(Feature image by Arthur Maiorella/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Minneapolis is currently under occupation by ICE, a network of federally endorsed, trained, funded and organized domestic terrorists. They are kidnapping people from their workplaces and homes, detaining children, conducting bogus arrests and making residents scared to go outside, go shopping, go to school, go to work. They are not looking for specific people to arrest, they are simply looking for Black, brown and Asian people to arrest.

Residents report bearing witness to violent captures and arrests regularly, while going about their daily lives, report seeing roads dotted with abandoned cars, sometimes still running with doors closed, from ICE arrests.

ICE agents sat and had a long lunch at a family-run Mexican restaurant in Wilmar, Minnesota, and then, after the business closed at 8:30pm, followed workers departing the establishment and arrested three of them.

Many schools in Minneapolis are offering the option for remote learning through mid-February to account for justified fears of ICE’s infiltration — because parents have been arrested by ICE agents while waiting with their child for the school bus. Because teachers have reported ICE agents staging enforcement activities in school parking lots, and pepper spraying people on school grounds.

ICE murdered legal observer Renee Nicole Good on January 7th while she was driving her car. They murdered 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti this past weekend as he was attempting to help a woman they’d pepper-sprayed. Both murders were captured on video and these videos tell clear, uncomplicated stories. This has not stopped the Trump administration from claiming both killings were justified responses to alleged aggression.

On January 23rd, the largest general strike in Minnesota in almost a century was held. An coalition of interfaith leaders called for a simultaneous day of prayer and fasting for truth and freedom. Despite unfathomably cold weather, Minnesotans have taken to these streets to stand up against ICE and support their neighbors. This community response has been enabled by the efforts and networks fortified by the Black Lives Matter movement and the response to George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

A New York Magazine cover story calls this “your friendly neighborhood resistance,” as author Kerry Howley observed a city that has settled into “a new rhythm, a relation between occupied and occupier.”

“Black and Indigenous peoples have lived inside a violent police state since the very beginning of this country,” writes the San Sherman at the Sioux Chef. “This is not new to us. What feels new is that more people across the United States are choosing to side with humanity instead of the Trump agenda. That shift matters. It creates cracks in systems that rely on silence and compliance.”

What is happening in Minneapolis is different, feels different, according to the people on the ground, like writer Margaret Killjoy, who writes on Birds Before The Storm that we are used to seeing protest movements as “a sort of internal rebellion” against forces like capitalism, or the local police, but in Minneapolis, right now, she is witnessing “a rebellion against what amounts to a foreign occupation.”

Hamilton Nolan writes that Minneapolis right now, with all of its homes and streets and stores filled with regular people, reminds him “of a politically torn, unstable country in a transitional period before full-blown war with a repressive government.”

Again and again, citizen journalists, people with phones and social media accounts, are clear that the mainstream media is not accurately portraying what it’s like on the ground in Minneapolis. You can find indie outlets across the gamut on the ground, like Sahan Journal and Status Coup News, and organized movements on social media like Defend 612, The 5051, Sunrise Twin Cities and Indivisible Twin Cities. Nick Valencia on substack is there and often reporting live, so is photographer bartlett and photojournalism collective Humanizing Through Story. Writer Kirstie Kimball is another great resource.

How To Help:

You should call your senator and ask them to block support for ICE. Here’s an explanation of the appropriations bills in question.

Help legal observers like Renee Nicole Good continue to do their important work by getting them dash cams and gas station gift cards.

Give to the Immigrant Law Center in Minneapolis to assist immigrants and refugees in Minnesota.

Defend the 612 is a grassroots volunteer attempt to help community members and neighbors connected to organize their own decentralized rapid response networks and keep each other informed. You can sign up here to be a part of it.

Minneapolis Mutual Aid has assembled a monumental list of mutual aid funds in Minneapolis.

The Minneapolis Black Collective Foundation is supporting the urgent needs of this moment.

ICE Out / Twin Cities Mutual aid organizes food distribution and immigrant support resources.

The Minneapolis Immigrant Rights Action Committee is a mass-movement organization that has been fighting consistently for an end to immigration raids and deportations.

Unidos Minnesota is a multiracial and multigenerational org building power for social, racial and economic justice, providing rapid response and ICE observation training.

Pow Wow Grounds, a Native-owned coffee shop, is distributing donated supplies and cash to those in need.

As a passionate advocate for Minnesota’s indie food scene, Kirstie Kimball has assembled a list of local immigrant-owned spots on Eat Street unable to operate safely or at capacity due to ICE’s occupation and the recent execution on the street by an ICE observer, an effort described in her substack post Support Eat Street. She has also assembled a massive list of community-sourced and independently verified list of bars, restaurants and coffee shops that have been posting in solidarity.

Stand with Minnesota also offers a massive directory of funds supporting pets and animals, rent relief, mutual aid and more.

Libro FM has a list of Bookshops to support in Minneapolis, many of which are accepting donations, organizing fundraisers and providing support like art kids, books, whistles, know-your-rights cards, and more to support the community. If you’re not in Minneapolis but you do love books, go ahead and order some from local stores to endorse their ongoing existence, and their ability to provide this kind of community assistance. Black Garnet Books and The Irreverent Bookworm are queer-owned.

Speaking of queer-owned businesses, women’s sports bar A Bar of Their Own is hosting protestors, providing poster supplies and whistles, and knitting winter gear. They’re maintaining an updated list of mutual aid funds on their social accounts. Other queer-owned businesses gathering resources and donations and providing free signs, whistles or other supplies include sex toy shop Smitten Kitten, coffee shop and cafe Silver Fern Minneapolis, vintage shop Tandem Vintage and brewery Urban Growler.

Some standalone fundraisers that haven’t yet met their goals:

Share your own resources and sources in the comments.