scary.

[00:44:34] Kind of traumatic, like it’s just terrible. So one towed 250. Cars. Jesus. In the month of January, he said there was a week where he was doing five or six per day. 

[00:44:47] Cayden Mak: Wow. 

[00:44:47] Doran Schrantz: So Juan is an amazing, you don’t know, he is just, he’s just a guy who owns a tow company. You know, like this is what he did. This he a contribution.

[00:44:57] Mary Gland, who is the school board president of Columbia. High school district where Liam Ramos, um, there were multiple teachers. Uh, one of the teachers was also in the Columbia High School District who talked about, I think what was really powerful about there, it’s like, it was kind of interesting ’cause there was a refrain that multiple people, people use, including myself, where it’s like you have this moment with yourself where you’re like, is it time?

[00:45:22] Like, is it time to act? And the principal of the school, the school board, and the superintendent. Talk to each other. I’m like, oh yeah, it’s time. We have to go public with what’s, how besieged our school district is and what happened to Liam. And then experience surveillance, tailing and harassment from DHS from that point onwards.

[00:45:43] So they came with us. Um, Nick Benson, who is uh, uh, aviation enthusiast, that is his. Previous life and he built a system to track every plane that, uh, went in and out of the Minneapolis airport on this. This is a huge 

[00:46:02] Cayden Mak: airport. 

[00:46:03] Doran Schrantz: It’s a, well, there’s the silver lot on floor eight of the parking ramp where he put telescopic lenses and every day would go and count the number of shackled deportees getting put onto planes.

[00:46:14] So that, and then reported a daily number. Of how many shackled deportees have been flown out of Minneapolis airport that he could count? So Nick Benson, there were a couple of folks who were connected to Take Action Minnesota, who were, have organized large parent patrols around schools. Um, Patty O’Keefe and Brandon, who were very early on were, um, violently like, like aggressively.

[00:46:45] Detained and held unlawfully at Whipple for 10 hours with no lawyer as legal observers. Um, and Patty has been very public with her story about what happened. Clergy, you know, a lot of the clergy have been involved in many, many ways. So faith institutions have been involved in terms of public voice. They got arrested at the airport, they.

[00:47:07] But also have been sites of massive amounts of mutual aid organizing, food distribution, rides, all, all the like, just like the scale of the food distribution is unimaginable. It is just the amount of food. So, so those are, that’s an example of the kind of people who went And so we went and we did a big press conference on, right outside the Capitol.

[00:47:33] You could see the capitol building and the shots of the press conference. It was a very, um, powerful experience for people, I think to publicly declare their stories. Oh, Rachel Thunder, who’s an indigenous woman, indigenous organizer, who, uh, built out powwow grounds and Rachel Thunder were like just a really huge, important community hub during.

[00:47:55] This whole thing. So she spoke anyway, she was there, Ruth Buffalo who, uh, worked with unhoused people and uh, there was a lot of work, a lot of indigenous people got detained, got picked up by ice. 

[00:48:07] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:48:08] Doran Schrantz: Ironic. But there was a lot that that happened to, and they actually, there was a period of time where there was five detainees they could not find.

[00:48:17] I don’t know if they got sent to Texas and sent back. So there was a lot of indigenous involvement, um, and, and teaching and support and leadership, kind of like throughout the movement. Right now they have a camp set up outside of Whipple because Fort Snelling was the site of, um. De uh, detention of indigenous people in Minnesota.

[00:48:35] So it’s like, anyway, so that’s been a really beautiful form, the leadership that, uh, indigenous communities have been helping the rest of us figure out what to do to absorb this, this experience. And so then we met with Chuck Schumer and we met with Hakeem Jeffries top staff. And then we met with senator.

[00:48:56] We met with a lot people, broke up into groups, and we met with a lot of senators. Bernie Sanders, um, van Holland, a whole bunch of people buttonhole some Republicans and told stories and there was a couple of big kind of headlines. I think one, they were on a path. To like vote no. Um, or at least to hold up DH funding for now.

[00:49:22] I think having 50 Minnesotans in their face that day was very helpful. And then what struck me in the conversations with congressional staff was two things. One, they were tracking pretty closely, like a bunch of the violations that I, the abuses, excessive enforcement. I think they themselves struggle to understand the scale of that.

[00:49:45] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:49:45] Doran Schrantz: Lawlessness. And then the second thing that they were gobsmacked by, and this is why I think it’s kind of under-reported and people don’t understand it, was the surveillance, 

[00:49:54] Cayden Mak: yeah. 

[00:49:55] Doran Schrantz: Was the repression tactics, treating a population like a counterinsurgency and sort of repressive surveillance. So I, I hope that the conversation goes beyond, I mean, it’s not even just like abolish ice, it’s, it’s what, what it is, is we built, we need to have a conversation.

[00:50:15] About how we built DHS in response to nine 11. 

[00:50:19] Cayden Mak: Yep. 

[00:50:19] Doran Schrantz: And at the time, a shit ton of people were like, this is a monster, like sitting, waiting to happen. It’s basically like a civil liberties constitution violator machine, you know? And so if you have like a hyper malicious federal government that decides to weaponize that on Americans, it’s completely equipped to do that.

[00:50:40] Like that’s what it’s built to do. 

[00:50:42] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:50:43] Doran Schrantz: So if you wanna turn people who live in our country into domestic terrorists and domestic enemies, like it’s 

[00:50:51] Cayden Mak: built to, 

[00:50:51] Doran Schrantz: that’s 

[00:50:52] Cayden Mak: tools. Do it. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think, 

[00:50:54] Doran Schrantz: and now the tech Palantir and mm-hmm. Crazy technology and the i, ai and, and like the way that could be weaponized, the way it is being weaponized for surveillance, repression, but also the smear machine, like the.

[00:51:12] Sort of propaganda machine of the MAGA grifters and how all those things then kind of like work together to be essentially re like, like suppressive and repressive like that. So I hope that what comes out of this is not just like, let’s rain in ice a little bit. It’s like we need a fundamental. I don’t, you know, people are like, all the Democrats are debating words right now, but it’s like, yeah, we better radically transform.

[00:51:42] Cayden Mak: I mean, honestly, it’s like, it’s like there, there’s like a, there’s like a DHS like war on terror, truth and reconciliation process that we need to have, honestly. Right. It’s like. Looking at the impact of this on pe, like people who live in the US or who visit the us, but also people around the world. You know, like I feel like, yeah, like every couple weeks there’s an article about how basically these technological systems were tested on Palestinians and now they’re being used on people and.

[00:52:09] Minnesota, like 

[00:52:10] Doran Schrantz: it’s s Palestinians, probably Iraqis like mm-hmm. People in Middle East, Afghans, Muslims, domestic people, Muslims who live in the United States domestically. Like I think what, what the sort of general population of people, the majoritarian conversation needs to be like. We looked the other way on some of these things ’cause it was some other people.

[00:52:29] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. Or, or we were sold a bill of goods that it was gonna make us safer. 

[00:52:34] Doran Schrantz: Or we were sold a bill of goods that it was gonna make us safer, and then we’re gonna go after criminals, like mm-hmm. Basically, any trust that that’s true is broken. 

[00:52:42] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:52:43] Doran Schrantz: And so I think it needs to be taken down to the studs and like, I mean, I don’t, I don’t have the policy solution to it, but it’s a, I hope that that, what, what, what struck me in DC.

[00:52:56] Besides, whoa. These people are very, uh, in their bubble here at Easy. Sure. Oh my God. But the other thing that struck me was like, I, it’s like I left with this question of how do we break open if we have a renaissance, let’s say, the good things happen and the, the trajectory of history, because Americans and, and residents and people who live in the United States decide we’re not doing this overall MAGA project.

[00:53:24] A part of the aftermath has to be a reckoning about DHS WR large. 

[00:53:28] Cayden Mak: No, I think that’s quite right. That’s, and and I think that like there’s something that’s just like, to me, the thing that’s heartbreaking about all of this is. People were saying this from day day one. 

[00:53:41] Doran Schrantz: I know 

[00:53:41] Cayden Mak: Jess, like 

[00:53:43] Doran Schrantz: people also said we should regulate the tech companies and we didn’t do it.

[00:53:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah. And here we are. 

[00:53:49] Doran Schrantz: No. As someone who’s 51, it’s like I keep having these haunting moments of like when 9, 9 11, the Patriot Act. 

[00:53:56] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:53:56] Doran Schrantz: I remember when there was a debate about the internet, like, shouldn’t it be treated as a public utility? 

[00:54:01] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:54:01] Doran Schrantz: These big companies need to be regulated. They should not have a monopoly on this technology.

[00:54:07] And we let all those things go by. And here we are. 

[00:54:10] Cayden Mak: Not only were did we sort of let them go by, but like they, they were a step ahead of us almost this whole time. Right. Like they, they knew what was at stake and they were like, here’s how we’re gonna make our money. Well, Dorin uh, is there anything else that you wanna leave our listeners with?

[00:54:25] Are there, I feel like this conversation was really enlightening and like. Scary but necessary. 

[00:54:33] Doran Schrantz: I know. Listen, I’m just, I would like to scare people just a little bit. I am, I’m trying to not like overly scare people. It’s like that’s what I’ve been wrestling with. I think what I would want people to be left with is like a soberness.

[00:54:47] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:54:48] Doran Schrantz: About the gravity for the future that’s at stake right now. And then a hope. Which is what I, what I leave this experience with is a tremendous amount of faith and trust that when people are faced with the question of, do I protect and defend my neighbor and will I stand up for freedom and democracy?

[00:55:14] I’m gonna cry. People said yes. 

[00:55:17] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:55:19] Doran Schrantz: And so then our job is organizers. Is you can’t control all that like that is, this was like absolutely. For me, it was like a giant synthesis moment of like scaffolded organizing and social movement, energy. Mm-hmm. And decentralized leaders. All that stuff was true. It was actually all of it.

[00:55:35] It wasn’t one or the other. It is one better. It’s like, no, it was the synthesis. 

[00:55:39] Cayden Mak: You need them all. 

[00:55:40] Doran Schrantz: You need them all. And so then the question becomes, I think from an organizer perspective or like as a friend of mine. Guy I’ve gotta know really well, who’s a little more in the anarchy circles. He’s like, you know, the institutional left has really showed up.

[00:55:58] I’m like, thank you. You know? So like the institutional, I feel like the role is really about leadership and channels. 

[00:56:04] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:56:05] Doran Schrantz: So that there can be where my mode about that is not control, but it’s about the unleashing of people and how do we build bigger and bigger containers and platforms where this like deep.

[00:56:16] Experience and expression that is sometimes prepo political about. I don’t want to see people like beating the shit out of on my street. And also I don’t, you know, I don’t want my own freedoms to be limited. There has to be a commitment to lean into the uncertainty of those moments and create the channels where all those people can express that.

[00:56:39] And I feel like one of the things I’m most proud of about our movement here is. I mean, I’m proud of Minnesotans. Then about the quote unquote institutional left, I think the organizations were not sclerotic. They met the moment. 

[00:56:53] Cayden Mak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:56:54] Doran Schrantz: And the building towards that general strike created an offense that was required.

[00:57:00] So we had a lot of defense, but we didn’t have an offense. And so that created platforms in a huge container for thousands and thousands and thousands of Minnesotans to be a part of what they felt like was an offense without control. You. But like, you know, based on our poll that we did, we think about 350,000 Minnesotans stayed home from work that day.

[00:57:27] They participated in the general strike and the website, the vigil after, uh, Alex Prety was killed. There was just this, the four demands. The website kind of created an ability for us to turn this incredibly organic, powerful movement into an offense. So those are the, so, so I think you should be scared.

[00:57:46] And also feel a lot of hope. 

[00:57:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah. No, I thank you so much Dorin, for sharing all of that and like thank so 

[00:57:52] Doran Schrantz: much for your interest. 

[00:57:53] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no, I, I always appreciate like deep strategic insight that you have that’s both taken this sort of like high level view but also it’s like I am here on the ground with humans.

[00:58:04] Yeah. 

[00:58:04] Doran Schrantz: With humans. 

[00:58:05] Cayden Mak: Really, really valuable. So, uh, take good care. Thank you 

[00:58:08] Doran Schrantz: so much. And we’ll stay in touch. 

[00:58:11] Cayden Mak: Yeah, sounds good. Take care. My thanks again to Doen for making the time to join me last week. This show is published by Convergence of Magazine for Radical Insights. I’m Kaden Mock, and our producer is Josh sra.

[00:58:23] Editorial assistance provided this week by King Ola and Kimmy David designed our cover Art Convergence Magazine is a proud founding member of the Movement Media Alliance. And of course, if you liked what you heard, please let us know. Be sure to subscribe for more episodes, tell a friend or rate and review the show wherever you listen.

[00:58:39] Like listener b KDC two five. Who writes Block and Build has terrific guests who share all kinds of insights on timely topics ranging from the Epstein files to data centers. Everything in between. Caden Browns it all. In a recap of the week’s headlines before diving into substantive conversations with organizers who have fascinating things to say.

[00:58:57] You’ll laugh, you’ll nod your head sometimes. You may even wanna take notes. Thanks. Leave us a review and you might hear me read it out on a future episode. And finally, if you would like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bring our movement. Together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment.

[00:59:13] You can become a [email protected] slash and donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to helping make sure our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements. I hope this helps.