As I write this my brain is rattling in my skull, my heart is empty, and my soul is alive with fury.
I got back from a small vigil for Alex Pretti with a handful of neighbors over an hour ago and my feet are still cold. Granted, my feet have been cold a lot lately because it turns out being under federal occupation makes it hard to eat.
The past week was busy and difficult for a number of reasons. Victor Manuel Diaz, kidnapped from MN and murdered in Texas. Liam Conejo Ramos, kidnapped and used as bait, detained with his father in Texas. Chloe, 2 years old, kidnapped and flown to Texas despite a court order to free her—freed, now, yet her father Elvis remains in Texas.
Alex Pretti, clips emptied into his prone body, today, in broad daylight.
There is a horrible, brain-breaking facet to such atrocities that I want to give voice to. When something like this happens, and you get enough details to guess what the national response will be, or you see something and just know it will "break through": it is a relief, in the same way feeling intense pain in cold-numbed toes is a relief. Thank God someone got a picture of little Liam Conejo Ramos in his blue hat and overlarge backpack, thank God Alex Pretti was a clean-cut white man. Thank God, because it means the violence ripping my heart apart will, however briefly, be understood by other people. News cycles come and go, public interest in an event ebbs and flows. I consider this human nature, however twisted by modern economic and social systems. But it is dizzying, surreal, for your friends in other US cities to be living their lives as you try your best to fight fascism. I want to scream sometimes: wake up! Wake up! But for them, even when they know this is fascism, even when they are themselves very concerned, afraid, and angry, there is still a world outside where their neighbors can leave their homes and they are less likely (this is still America) to be summarily executed by an agent of our government. There is a world where their neighbors would think they were insane if they were trying to get Signal chats put together and organize daily patrols. And for me, for now, that world is gone. There is work, and there is sleep, and there is the fight. Even recreation, for the most part, is the fight.
And so, when I realized this would keep us in the headlines, when I realized this might move the needle and make those motherfuckers who call themselves leaders in Congress actually take our occupation, brutalization, and murder seriously, I thought: thank God. And then: God, forgive me.
We had planned to go to Albi today, to get some sambusas. We didn't make it.
They are protesting inside the facility where Liam and his father are being held.
I started doing school patrol/watch shifts this past week. They are inconvenient to work into my schedule, but not impossible, and a task that I think is vitally important. So off I toodle, in my little neon vest, to stand outside a school in fuckoff cold temperatures and wave to kids who walk in. Joke with them, say hi to their parents, or the random white person who is walking them to school and scanning the streets for threats the same way I am, because we are trying to keep things as normal as possible for the kids. On the first day I did it, the guy I was with casually said they'd never seen ICE and didn't think they would. I told him I'd let another member of the watch know I'd seen someone rolling by just the past week.
And then the bitter cold came, and ICE came too. Not into the school, but around the school. I suspect they've been keeping track of which schools they've had successes at and which they haven't. We heard a story (which I can only talk about because it broke out of the Signal chats) of an undercover ICE agent approaching a patroller, trying to get information out of them, and leading them back to their car - at which point the person understood they were ICE. We had vehicles lurking a block or two away from the school. Vehicles circling. Trying to catch us out, or maybe just fucking with us.
When Bovino and his goons were nearby, I found out because a kid screeched up in front of the school in a black SUV, wearing a loose brown sweatshirt on a day that definitely called for more. He asked me if I'd heard, I said no, he let me know the location (2 blocks from my home), and then sped off. About five minutes later, another SUV screeched up, this one with two kids (when I say "kid" I mean someone who might be 16 or 20). They told us basically the same thing, a little more detail, and then sped off. Every single rapid responder is a hero, but I keep thinking of them, the three boys or young men who thought of the school and wanted to warn us. Neighbors.
On the last day, two Somali women showed up with flatbread and piping hot tea. It was a wonderful surprise and felt unearned, just like all the profuse thanks from parents and teachers did: I've only been doing this for three days. Nevertheless, the tea was delicious and the flatbread was somehow still warm (and delicious). Neighbors. I'm signed up for 2 shifts per day all next week.
We went to a local restaurant as part of a cash mob. They baked us all special cookies as a thank-you. The door was manned by a security guard from the same queer security company we took our PTC classes at.
I almost flaked on going to the Friday rally because I hate being cold. When we got home, the first thing I said was that I'm glad I didn't flake. I'm still glad we went, despite the emotional whiplash of seeing Will Stancil's Bluesky post at 9:00 and understanding ICE had just killed another neighbor. When we got on the bus there were already a couple protesters en route, and the bus just kept getting fuller and fuller. I had no real expectations as far as how many people I thought would be there, though I certainly hoped the weather would inspire contrarianism and get more people to show. The more the better, if the point is that your state won't be beaten into submission. But we never made it to the park; we were packed into the crowd at least 2 blocks away. Thousands upon thousands of beautiful people, so many people distributing Hot Hands that we only managed to hand out about 10 from our stash of ~120. Joyous, furious energy, from liberal moms and conservative veterans and furries and activists and union members. We were all angry and we were all unafraid.
Alex, I didn't know you, but I am going to make you a promise anyway. Your neighbors said you worked to protect your community during the uprising. Your family said you cared deeply about social justice. Your colleagues said you were a caring, brilliant nurse and researcher. ICE stole your life because you tried to protect another observer, while documenting the abduction of yet another neighbor. I don't know if you died cold and afraid or cold and angry or cold and confused, but I am pretty sure you were cold, because we all are, we have been for days, weeks. It is a cruel irony of the Upper Midwest that just as the darkest days of the season pass, just as the new year begins and sunlight persists past five o'clock, winter will mete out the full force of its brutality upon us. The sun hangs high in a cloudless sky, sets more slowly than your weary heart remembers it could, and you fall and crack your ass clean open on a plane of ice, or arctic air numbs your fingers and splits your lips, your nose, your knuckles. You are reminded by the powder blue five-thirty sky that spring will come eventually, and you are reminded by the happy hour blizzard that you may not live to see it.
Alex, you're gone now; I never knew you, and I never will. Your murder has shocked us, just as you were surely shocked by Renee's. But shock is not surprise. This may happen again. It may be me next time, or my wife, or a friend. Nothing distinguishes us from one another. We are neighbors with a shared mission, and when one of us goes, it falls to the rest of us to find our strength and keep pushing. We are not going to let them smear you, Alex, and we are not going to let you have died in vain. ICE will break themselves upon the people of Minnesota just like their Confederate predecessors. We know what it's like to be outnumbered and to believe in something enough to fight to the last anyway. We will not stop until we win. And when we win, just like with Renee, we will tell everyone about you—but especially new neighbors, welcomed to a Minnesota free of terror.
They will not break us. We will finish the fight.
