It goes without saying that I am relieved this is finally happening. Living in the epicenter of this Federal occupation of my city, seeing the occupation end is welcome. I knew it was coming, but it's good to have it confirmed.
"Relieved" is different than "jubilant" or "giddy". I know all of us in the Twin Cities will be processing this Federally imposed crisis for some time. These are my immediate thoughts and some of the things I learned, both good and bad:
I think ICE is claiming 4,000 people have been arrested. Who knows if they're all really criminals, but for a moment, just accepting that number, let's compare it with another number: $250,000,000. This is the conservative estimate of how much Metro Surge cost the government. That's $62,500 per arrest. Just spitballin' here but I wonder if there was a more efficient way to make these arrests? ICE has been around for 25 years and it would be interesting to see how much they spent, per arrest, in other years. My strong sense is that it's a lot less, with a lot less drama, and a lot less chaos.
Which leads me to something thing I learned. While deportations were the stated goal of the Trump administration, I think they had a second, perhaps equally important but unarticulated goal, of teaching a lesson to Blue cities and other areas that didn't vote for Trump. Turning Federal military or paramilitary forces loose against your domestic political opponents hasn't really been done in living memory. Until now. I think we were a test case in siccing Federal power on our own people.
I learned just how strong we, the people, are. This country has been so relatively stable for so long, and have had structures of government and convention that were meant to protect us that we kind of forgot how formidable the people are. There was such unexpected, yet growing solidarity among citizens of our city. I think it surprised us. But I think it surprised the Trump administration even more. And maybe, even hopefully, some of what we discovered about our own power encouraged people in the rest of the country to realize their own power too.
I learned that when the administration called all of us "highly paid leftist agitators" that the administration revealed what it would have taken for them to stand up to tyranny: being highly paid. Clearly just standing up for our city and our neighbors would be insufficient.
Speaking of standing up for someone else, I learned that I will NEVER forget how most of the Republican Party in Minnesota and around the country threw us to the wolves. Our own Republican members of Congress never had our back, even a little bit. Rep. Emmer went so far after the Pretti murder to express relief that at least no members of ICE were hurt. When the betrayal comes from inside the family, it really hurts.
And I learned a lot about myself. I am by nature nonconfrontational; I am a people pleaser; I'd do anything to preserve the peace even if that peace is an illusion. I learned to push beyond that self-limitation and I know hundreds of thousands of us did the very same thing. In a weird sort of way I should be grateful to Trump, Noem, Miller, Bovino and the other administration toadies because their actions revealed a strength in me I didn't know I had. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
