If one reads the national news, the commentary from day drinkers in out-state Minnesota, the reports breathless about “protesters clashing,” the speculations about how cold it will get this week (so cold that one is in danger of permanent eyeball damage if they cough too hard outside), whether the cold will cause Minnesotans to stay inside (no), one would miss the real stories of what is happening here.

I will start with the bad and the more widely reported – our city is being occupied. Many immigrant families, even those who entered the United States legally, even those who are citizens are rightfully terrified to leave their homes. Many people of color are as well. ICE agents break down doors, lie about the status of their warrants, leave children in the back of unoccupied cars in a city with a current temperature of seven degrees. 

The killing of Renee Good was not an anomaly of the recklessness and sheer animosity towards our city, people and children these agents continually demonstrate. Cars are rammed, ICE agents shoot tear gas into the intake vents of cars or open doors and spray the inhabitants including children, people are pulled from their vehicles, beaten, arrested and detained in the sections of the building ICE is using reserved for American citizens (this last phrase should give all Americans significant pause). Agents block streets and go door to door, asking for papers, asking inhabitants to report on neighbors, demanding a list of their neighbors who aren’t white, Wednesday night a man was shot running into his home and in order to get him out, agents fired “nonlethal weapons” into that house with small children and a pregnant woman. That same night a man packed his kids into the car to leave the neighborhood and instead had a flashbang and tear gas canister deployed at his car. Three of the children were hospitalized including his infant, whose heart stopped. 

ICE agents have rammed and flipped cars, caused numerous traffic accidents, pointed guns at, beaten and tear gassed countless protesters, Constitutional observers, clergy, journalists, bystanders and people going about their day, including American citizens who they detain due to their color of their skin and are either held or beaten and dropped off miles away. This includes minors, like the teen employee of Target. Schools have repeatedly been canceled due to the risk to the students of ICE agents, especially after students at Roosevelt High School were tear gassed. 

No one is safe – though many are less safe than other. And tied to the fear that fact creates is the knowledge that absolutely no one is coming to save us. Our Governor is hamstringed by the looming threat of the Trump administration invoking the Insurrection Act. Leaders in Washington are either cheering these events on, or have let us know that they are focused on other priorities, ones more likely to win them the mid-term elections. 

And though our city is being terrorized, it is definitely not terrified. This is the part that the national and international media is not understanding or failing to focus on. What is happening in Minneapolis is the claiming of the whole of the city as one’s neighbors – the taking of radical responsibility for the well being of each other while allowing our community to also take radical responsibility for us. Simply put, the people of my city right now are deeply engaged in love as a verb, an act, an unwavering commitment.  

How is this love being expressed? Parents organize to patrol the grounds of their children’s schools at dropoff and pickup (the time when ICE agents attempt to raid the school) and take turns putting their bodies on the line to protect children, theirs and those of others, trusting in their neighbor taking the next turn to keep all of their children safe. These parents are armed only with whistles, crossing guard vests, cameras and the righteous rage of those who protect the vulnerable. Elsewhere in Minneapolis, it’s PTA moms divvying up who is dropping supplies at which food shelf or to which family – who’s going to be responsible for getting the diapers, which people are going shopping for the needed food items, who is making sure to include menstrual supplies. This work is people and families checking on their neighbors, taking their kids to school, making sure people rightly scared to leave their homes have groceries, and agreeing to get their children back to them if the parents are deported. Lawyers gather to fulfill the oath they take at their swearing in to “support the Constitution of the United States and that of the state of Minnesota” by drafting habeas petitions, assisting with the lawsuits filed seeking injunctions to stop the worst of ICE’s practices, and assisting clients in ways that right now may feel closer to ministering than solely the practice of law. Dispatchers track ICE vehicles to warn neighborhoods where agents are headed, enabling the dispatch of community watch groups to monitor, document and hopefully protect our neighbors by mobilizing such a sheer presence of witnesses that these agents cannot grab or hurt people. They too put their bodies on the line for their neighbors, friends and community. There are no greater acts of love than these. 

As I have struggled in the past week to better understand the why and the how of both our occupation and the people’s response, I keep coming back to the Preamble of our Constitution and particularly two parts: the idea of a more perfect Union and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. At its core, the idea of the United States has always been a set of ideals that we have never lived up to (as our history and the current moment clearly attest). Yet, I still find hope in the idea of a “more perfect Union,” as a pledge ensconced in a list of shared commitments towards all in our country. What I have seen in Minneapolis this week is the work of democracy and a fundamental commitment not to seeking the more perfect Union, but braving the cold and creating it ourselves. I have seen it as the hope people share by joining in community for common purpose, in the celebration of the immigrants who make our lives and the lives of our communities richer and stronger. And I see it in the people risking their personal safety to protect others or to simply say, over and over and over again, “No,” that we will not accept this injustice. Minneapolis demonstrates a fundamental truth – it is impossible to secure the blessings of liberty just for me, my children and children’s children, unless I also work to create it for you and yours too.