We’re taking notes, Minneapolis!

Scribbling my outsider’s admiration + learnings while fresh

I’m fresh off being part of a clergy delegation in Minneapolis. (In fact, I’m waiting in the airport because it’s too cold for the plane to take off!) We took faithful actions and marched as part of the General Strike day (the first in the nation in 80 years— hell yeah!) to get ICE out of the city and permanently abolished, so we can get onto growing the loving world we know is possible in the compost of the empire. Holy mama, Minneapolis is DOING IT right now. They are moving with love, in nonviolent formation, with decentralized, powerful leaders on every street— showing us all what durable resistance, steady power building, and loving possibility- tending can do.

I took (literal) notes the entire time.

One of my teachers, Mark Schultz, is a grassroots organizer. He trained us at NOFA-VT. Mark has also been building durable power in Minneapolis for decades. He taught me that good organizers take good notes and share them to be accountable, and to reflect and refine for next time. The people of Minneapolis are setting an epic example.

This isn’t polished, or tightly copy edited— nor is it a complete picture of all that is happening in the city that is making the resistance work so well. It’s just: my notes. Use what’s useful, leave what’s not, and keep going. Love is with you!

History of Place + Story of Who We Are

The infrastructure to build this scale of resistance didn’t happen overnight. But more importantly, the story and self-conception of Minneapolis as a people’s town didn’t happen over night.

Minneapolis was, and is, a union town. People take pride in themselves and their city as a place where people work together in larger bodies who work together on common goals. While the power of the union has waned in recent years, the story of the union is in families and is a formative narrative about who they are.

A chant I heard in the streets a lot was “No Trump, No troops, Minnesota’s not licking boots!” and I could hear the union influence.

George Floyd’s murder also galvanized the city, which helped lead the Black Lives Matter Uprising in 2020. These more recent experience helped get people thinking in terms of mutual aid, keeping each other safe, and clarified that law enforcement was not on the side of the people. I heard about a lot of people got woken up for the first time in 2020, who are now deep inside the mutual aid work.

People are keeping these stories alive by tending them. People march with their union. The George Floyd memorial is very present. And the Renee Good memorial is a whole block long, with a man tending a fire around the clock by it. A few days after she was killed, either the police or the city (trying to be accurate and didn’t capture that detail) cleared away the flowers and memorial, citing safety. The people WERE NOT HAVING IT and put up even more, and now stand guard. They have hung portraits of other people killed by ICE and police all along the street.

These wounds stay open to remind the city of the pain, and visibly keep in plain view what we must resist.

The power of “Minnesota Nice” and simple, human language

Related to importance of knowing ‘who we are’, Minnesotans are very proud of how nice they are. None of the people from the city I met were talking in ANY kind of jargon about why they were there. None told me their political party or their theory of change. They said things like:

• “This is plain wrong.” “I love my neighbors.” “My heart breaks for those kids.” “This is not who we are.” “We don’t really want to be out here in the cold, but we’re Minnesota tough.” “They picked the wrong city.”

• Reclaiming neighborliness and basic “niceness” (and wow does it have teeth)

• Using plain language and appealing to basic human concepts brings people in rather than making everyone be a perfect ally.

Violence is not always visible, or visible to everyone.

A lot of the violence bubbles up in an instant, and then is hidden again. In some neighborhoods, there is ICE presence and terror constantly. In others, ICE rarely moves through. It’s still possible to ignore or put heads in the sand if you really want to. Minneapolis has chosen to open their eyes, no matter what neighborhood they live in. Empire will always try to hide violence until it’s at your front door. Being willing to see is powerful and necessary. Many already do not have the choice. (Video and community witness has really changed ICE’s ability to control a narrative.)

Good preparation shapes how we show up.

Our organizing body (called MARCH) put out a call to national faith leaders and asked us to attend an orientation call before coming. They appealed to the moment saying “this is our Selma” and called us to be brave.

Then, they prepped us for the worst and allowed us to opt out. “Since Renee Good, ICE is, at times, pointing guns at people’s heads as a way to make protestors leave.”

[Updated just later this morning: horrifically, another observer was shot this morning. I do not yet know their name, but am holding them in the light and my heart. ICE must be abolished today.]

Organizers also told us VERY clearly our role “We are calling clergy here because we want to center peace, bring calm, and de-escalate violence. Even if you feel fear, you need to present calm to the people around you – no matter what. This is your role, and if you don’t feel up for it, no judgment and we love you, but don’t come; find a different way to support.”

• We were asked to journal why we were hearing the call to come to Minneapolis to get clear on our “why.”

• We were repeatedly offered off- ramps if we didn’t want to take the risk, and thanked profusely for even considering it.

• Clarifying both the risk and our role helped us have a team on the ground who had accepted the risk and was ready to be level headed, and made for a focused, calm contained. It also made risking arrests look like a tame(r) outcome.

• Similarly, we heard a lot about how cold it was going to be—which was really, really, really fucking cold. We all took that seriously and prepped, (I was wearing five, yes FIVE pairs of pants, six shirts/ sweaters, two pairs of socks, hand and feet warmers, hat and balaclava, two scarves, two coats, and even though it was -15 before windchill, I was warm all day.)

Decentralization!!! *This feels like the most major of the lessons!*

A decentralized network is very, very hard to squash. It’s like mushrooms, roots under the soil: it can pop back up anywhere. It doesn’t have one charismatic leader who can be easily taken out. It is a commitment, a set of practices, skills that are imminently replicable.

This looks like neighborhood signal groups walking neighbor’s children to school, delivering groceries so people don’t need to leave their houses right now. It looks like swarms of people surrounding each other when ICE is trying to enter a home. It looks like blobs of resistance singers, caroling to people stuck inside and also keeping watch out for ICE.

As people learn about each other’s struggles through basic mutual aid/ people- care efforts, it includes more (and the white people) of the neighborhood in the daily experience of immigrants and non- white people. This “radicalization” aka humanization aka relationship-building helps ensure that the whole neighborhood will not only deliver groceries, but will TURN OUT to big actions when they are called.

Watch some “de-arrest” videos where neighbors manage to help others get free of ICE arrest. There is not one person tugging back and forth but many people grouped together. This provides safety and cover all around.

We are many. So many. (As my taxi driver, an immigrant who has lived in Minneapolis for 25 years said, “Yes, it’s hard—I’ve never thought it could be like this—but of course we will win! No one agrees with this! Look at all the people!”

People are recognizing that togetherness, collective power, and the safety of relative anonymity means we have the superpower to flock as a group and adapt together moment by moment.

Move towards yes, build on each other’s ideas!

There was not one central leader for whom to ask for permission to do a General Strike (the nation’s first in 80 years!), but rather a snowball of an idea that got started and groups said YES, and added to it.

There were SO MANY organizations involved in or planning their own offering for the Friday walk out/ General Strike. I found one to align with that made sense for me as a clergy person and took their direction, but there was not one strategy nor one clear “head” but rather many orgs shaping different actions in harmony across the day.

Even inside of the one organization with which I attended, leadership was highly decentralized. There were many groups presenting at the first day of orientation. There was a core organizing team beyond the visible leaders coordinating all logistics. On signal, (which is where we should all be communicating if we aren’t yet) we were sorted into a cascading variety of groups.

• First ~700 clergy of us were on one signal thread for announcements only.

• Then we were in smaller affinity group by faith (mine was about 50 people deep) we could message with questions.

• Finally we were in text groups called “safety pods” with whom we were to take accountability, make sure we accompanied each other, checked in after actions and leave no one behind in the event of detainment.

  • We took that responsibility seriously! My pod would regularly check on each other throughout the days, and even if we weren’t physically together, we would know where the others were and that they were safe.

One of the major weaknesses of our opposition is they are sycophantic and rely on leaders to tell them how to fall in line. Our strength is that we are rooted in deep values and don’t have to look to one person to tell us what to do. Values can’t be killed.

And, there are real challenges of decentralization (i.e., muscles that we all need to be building now through practice with decentralized organizing in our communities.)

We as a country have been schooled to look up to authorities, to follow directions, and to wait until we are told what to do next. Even people who showed up to be part of the action seemed VERY anxious about having all the information, all the time. What time to show up, what code was the action, who should go in what group, what to do if they didn’t want to do x or y or z.

Decentralization and leaderfulness (a term for when MANY people taking on leadership roles) means that (while we do need to respect the orgs who have been building power and strategy for a long time!) we must:

1) Accept our own agency. Ultimately, and sorry, yikes, it’s all our call, and what we do is UP TO US;

2) We have to get comfortable with, or at least able to tolerate, the fact that there is a LOT of grey zone right now. Exactly how much risk you are taking on is not clear right now, no matter what action you are doing (including even simple things like writing these notes up!)

Risk is often where the impact is. If it feels risky, it might matter. AND AT THE SAME TIME— It’s the durable and relational organizing that is all in place in Minneapolis that makes it all possible, so cooking for your neighbors is A GREAT way to start if you feel low risk that is also HIGH reward down the line.

3) Shit happens. Allow for emergence and changing plans. Situations shift. Be ready to pivot. Remain calm. Forgive organizers when conditions beyond control shift. This is not a pre-scripted play whose lines we’re all following. We’re in a dance with the rest of the world and guess what else? We are MAKING IT UP AS WE GO.

Sometimes, sharing last minute plans, or not knowing the plan is actually safest.

In one example of last minute = better, we only learned the location for the Target HQ action one hour beforehand. With this notice, we were expected to get ourselves there from wherever we were in the city. This limited the chance for the action to be leaked and for it to work as a surprise. It also meant that lots of folks felt anxious waiting around for info.

There were options offered for many different actions with different roles and risks. All were important.

Organizers steadily reminded us as they presented ideas for ways to participate in the day of action that one type of action was not “better” than another.

Some of these actions included:

• Clergy going to the airport to disrupt business as usual (we were told that ICE deports people in the scale of 3 (!) chartered flights from the airport). There were both higher risk of arrest roles and witness roles. Because the airport is considered federal jurisdiction, we were advised that legal teams could only support so many of us if we got arrested, and to prioritize local folks risking that and have the rest of us in other roles.

  • · Having folks willing to risk arrest is powerful. Often high risk means high visibility and news coverage. It also is not even close to the only way. (Also, ICE is arresting people who aren’t breaking laws, so it’s a little hard to gauge arrest risk right now.)

• ICE patrol on the ground. (This looks like: regular ass people walking up and down the street in front of diverse schools, businesses, and neighborhoods.)

• One group went to do song presence and witness outside of a detention facility.

  · While they were there, a group of anarchists used metal plates to block the entrance and got into more of a direct conflict with agents. Both are strategies! Resistance is an ecosystem and we can celebrate diversity!

• Visiting churches mutual aid efforts to see their operations and connect with parishioners who are keeping each other fed.

  • A note: there was an ICE abduction that happened to take place right outside the church that a group of our people had gone to for “low risk” learning. It was scary and awful and we never know what is going to happen where.

• Song leadership training.

  

• Sing- in at Target headquarters (based in Minneapolis). We did a surprise clergy action where we held the space by singing and also raised our demands to the corporation to stop cooperation with ICE. They tried to get us to leave, we resisted. We had calm de- escalators. We need to target not just government but all the businesses that cooperate with ICE. We need to force side- taking of corporations.

• Digital storytelling as component of the action:

Whatever way you feel about it, the internet is a powerful place to spread ideas. (It’s also a place of mass surveillance). Be sure to tell compelling stories that focus on what we want to grow. Document + share (and be sure to check with anyone who you feature about posting at an action.) This is not a digital security piece, but you should read up and lock down your info as much as possible. Turn off location sharing, etc.

Key lesson: *We had to take responsibility for ourselves and figure out what made sense for us! There was not one leader to check the clip board!*

Again, there is not one perfect way – we need to, and have power to, throw grist in every gear of this machine. We can stop trying to plan THE perfect action and commit to supporting each other with doing MANY types of work. Whatever strategy you commit to, having the numbers to back you up AND CLEAR DEMANDS that you raise as part of the action felt critical.

Song!!!

There was so! Much! Singing! In! Minneapolis! There are a lot of choirs (St. Olaf’s choir, church culture, etc.) in the greater Minnesota area, and people like to sing. People kept saying “we’re good at harmony” and would break into many stacked chords quickly. ( Sarina Partridge is one of many inspiring song leaders doing a lot of resistance singing who I got to learn a bit with this weekend.)

A friend of a friend learned I was also a resistance singer back home, and added me to a signal thread for “song leaders for resistance.” There were 1000 people on my thread, called “Group 2”. I have since learned that there are so far 3 such threads of ~1,000 people each (signal groups max at 1k apparently) and that people keep signing up.

Decentralizing logistics again: these huge threads are for announcements only of where to come for a singing action or to a training.

Next, singing resistance leaders plan to help people break themselves into small, geographically based or friendship-group based pods so they can sing resistance in all their neighborhoods.

Small is resilient. We need a million pretty good song leaders, just like action planners, not one great song leader.

We heard from people who were staying in place in their houses getting sung to in solidarity, and their experiences of having song help them feel less alone.

Learning more short, easy to teach songs is helpful for keeping you warm when it’s cold out!

”We cannot let this terror campaign make us into what they are. We cannot become filled with hate. Song quickly communicates beauty, harmony, presence and love. We have to do as much good as they are doing evil. Song keeps us in the heart place from which we want to be moving.” - notes from the group during my song training

Faith + Spirit have a role in movement.

Faith based organizing is alive + powerful in Minneapolis. People of faith and conscience have a role to play in these movements because, to use Hebrew National’s slogan: “We answer to a higher authority!” (I’m jk… but I’m also deadly fr.)

Once again, faith leaders being involved helps remind us that laws are not moral — laws are reflections of power. Clergy help separate these ideas out and remind people that sometimes you have to not comply when what is deemed “legal” is horrific.

To name that the power of a loving, unstoppable and unending force (God!) is on the side of what is “illegal” more than balances the scales. It invites regular people to do civil disobedience to be in right relationship to justice. (And, FWIW, I don’t think most of what ICE is doing even complies with what this administration claims is legal, not that it’s particularly important anymore.)

• Kneeling, praying clergy with hands up get arrested is a powerful image that has helped move change historically. It’s working today too.

• When I attended the ritual of Friday night shabbat services at Shir Tivkah, the dvar was the best I have ever heard in my life. Rooted in Torah, connected to the parsha, speaking directly on ICE and police abolition, and a loving world where we all are collectively thriving. There was beautiful deep text reading about moving collectively like locusts to stand up to empire like Pharoah. There was song. I wept. There were children and elders. It was exactly needed and so connective. We all need ritual rejuvenation. I hope you can get in a space like this shul soon.

The rally at the stadium had 10K people after the massive march of 50K people, and it opened with multiple voices of Native leadership. I want to underscore this. A number of Indigenous leaders sang and spoke before anyone else, in the language of this place, waking us all in the crowd up to a longer story than that of the US empire. They helped remind us that there are many other stories available to us and when this narrative has come to its end, we can get inside of a bigger, more beautiful story.

Next, we heard from a Baptist preacher who brought fire and cadence and love, from a rabbi and an Imam who both spoke beautiful, clear words about the moment, what is possible when we come together. One asked, “when we are no longer using all this energy to fight this evil machine, imagine what we can build together! What are we growing now under the crust of empire?” a beautiful question to ponder.

Interfaith action is unstoppable. When we move together with the ultimate deep well of power (g-d, holiness, universe, life, spirit, whatever you want to call it) 1+1 is so much more than even 3— it’s infinite.

Using very “American”/ normative – coded spaces to do “radical” work is impactful.

The end of the march culminated in a rally inside a massive stadium. On the jumbotron we saw “ICE OUT”. I can’t remember the last time I was in a stadium, but it felt so deeply OF THE PEOPLE of the place to gather in this space.

• Of note: the city owns the downtown stadium. I was trying to figure out who paid for the rental, and it seems like the city allowed the gathering to happen for free. (I could be wrong! LMK if this is off, but it’s what the people around me from Minneapolis told me at the rally.) Public spaces for public purposes! If we hadn’t been allowed to be inside there, seems impossible we would have been able to remain gathered at all, given the temps.

• More on the power of having a space: the location of the song leader training was at a new urban folk school called Center for People and Craft (!), and was made possible because the city had a “vibrant storefronts” program. This program allowed people with ideas to pitch them to the city. If they won, they got $50K a year for 2 years (aka free rent for 2 years) to be able to do their project. This folk school hosted our training for free ninety nine re: song leading. (Generosity breeds generosity!!)

**If you have a space, making it available to community groups for free is a way of building power and bringing people in equitably**

All cities should have this vibrant storefronts program!!!

Non-cooperation from local leaders matters SO MUCH.

The city supported the rally to happen in a public space. The mayor and the governor are not cooperating with ICE. School boards are organizing quickly and pivoting when need be (i.e., moving classes to remote learning when they feared ICE raids this week).

Excellent music/ vibes / art create a texture of values and possibility that shape how we all feel.

Those of us at the front of the march arrived an hour or two (!) before the back of the march got done marching, there were so many people. We had to wait a long time in line to get in. First, there was a marching band playing while we waited, and people were dancing and happy.

When we got into the rally, there was an incredible DJ spinning EPIC tracks. The vibes were so on point and people were chatting with the folks around them, taking pictures together and sharing their “why are you here” with each other. Turned what could have been a drag (waiting around) into the best part (community building).

There was art all over the city depicting our asks and our vision in a million different, beautiful ways.

None of us does anything on our own. I was so supported in attending this action.

After getting the call to come, I needed help to do it. I reached out to my community and I made concrete asks for support. Sometimes I feel sheepish doing that, but it also provides a way for people who can’t be on the front lines with a way to help. They don’t have to say yes.

But people are SO GENEROUS and showed up for me. I carried a feeling of, I am doing this with the support of my community and on behalf of our whole community since we can’t all just hop on a plane:

Friends and comrades shared money for flights or hotels/ food/ etc. Any money that was extra to what the clergy delegation needed to get to and from Minneapolis will then go to mutual aid. I was bowled over by the scale and scope of gifts— just truly so generous. Old friends, old mentors supported me, and the larger mutual aid net, in ways that surprised and moved me to tears.

Kiddo support-- a neighbor watching kids so I could be at a prep meeting when my partner had to work; a teacher staying late with our preschooler because he couldn’t be in two places at once.

Ritual support: friends gave me courage tincture, lucky stones for my pockets, a mala bead necklace, a clove of garlic (because we are witchy baba yagaas over here) , prayers and chants, chocolate chocolate and more chocolate, a pair of yak traks for my boots.

My partner went out and bought be a zillion hand-warmers and the best gas mask for tear gas prep, stayed home with the kids, did a million seen and unseen acts of support. He spoke with me extensively when I felt scared, encouraged me to heed the call even though it scared him too, and checked in on me when I was out on actions. <3 you boo.

Some sentences I heard repeatedly:

- This is no ones job, and we are working 24/7, and it’s fucking beautiful what we’re doing.

- We will not become what they are.

- We have love on our side.

- We will not stop.

- We are doing what we can.

- We are showing up for our neighbors.

- I am doing my small piece.

- I am not afraid.

- I am afraid, but I am doing it anyway.

- God is with us.

- Thank you.

And finally, a song recording from a Singing Resistance training, song by Peace Poets, taught by one of the badass song leaders inside the folk school. We were all singing this together for the first time, and we quickly found our harmony.