Surviving...
...in Minnesota
Living in the chaos that is now Minnesota, I am frightened. I don’t think I’m going to be hurt or imprisoned today, but I don’t know that. Just driving through the normally calm streets of mid-town MPLS a week ago to pick up tacos in the middle of the day, on a busy street, I was suddenly surrounded by the danger and chaos of an ICE raid. I wasn’t hurt and I wasn’t imprisoned, but it rocked my world to see others chased by masked men like animals in a hunt right outside my windows.
I wanted to jump from my car and run into the fire, but I couldn’t. I have an amazing daughter who is entirely dependent on my not running into the fire. While others might be sad or angry or overjoyed that I might stand up at that moment and fight, Caty would be lost. She wouldn’t understand. She would only know that I didn’t come home that day.
Last night I read about a man grabbed by ICE as he was waiting to put his child on a school bus. As he was being taken to the ground and handcuffed, the bus arrived and his son had no choice but to get on that bus and watch his father taken away. He understood what was going on. He could see it. He saw the masked men. He watched them treat his father as an animal and likely knew his world had suddenly changed forever. I can’t imagine the horror of that moment for that little boy, but I can understand the guilt and desperation of that father.
He had no choice but to be consumed by the fire and see his son safely carried away to school watching.
This is what is happening every moment of every day in Minnesota. This is what we’re seeing outside our windows. As I write this, my friends are trying to define this ICE brutality in a chat group. Is it Gestapo? Is it the SS? Does it compare to our Civil War?
To me it doesn’t matter how it is defined. It is real. It is happening. I’m thinking of that little boy trying to be brave on his way to school. I think of that father, stripped of liberty and dignity in front of his son.
I think of Caty.
Sitting at that stop light, stunned by the shock and awe of the chaos escalating around me, I felt helpless and afraid. What happened next gave me hope. When we were finally allowed to move through the intersection, few of us moved. Some ran into the fire. The rest of us stubbornly sat there, blaring our horns baring witness to the lack of humanity until ICE gave up their hunt unable to proceed.
It’s easy to say we are living in a difficult time. It’s understandable that we may want to define what it means. It’s important that we survive.