Our Journey to Minneapolis

(Photo taken by me at my kids' home in Minneapolis)

Our trip to Minneapolis was planned as a regularly scheduled visit to our children and grandchildren. 

As the date grew closer, my husband noted with chagrin that it would likely be the coldest week of the winter, but the grandkids are totally worth it.

Except that this time, the context was different.  Our son and his family live in the neighborhood where Renee Macklin Good was murdered.  He happened to be driving out of the neighborhood on January 7^th to go to the dentist when he encountered a crowd of people.  He parked his car and approached to see if he could help, just in time to see Renee’s body carried out of her car.  He saw with his own eyes that ICE officers tried to stop the ambulance from approaching to bring her body to the hospital.  He spent some time, along with other volunteers, helping people who had been pepper-sprayed, pouring water into their eyes to relieve their pain.

We had been following the news very closely already, especially because of our deep connections to the Twin Cities.  But knowing that our son had seen unspeakable things was hard to bear.  We hoped to be able to bring him and his family some extra support.

Then, with just a few days’ notice, the announcement came that  clergy in the Minneapolis area had called for a mass national mobilization.  Clergy and faith leaders were to converge on Minneapolis to bring our love and our prayer to the beleaguered people on the ground, and to learn what Minneapolis had to teach all of us.  As my colleagues scrambled to make their flight plans, I was glad to know that I would be there.

Twelve hundred members of the clergy responded to the invitation.  The largest church available could only accommodate six hundred fifty.  For much of the day on January 22^nd, I sat among six hundred fifty clergy of all faiths, singing and praying, stretching our hearts and strengthening our determination to oppose the administration’s brutal assault on those whom everyone referred to as “our neighbors.”  There was no separation.  This wasn’t Jews caring about Jews or even immigrants caring for other immigrants.  This was everyone caring for everyone, in a stunning collective experience of loving our neighbor as ourselves. 

That morning, we heard from organization heads from a variety of  communities:  Jewish, Latine, Native American, East African, and gay and trans.  Deeply moving stories were told about the love and care being offered to oppressed people. Awestruck, we learned about the powerful, often spontaneous, efforts of wide swaths of Minnesotans buying and delivering groceries, accompanying children whose parents were afraid to leave home to school, patrolling to alert neighbors when ICE vans were in their neighborhoods, fund-raising to support families in which the breadwinner has been detained or deported, and much more.  I know of one family that identified an underused apartment in their family and offered it to an immigrant who felt it was unsafe for her to return to her own home.

Periodically someone would start another soul-stirring song.  Lyrics like “We will not leave anyone behind this time.” “We will not underestimate our power any longer.”  “We are gentle, loving people and we are singing for our lives.”  “We are all related.”  We sang and prayed and cried, hugged each other and strengthened our spirits. The word repeated more than any other was “love.”

We were cultivating a resistance that was both tender and fierce, a transformative energy that was powerful, creative and humble.  We all assumed that those of us from outside of Minnesota might be the next targeted community next time.  We hoped that our own communities would rise with as much energy, courage and love as Minneapolis was doing. 

On January 23^rd, there were many opportunities to protest and learn. I spent half a day at an immigrant church in a neighborhood that had been intensely targeted by ICE.  We heard from church leaders about the plethora of ways in which they support their people, many of whom are afraid to leave their homes for fear of abduction.  The church raises money to buy and bring groceries to people who cannot leave their homes and accompanies children to school; it provides an onsite medical and accupuncture clinic for those afraid to visit their usual providers, and much more.  And the pastor, himself an immigrant, spoke in a lilting voice about the importance of maintaining a sense of joy and abundance.  The church periodically has dance parties, to invite people out of a sense of oppression and victimhood and into joy.

We heard from a group of young white activists from the neighborhood where our son lives.  Without help from any institution or established organization, these people organized what they called “hyper-local activism.”  Every neighborhood (even a city block or two), they said, had a Whatsapp or Signal group.  Groups of people would follow large black vans with tinted glass roaming the neighborhood.  A driver would text the license plate number of the van in front of them to a dispatcher, who could confirm from a makeshift database whether or not this van was ICE.  If it was, the driver would honk repeatedly, get out of the car and begin to whistle, to alert immigrant neighbors (or those who might be mistaken for immigrants) to be careful, to stay inside and keep their kids safe until ICE had moved on.  These young people took shifts accompanying children to school, patrolled schools at pick-up and dropoff times (favorite times for ICE to apprehend immigrant parents and faculty), gave rides to people afraid to drive their own cars to work, and more.

There was no central authority, no one telling these young people what to do.  This was a spontaneous expression of care for neighbors.  When one neighbor mentioned a need for rent money, one woman began to fundraise.  Everyone was doing something, guided by people in need, moved by their sense of connection to one another.

The morning had been rich but I needed a break and looked forward to getting back to my sister-in-law’s home.  But suddenly an announcement came:  the building was on lockdown.  There had been an ICE abduction in the neighborhood, during which two people had been injured.  These people were being treated in the church’s medical clinic. No one was to come in or out of the building until it was clear that ICE had left the neighborhood.  It was a strange and unnerving pause in the day until, ninety minutes later, we were told that we could leave – quickly, in small groups.

By now I wasn’t feeling well and called my husband to pick me up.  But the traffic in downtown Minneapolis, where my sister-in-law lives, was completely gridlocked.  In 15 degree below zero weather (did I mention that it was frigidly cold?), throngs of people walked through the streets, heading to several different demonstrations, including the one that held fifty thousand people at the Target Center.  It was strange to sit in such total gridlock but thrilling to see the amazing throngs of people with their signs and symbols of resistance, of solidarity, and of joy.

On Friday night, many visiting clergy (both Jewish and non-Jewish) attended services at one of many synagogues that had opened their doors.  We had a quiet shabbat dinner with our family, breathing in the joy of being with our sisters-in-law (both of whom are active in immigrant support activities) and our beautiful grandkids.

On Shabbat morning, January 25^th, we picked up the kids and went to the shul we had attended when we lived in the Twin Cities.  The first thing I noticed was how people greeted us.  Sure, they were glad to see us, but there was a quality of deep need in their hugs.  A need to be embraced by someone who had not been living this nightmare for months, as they had.  A hope to receive added strength from us.  A need to communicate just how bad it had been, and a desire to be seen in their pain and exhaustion.

But then the news filtered in that Alex Pretti had been murdered earlier that morning.  The rabbi gathered everyone in sorrowful prayer and song.  Many people around the sanctuary cried.  This was not someone that any of us knew personally, not a Jew or a colleague.  This was “a neighbor,” and his death (what everyone considered a murder) was a personal assault, a personal loss, and another layer of horror.  Many of these people volunteer, as Alex did, to take videos of ICE officers as they acted in ruthless and lawless ways with those presumed to be immigrants.  I did not talk to a single person who decided that they should not show up in these ways again, now that protesting had been marked as a capital crime.  People took in the horror and the outrage, grieved, and moved on.

At the end of shabbat, our son received a text message on his neighborhood whatsapp, inviting the whole neighborhood (about a city block all around) to a vigil in memory of Alex Pretti outdoors at 7 PM, and asking us to bring songs we might like to sing.  Our six-year-old immediately offered, “Let’s sing, ‘This Little Light of Mine’ !”  We bundled up the kids (it was now 10 or 15 degrees below zero) and walked the short distance to the gathering.  A group of neighbors stood around a small campfire built in the snow in the middle of a circle.  One person invited us to go around the circle and introduce ourselves.  Some people offered expressions of gratitude for this group of neighbors.  Others led songs of care and hope.  Of course, I had to step up and lead “This Little Light of Mine,” our granddaughter’s selection.  People lingered for awhile, greeting old friends and new ones, before heading back to our warm homes.

The contrast could not have been more vivid.  In the areas dominated by the cruelty and inhumanity of ICE, hatred and dehumanization reigned.  Here in this little neighborhood gathering on a frigid evening, neighbors reached out to each other, sharing their grief, their determination and their courage.  We drank in the strength of the collective, believing that together we could make this dark time give way to something better.

I had come to Minneapolis expecting to see the atrocities perpetrated by government officers. I heard about all of that.  But I also found a remarkable tapestry of love, generosity, and courage that touched my heart deeply.  I hope that when our own communities are invaded next (and I suspect they will be), that we will respond with the energy and nobility of the people of Minneapolis.  If we do, in a very limited way, we may participate in building the world as it should be, as the Psalmist said, with lovingkindness.