Image: The Portland Frog riding the Minnesota Loon carrying the progressive queer flag and the MN state flag shield, flying towards the resistance by Freddie Schwager.

Yesterday was very busy for me.

I got a text from MONARCA in the late morning that there were 20 heavily armed iCE agents attempting to gain access to the Dorothy Day facility in downtown Saint Paul. I hopped in my car and headed out, but, as seems to be typical of me, I arrived fifteen minutes too late. I talked with a witness and he told me that the staff locked the doors and demanded a warrant. ICE was forced to leave without abducting anyone. I was joking to a friend that they should send me out to every one of these calls because every one I have ever arrived at, it has either been a false alarm or, as in this case, the ICE agents left empty-handed. I am, apparently, some kind of anti-ICE luck charm. ;-)

So, even though, for me, it wasn't a confrontation, I was still really keyed up afterwards. So, I basically just went directly to my Food Communists and spent three hours packing up groceries for folks sheltering in place/in hiding. The nice thing about my Food Communists is that they are also a homeless/unhoused warming shelter and so they have free meals. I can't forget to eat if I'm at ZCC because someone will tell me to sit and eat at some point, which is good.

Then, at 6 pm yesterday, I signed up for a legal observer training with COPAL. I'll be honest with you all? I have only ever kind of been half-assed trained in this. I was signed up with MONARCA, but I missed the actual training session, and have been relying on notes taken by a friend. So, this seemed like a really good opportunity to get the whole deal. I'd also attended that national training via the ACLU the night before, and, given that my brain is a soupy seive right now, I figure the more times I hear how it's done, the better.

The Observer trainers were expecting 150 people so I walked over. Despite the temperatures, the church sponsoring this event is only five or six blocks away. The place was packed. They actually had Constitutional Observers outside on ICE watch because... I guess because we no longer trust those jackbooted thugs not to terrorize people just trying to learn how to protect their neighbors.

A couple of funny things about the training. First, Minnesotans are still entirely Minnesotan.

The person running the training tried to get us all to introduce ourselves to our seat mates by asking us to ask a stranger "why they were here." Literally the people I sat by in the pew, were like, "I don't even know where else I would be? I am literally worried about our actual neighbor," I was like, "I know. It's kind of a weird question because the answer is: fascism?? Also, why would we sit by and let our neighbors get kidnapped when fifty of us show up to help someone get out of a ditch?" So, that was both good and very awkward because it was clear that a couple of guys just wanted to shrug because Minnesotan men are like "eh? 'Cuz it's the right place to be??"

Second, the trainer kept trying to get us more engaged by having people "popcorn" (which I guess just means shout out as the spirit moves you??)  some of the slides and this was... so very Minnesotan. You could tell people hated being asked to do this, but we were all there because we were willing to get out of our comfort zones so people just FORCED themselves to speak up. It was kind of hilarious because the, like "OMG, FINE I WILL SPEAK WITHOUT RAISING MY HAND THIS IS SO PAINFUL I WILL DIE IF I ACCIDENTALLY TALK OVER SOMEONE" was palpable in the air?

But, it was a good meeting and I am now signed up on COPAL as well as MONARCA.

I woke up really sore from all the physical work at the Food Commies, so I have declared today a mental and phsyical rest from the revolution.

Have I read anything?  Just the training manual for the constitutional observers. It's been rough!

 
Image: a Minnesota state bird crushing ICE in its beak. Art by Annie Shao.

You have likely all heard the news, we have turned away at least one of the goons from our streets. Greg Bovino has been sent packing.  Horray! Now there are 2,999 more to go!!

There are some conflicting reports that all of ICE is leaving, but I don't find that terribly plausible. I hate to say it, but I suspect they realize that they FUBARed their PR by executing a white man who was not only an ICU nurse for Veterans, ffs, but also a stridant 2nd Amendment guy. They are hoping, I think, that Minnesotans only really care about white people and that once they reduce their numbers in our streets we'll turn our backs on their atrocities against our immigrant neighbors.

Think again, A$$holes.

 Already today, I fielded a request for someone in one of my little resistance cells who wanted to get involved in packing groceries for folks over with the Food Communists. People are not stopping. We are continuting to show up for each other. In fact, yesterday, when I was at the Food Communists, they asked for a show of hands for how many people were showing up for the first time and a half a dozen hands shot into the air. It is very heartwarming.

So, yeah, the resistance continues apace. 

Besides packing food, I also went out to join my singing group, which decided to stand outside of a lesbian sports bar on University Avenue? It was a weird locale (if only because it's hard to know what we're doing, since lots of people stand outside of bars to smoke.) We had only four people, but one of them was someone in my Thirsty Sword Lesbians group, Laurel, so that was cool!  We sang songs for about a half hour and that was about as much as my toes could take, so it worked out. Plus, I had signed up to get a little bit of a refresher course on Legal Observing from the ACLU, which was a Zoom event, at 7 pm. 

The ACLU Zoom was okay but not focused on what to do locally, so I'm also attending one for Ward 4 (my congressional ward) tonight, in person, at a local church, because I have completely forgotten everything important. That starts at 6pm tonight, and I am telling you to reminnd myself because my brain on fascism is very soupy.  (My brain was already a seive as the joke goes? Now all the information going in also turns to soup... so very, very little is being retained.)

But, we had a win!  Go TEAM!!

Oh, and I should note? The ACLU Zoom had 60,000 people signed up for it across the nation. That's still a tiny fraction of America, but still impresssive. 

Alex Pretti, who was an RN, a helper, and a legal observer, was executed by the state yesterday afternoon.

I fully believe this death was in retaliation for the successful Twin Cities wide general strike, the clergy sit-in at the airport, and the of thousands who flooded the streets on Friday. Yes, Alex owned a gun and was carrying it, but that is his right as guarunteed by the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States (usually my least favorite given how often it is perverted by the opposition.) But, he was not threatening anyone as the video evidence clearly shows. Believe your eyes, not the lies. This is actually why they hate us so much. Everyone comes with their phones charged and video on. Our very own Greg Ketter of Dreamhaven Books and Comics was on the scene: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/minnesota-man-curses-out-ice-agents-at-scene-of-fatal-shooting-tktktk-fuck-you-tktkt_n_697506d2e4b0dcc40307a358 and has a few choice words for the ICE agents.

I got the news of Alex's murder on Saturday during a bio-break in my D&D game.  Ironically, we were just starting to try to get back to a kind of normal.  We were able to play a bit, but the second half turned into leveling up characters and planning next sessions. Everyone's ability to play pretend was just sort of unwound. 

The neighborhood that Alex Pretti was murdered in is called Whittier and is named after Quaker poet and abolishonist, John Greenleaf Whittier. The local Friends groups sent out a call to ask people to not gather en masse (there was concern, of course, that this second murder was an attempt to incite a riot so that the Trump Administration could invoke the Sedition Act,) but to instead stand in small neighborhood groups, light a candle and sing. For those who could not get out, they asked that people put candles outside or in a window. 

I had already seen on a Signal group that a bunch of my singers were planning to gather at Snelling & Minnehaha, near Ginko's Coffeeshop. So Mason and I headed over there to sing with people and hold up a light in the darkness. We had a big group. We sang a lot of excellent songs that helped soothe the soul. A couple of assholes (possibly ICE) revved their engines threateningly at us and flipped us off as they drove by, but we just raised our voices to drown them out. 

It was an awful day, but our gathering was peaceful and beautiful. Collin from the Food Communists was there with his wife, and two of my D&D players, Shawn and Carillon, came as well.

I missed telling you all about Friday.  I did tell you what I was planning to do, and that was pretty much how it went. We have a guest (Mason's partner) and my toes were frost-nipped several years ago while waiting for a tow-truck after an accident on one of these horribly cold days. I was in my super butch phase and had cool looking footwear that wasn't actually very climate resistant. I know, I know. I have since learned my lesson! But, because my toes will start feeling like they are on fire after a couple of hours in this kind of weather, so I decided to just focus on protecting the mosque during Friday prayers since that is something that is very drop in/drop out.

I needed to go anyway to the mosque because I have a couple of neighbors who needed introductions into the rebellion, so we drove over together (it was -11 F/-24 C). I found someone who was part of the Rapid Response team and so my neighbors got connected to the right groups. It was cold enough that we had planned on just having Constitutional Observers at the doors. We were introduced to the imam, imam Hussein, who was so incredibly generous. The folks there always thank us, which... as a Minnesotan I want to demur, but I've been learning to just accept. Someone in the community put down $60 at the little deli in the food mall that's attached to the mosque so that folks could have free tea and sambusa.  My friends who had come for introductions were on street detail (in my car) watching for ICE and so I brought them out a couple of sambusa. They couldn't believe the generosity and I jokingly said to them, "I bet you didn't know that the revolution has perks."

There's been a lot of Star Wars imagery going around and I kind now want someone to make some art about how we all used to say "Come to the Dark Side, we have cookies," and we could now say, "Join the Rebellion, we have sambusa!" (This is not localized. There are a lot of Somali folks who have been handing out sambusa to protectors and protesters.)

The usual mosque group were told to stay away or go to downtown because of the cold, but by 2:00 pm a decent-sized crowd joined and so I went home, honking and waving at all the people taking the lightrail to the big rally. 

While we were still quite small someone snapped a picture for us to post on Facebook. (Only people who agreed to be photographed are in this picture!)


Our small group outside of the mosque. I am in the back row second from the left (before the bright yellow hat.)

Not as impressive as the downtown rally, but everyone is doing their part. 

Including the drag queens (see below):



Image: a fabulous laser-eyed loon advertising for a drag show and dance party for the revolution.

I just love the community that is happening around these things, too. I met several neighbors and discovered one of them was a longtime roommate with my college friend, Nick. Several others were part of the Twin Cities Geek group. We talked about the resistance and D&D and crafting while sipping tea and waving at passing cars (only a couple of which flipped us off and one, likely an ICE agent filmed our faces.)  

There was another lovely moment when the imam was reminding us to go eat sambusa when one of his congregation really, really wanted to explain halal to us and the imam gently put out his hand and said, "Brother, these people understand us. They know halal." And.... I could have cried honestly? It's so nice to see the love going in both directions. 


Okay, y'all go be Pretti Good.