What do you do when fascism comes to town?
I live on a major bus line, which means I live across from and next to large apartment buildings. I have not seen my neighbors, their children, since coming home from traveling just before New Year's. Wait, let me take that back: I have seen them, once, unloading their car, running for the door.
When they killed Renee Good I was at home, at work. I took my lunch hour to walk down to the site of her murder. By then a small crowd remained and local officials were begging people to leave and patrol our neighborhoods. It was good advice, so I left and patrolled my neighborhood. Specifically, I walked to the Dollar Tree at Lake & Nicollet, where ICE (and CBP) had been staging.
By the time I got there, a crowd had formed. A man was handing out whistles. Neighbors were watching from across the street. I spoke to one who hadn't heard of what was happening yet; she wasn't white, and I told here where I live and what the whistles were for. Then, ICE drove by—and stopped.
A brief digression: I'm a pedestrian, so I've seen bad driving before. I've had men jump out of their SUVs to scream at me for "coming out of nowhere" (crossing at a crosswalk on a block without a light). I've had a man, angry at being yelled at for almost hitting us as we crossed with the walk sign on, pull up onto the sidewalk, blocking our path, and tell my wife and myself "I could kill you right now, I could kill you too". So please understand what I mean when I say: ICE agents drive like they want to kill people.
With that in mind, let's return to 1/7. I can't offer a play-by-play, as my memory is really no match for the horror of what's happening here, but I can tell you what I know I saw:
- ICE agents boxed in an observer following them in her car. They then leaped out of their SUVs.
- Observers on foot, myself included, blew our whistles and shouted.
- The woman, who looked Latina and was driving a small sedan, tried to get around them.
- The agent about 10 feet away from me drew his gun and pointed it at her.
At this point the whistling got much louder. The woman was clearly terrified. But she got away, and ICE got back in their vehicles and peeled off down Nicollet: blowing red lights, hopping curbs, driving as dangerously as I have ever seen anyone drive.
Except one. I followed a red Dodge RAM about a block down. He had his hazards on outside the Metro Transit garage. I blew my whistle and blew my whistle and blew my whistle, flipping him off the entire time, and after about 30 seconds (pussy) he smirked a bit and gave in, driving off.
What do you do when fascism comes to town?
I knew then that this was in fact a massive escalation, not just of "immigration enforcement" but of an ongoing attempt to force the people of Minnesota to bow our heads to Trump. Authoritarian behavior from law enforcement is common, as anyone who lived in Minneapolis in 2020 (self included) is well aware; but authoritarian behavior, towards US citizens, from an agency that legally has minimal authority over US citizens, is something else entirely. When I got home, I read what the President, Vice President, and Kristi Noem were saying, and I felt something in me settle, crystallize. This is what fascism looks like: not just authoritarian behavior from individuals, not just a government too weak to impose consequences on killer cops, but full-throated and unconditional institutional support of murder.
ICE observers drive by on Nicollet sometimes, blowing their whistles and honking their horns. On Saturday this happened as we were preparing to go to the protest, but they turned on my block. I was terrified ICE intended to stop somewhere on Blaisdell or Pleasant (residential streets immediately to the west of me), so I ran outside. They didn't stop; I could hear the whistles from several blocks away, fading fast. But I did encounter two older East African men, both of whom shook my hand and hugged me when I explained the whistle and that we were looking out for ICE. This moment has haunted me: open gratitude, but also polite surprise. A community that has been smeared and attacked by everyone from random local MAGA chuds to the President himself still takes time to reach out to others, and to trust them. I think the only thing we can do is choose to trust each other, as often as possible.
What do you do when fascism comes to town?
Since Saturday, I have donated to a number of mutual aid organizations. I have reached out to neighbors who are doing work via organized school- or church-based groups. I have set out whistles with zines so that passerby can grab them and get plugged into existing work. I have talked to complete strangers to explain what I'm doing, why, and how. I'm a naturally reserved person who normally wears sweatpants every day and now I'm out wearing jeans, in case I need to run out of the house at a moment's notice, and waving to people and trying to connect with them like I'm one of those annoying street sales guys who'd ask you about your hair (sorry if this is just a Chicago thing from 2011...but IYKYK).
What do you do when fascism comes to town?
As a non-native myself, someone who moved here for love in 2014 and was fully unprepared for the cultural difference between Chicago and Minneapolis, never mind Minneapolis and where I grew up in NC, I am in awe of the number of people, born and raised, who are open and welcoming to others. I am also in awe of the number of transplants, from elsewhere in the US or elsewhere in the world, who claim this place as their home and take seriously their responsibility to contribute to, and build, the community. There is a miasma of terror covering the Twin Cities right now, and yet thousands of us improvised an "ICE OUT/FUCK ICE" call and response at Saturday's protest. Our neighbors are justifiably scared to live their lives: to work, to send their children to school, to walk on the fucking sidewalk, because Brett Kavanaugh thinks it should be legal to racially profile people and demand their papers, and bullying random women seems to be MAGA Nazi Greg Bovino's favorite activity. (Short man syndrome? Helium voice syndrome? Limp dick syndrome? It's anyone's guess.) Despite this terror, however, Minneapolis refuses to be broken. US citizens who fit the profile (brown) are standing up and refusing to present papers when the jackbooted thugs demand them. US citizens who don't fit the profile (hi) are patrolling our neighborhoods, handing out food and hand warmers, distributing literature explaining how to get plugged in, and educating each other on our rights and the systemic violations thereof.
We're also cussing ICE agents out. And I believe this is important: expressing dissent is a core element of free speech.
Neighbors from a little further away, people I normally wouldn't think of as neighbors at all, also seem to understand what's happening to us. I've seen people posting Thomas Paine quotes; Edina protests the casual violation of our rights with American flags. St Cloud residents are surrounding ICE in strip malls. Burnsville residents are telling them to get the fuck out. Saint Paul residents are chasing them from Target. It is an attack on all of us, all of our rights and all of our freedoms; it is an attack on the concept of being a free people at all. What could be clearer? Trump himself said that Renee was "disrespectful"—and thus deserved to die. This administration smirks at us as it lies to us. All that's left is to roll the dice: live to dissent another day, or get shot in the face and smeared as a terrorist by the President of the United States before the world even knows your name.
What do you do when fascism comes to town?
I watched what happened during Chicago's enforcement invasion and hoped I'd be brave enough to do what's necessary when it was our turn—not, if, but when, because Trump is an authoritarian, and he hates Minnesota. To my surprise, though, when the time came, it wasn't really a question of bravery. There is no choice when you watch masked thugs beat, gas, and shoot your neighbors. I am a free person and I intend to stay that way. To resist this occupation, then, is a task imposed upon me by sheer bad luck, the same way you have to shovel your walk whether it snows 3 inches or 13. It's just necessary. Children have a right to go to school without worrying they'll come home to both their parents missing. Immigrants have a right to work without worrying they'll be snatched in their Amazon vests and put on a plane to God knows where without so much as a court date. Women have a right to exercise our First Amendment rights without worrying thugged up oatmeal-brained Chaska fascists will shoot us in the head and call us a "fucking bitch" as they walk away from our cooling bodies. Every single American has the right to not experience their government, sneering, cowardly, smirking on live TV, lying to our faces about what we saw, not just on a video from one angle, but on 5+ videos from every possible angle. Wagging their fingers at us, too, lecturing us about how we owe the murderer a "debt of gratitude".
Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good three times at point blank range and JD Vance wants me to believe that this was a normal, reasonable thing to do because she was trying to drive away, and that a man who'd just circled her vehicle while another man tried to break into it, a man who'd positioned himself by her hood, a man who'd switched his phone to his other hand so he could draw his weapon before she even started driving, is a hero. As Renee Good bled out and died, as ICE refused her medical treatment and threw her body around "like a sack of potatoes", as they removed evidence from Ross's home and the scene of the crime, Kristi Noem and DHS lied about what Jonathan Ross had done. And lied. And lied. And kept lying. They are still lying today.
In the past week, multiple videos have circulated where ICE tells people, "didn't you learn from what just happened"? The inevitable response: learn what? But I will suggest that in fact we did learn. They thought that coming to Minnesota and terrorizing us would break us. They thought people who look like me would sell out everyone who doesn't, or at least stay inside out of fear. But I will repeat myself: I am a free person. We are all of us free people. We are terrified, we are furious, we are exhausted; our floors are unvaccumed, our laundry is overflowing, our New Year's resolutions are toast. But we will not break. We will protect each other and stand united against state terror.
What do you do when fascism comes to town?
I mentioned the Paine-posting. No hate to The American Crisis, but in honor of the 262 men of the 1st Minnesota, I'm going to go with a different quote:
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Renee Nicole Good will not have died in vain.
