My @mcytblrholidayexchange gift for @kuruasu! Happy new year and sorry it took so long!
"Friends outside of Minnesota please read. I'm sharing a post written by a personal friend and medical doctor:
Friends outside MN, you need to know what is happening here. Everyone knows that ICE shot and killed a woman here on Wednesday. But that’s not the only thing that’s going on:
- ICE agents are cruising areas with immigrant-owned businesses, and kidnapping patrons and employees alike. Yesterday they abducted two US citizen employees at a suburban Target, one who was begging them to allow him to go get his passport to show them.
- ICE is going door to door in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, asking residents where their immigrant neighbors live. Read that again. If it sounds like something out of your high school history textbook, that’s because it is.
- ICE is targeting schools and school buses. They pepper sprayed teenagers and abducted two school staff members at the high school up the street from me on Wednesday. Police are literally escorting school buses to ensure children can get to school and home safely. The Minneapolis Public Schools have moved to virtual learning for the next 4 weeks because it’s unsafe for children or teachers to physically come to school.
- They are targeting hospitals and clinics. Patients are scared and are cancelling their appointments or just not showing up. Kids are missing their checkups and vaccines, folks aren’t getting their cancer care, etc.
- They are smashing windows in cars and homes.
- ICE is increasingly picking up Native Americans—again, targeting folks based on skin color alone.
- They are arresting and beating legal observers. A friend of a friend had her arm broken yesterday. Folks are showing up at local hospitals, brought in in ICE custody, with severe injuries that are absolutely inconsistent with mechanism of injury reported by ICE. (Think: patient appears to have been beaten unconscious, while ICE agent says he slipped and fell.)
I can’t emphasize enough that these ICE agents do not have warrants. There are 2,000+ agents here and they are simply hunting for anyone that’s not white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or a green card holder, they will kidnap you first and ask questions later.
But the community is fighting back. - Protests are happening every day.
- Community groups have been leading know-your-rights sessions for months, often to packed venues.
- Whistles are being distributed by the thousands, carried on keychains and worn on coat zippers, always at the ready to be blown in warning if ICE is spotted.
- Drivers are following ICE vehicles, blaring their horns in warning.
- Businesses are locking their doors even while open to keep employees and customers safe. As I type this, I’m standing guard at the locked door of our neighborhood burrito joint while I wait for my takeout order, so the employees can focus on their jobs. The place is packed with neighbors supporting this small business.
- Anti-ICE signs are posted everywhere. The community is making it crystal clear that ICE is not welcome here.
- Parents and neighbors are standing guard outside schools, organizing carpools, and escorting kids to and from school on foot.
- Parents of kids in Spanish-immersion daycare (there are a LOT of these daycares here!) are keeping their kids home so the teachers don’t have to take the risk of coming to work.
- Churches and community groups are holding fundraisers to buy and deliver groceries to families who don’t feel safe leaving home.
- Mutual aid money is going out to folks who can’t make rent because they can’t work or because a breadwinner was abducted, or who need a warm place to stay after their home’s windows were smashed.
THAT is what is happening here. This fight is ongoing and it’s horrifying to watch. But we are not backing down. To my friends in other cities and states, don’t think for a minute that this won’t happen in your town. It will. Be ready. Learn from us, as we have learned from Portland and Chicago and New York. Fight back. Don’t let us get to the last line of Martin Niemoller’s poem.”
-Grant Boulanger
Here's an AP news brief with a little more info. It's limited in the way major news outlets are right now but provides context that supports the personal account shared.
sometimes i wonder if we have forgotten that sharing creative work is, fundamentally, a bid for human connection. like I'm not posting art or fic for 'engagement' i'm posting it looking for other sickos to play with! i'd be making it anyway for my own gratification because there's something wrong with me, i'm sharing it hoping we can have something wrong with us together <3
hold on let me google something
what the fuck
happy Boston Molasses Flood to all who celebrate
hold on let me google something
what the fuck
I hate that ‘bad dream’ just means ‘nightmare’ instead of ‘shitty quality dream.’ I had a bad dream last night. It wasn’t scary it just didn’t make a lot of narrative sense
Between the nothingburger and the everything bagel, there is the somewhat sandwich.
listen. There's a whole mentality shift that needs to happen culture wide here, from the schools to the public infrastructure to pet ownership to the justice system
The proper response to your dog doing a natural behavior you dislike (digging/barking/protecting etc) it to give them an appropriate time and place to engage in that behavior
The proper response to skateboarders damaging infrastructure is to build more and better skate parks, or build skate elements into the public infrastructure on purpose.
The proper response to homeless people sleeping on park benches is to build them houses.
you see how there's like, a commonality at play here?
The proper response to a disruption is to address the root of the disruption directly, not somehow attack the disruption itself -
you don't invent a muffler by swinging a bat at the engine noise, you don't relieve your hunger by punching yourself in the stomach, you don't resolve public unrest by sending armed men to control them and you don't prevent homeless people using bus shelters as a roof by removing the bus shelters.
a whole ass shift in a basic mindset, i'm tellin' you. We need it.
god I wish I had a pair of menacing black gauntlets with really sharp fingertip claws I bet it feels good as fuck to have your hands resting palm-down on a surface and then scratch some deep fucking gashes into it as you clench your hand a little closer to a fist when your evil minion delivers some bad news to you



vangogh-vanhoe


triflesandparsnips
