I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.
I got in late last night. First thing this morning, I saw cars following an ice vehicle down the street, honking at it.
Later, we didn't drive more than three blocks before we found people defending a childcare facility. (The idea that people have to defend a childcare facility... let that sink in)
Half the street corners around here have people-- from every walk of life, including republicans-- standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes responders.
I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I have never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is not accepting what's happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman for participating in this, and all that did was bring more people, from more walks of life.
It's genuinely a leaderless (or leaderful) movement, decentralized in a way that the state is absolutely unequipped to handle. There are a few basic skills involved, and so people teach each other those skills, and people are collectively refining them.
Before I came, I asked a local friend if the cold (it's going to be -20 or so in the coming days) would stop people from coming out. "No, we'll be there. It's ICE who can't handle it."
Today I talked with a 76 year old who'd been standing in the cold for hours guarding her neighbors. I was getting kind of chilly, even in the new winter gear I bought for this trip (and I live in the goddam mountains myself).
She didn't even have a hat on.
Another person put it: "we're Minnesotans. We're excited to get our real winter gear out of the box for the year."
He was an audio engineer whose kid went to school in the area. No way in hell was he going to let anyone come for the kids on his watch.
Another friend put it to me like this: "ICE has made the classic Nazi mistake. They've invaded a winter people in winter."
But when I asked an organizer what they wanted to see out of press coverage, they told me they wanted people to see the beautiful things they are building here, and not just the worst stories of the worst of ICE's crimes.
What people are doing here is beautiful. It's a tragic beauty, but a real one
I've been here 24 hours, but already with what I've seen, well, I genuinely believe we're going to win. People here are well aware that what happens here impacts the entire country, that it sets the tone for resistance. ICE is angry, ICE is terrified, of how deeply unpopular it is.
I've never seen a population more united. If people can hold onto that unity, if people can accept that different people will have different ways of confronting fascism, if we can remind NGOs and orgs that they can join but not control the resistance, then, well, people here will write history.
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