I know I haven’t posted regularly on this blog in years but I’m not seeing a whole lot of posts on this site about what’s happening in Minneapolis right now. And the posts I am seeing are not covering the scope of it. I’m genuinely surprised because tumblr is usually where I find out about things organically through my feed. So I’m making a post about it.
A brief summary of events, from someone who pays attention and also lives here, best taken with a grain of salt and some fact checking:
2020: George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police. There are weeks of protests about it. It makes national news. Protests happen in DC. The infamous Trump and his bible photo shoot happens.
2024: Gov. Tim Walz is Kamala Harris’ running mate in the presidential election. He starts the “they’re just weird” thing. Is folksy, Trump personally hates him.
November 2025: ICE starts showing up to “crack down” on “illegal immigrants” in our Somali community. I may remember the numbers wrong, but something like 90% of our Somali neighbors are either naturalized or were born here. People distribute ICE whistles and are on high alert. Localized to the twin cities.
December 2025: Nick Shirley is paid by a bunch of MN Republicans to do an exposé on daycare fraud. I didn’t hear much about this. All I really know is this was an ongoing investigation that MN officials were already taking care of and some of the guilty parties have already gone to court from a COVID era food assistance program. Mostly, if not all, legal US citizens. He did a really bad job at doing journalism and just showed up to day cares with a camera crew and went “YUP nobody’s here” as if they weren’t in lock-down procedure because some fuck ass white men showed up with camera equipment that could easily be mistaken for guns. I believe. I will fact check all of this and will correct myself in a reblog if necessary. (source but not all the details that I remember hearing about but they said there was no recorded evidence of fraud)
Conservative internet explodes. Kristi Noem sends a mess of agents. I know it’s more than a thousand more. They call it Operation Metro Surge. They are going everywhere. There are protests. People try to interrupt the arrests. It’s a lot.
1/7/2026: Renee Nicole Good is shot by an ICE agent in the middle of a protest. A few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. Broad daylight. In front of a crowd. While she was following instructions to turn her vehicle around. Jonathan Ross, the piece of shit Nazi who did it, was recording on his phone the whole time, switched his phone to his non dominant hand so he could more effectively shoot her in the face from 2 feet away. Claims self defense, several angles immediately disprove him. He releases his video, he calls her a “fucking bitch” as her corpse drives away. Does not help him at all. (source) He has not been seen since. Some photos/reports exist of a bunch of agents showing up to his house and taking some tubs and art away. His wife is an immigrant. (source but it’s the daily mail so grain of salt.)
Not hours later they go raid a school and tear gas a bunch of kids. (source). Minneapolis has switched to distance learning. I’m not sure about St. Paul.
The last week: There are up to 3,000 ICE agents here. Keep in mind Minneapolis and St. Paul only have 600 or fewer police officers each. So these dudes are roaming in packs. It’s 2-4 dudes to a car and 2-5 cars per pack. People are “commuting with” ICE agents to honk and alert people that they’re there. People are going on patrols with their neighbors.
ICE is no longer asking “are you a citizen.” They are simply walking up to you and taking you into custody. They are going door to door. They have started just breaking the door down if you don’t comply. They are driving recklessly to just grab pedestrians and drivers alike (source). People are afraid to go get groceries. It’s all over the state. I am learning names of cities in places I thought were just factory farm land and I’ve lived here my whole life because they’re doing raids there. I had to text my family in the suburbs because I saw reports of my small little hometown an hour away getting door knocks today.
It’s insane and I am not doing it justice. There are thousands of masked federal agents roaming around all of Minnesota with no warrant or specific goal. They are just trolling around looking for people. They are detaining anyone and everyone. They are beating people. They are pepper spraying people. They are kidnapping people. They are acting unconstitutionally, aggressively, and unpredictably. They are creating situations that are dangerous so that they can try to justify beating or shooting their way out. I will run an errand and then get fed a tiktok that was shot from the Cub Foods that I just left and there’s 20+ ICE vehicles parked there now. They’re taking people from work, from day care, from schools, from shopping centers.
Iceout.org tracks ice sightings. This is a screen shot with the date set to 12/1/2025.
And from today.
They have cut off SNAP and WIC benefits. Just for us. Not any other state, just Minnesota. They’re saying it’s because of fraud but I think it’s because they hate that we use federal funds to give free breakfast and lunch to every public school student.
And this is breaking just now, 1/13/2026: the DOJ is trying to investigate Renee Good’s widow. 4 people have resigned about it. (source). I don’t even want to read the article to see what they’re saying.
So that’s a brief history.
Unicorn Riot is doing a lot of good reporting and they don’t seem to have the spin that a lot of local news stations will have where they downplay everything. This article specifically goes into a lot of the specific instances of brutality.
It’s also a rumor on TikTok that all of the videos of ICE and protests and the such and the like are being geo locked. So my feed is all footage of people being detained and talking about the “commuting” they’re doing and what they’re seeing but people outside of the state are not seeing it. So if you’re also on that infernal app, try searching for Minneapolis or Minnesota and see what you see. I’m kind of curious if this is true. Because I’ve been living and breathing ICE and doomsday prepping content for a week. I’m sure those two topics aren’t connected.
I don’t really know what my goal with this post is. I’m tired. I’m in the first ring of suburbs, so it’s been pretty quiet. But I have friends in south Minneapolis. And I’m worried for them. And I know it’s a matter of time before my quiet pocket is affected. Because they’re coming door to door.
Pay attention to Minnesota, I think an example is being made of us.
Update- Minnesota republicans are taking this opportunity to try to impeach Govt Waltz, who has already declared that he will not seek re-election in November because of Republican death threats against him and his family. Because of the “fraud”. But actually because Waltz is speaking very plainly about what is happening here.
St Paul has gone to partial virtual learning for anyone who doesn’t feel safe sending their kids to school.
Every school I know now has safety patrols.
The school districts are not mincing words about the clear and present threat. Everyone in the area is completely clear that we are under violent occupation.
Most of the white people ICE grab, are released within days, because ICE can’t even keep track of who was grabbed by who over what. However, they are still subjected to beatings, gassing, having their home and car windows smashes, etc.
Local police are advising compliance with the blatant human rights violations and total lack of due process, because they are cowards.
Even conservative Minnesotans are balking at the total lack of due process and open violence against unresisting people for doing things like taking videos. I know a guy who was in his house recording ICE, and they smashed his home window, dragged him out over the broken glass, beat him while screaming slurs, smashed his phone, and detained for three days.
We need your help to spread the truth about what is going on. Find the videos and share them on any platform you have. Make noise about what’s happening. Get your “don’t tread on me” relatives whipped up about it if you can.
We need republicans to be afraid, otherwise ICE plans to be here for half a year attacking us.
If human rights can be revoked because Trump doesn’t like your state, then they aren’t rights anymore, they are favors dispensed by your king.
I live pretty far north and in an incredibly conservative area, and even up here, this is the first time I’ve seen this energy, I’m a bit sleep deprived and I’m struggling with words, as much as I hate the fact it took this long and took hitting this close to home to get through to people, I’ve seen more people than ever talking openly about how they think this is wrong, I can’t put it into words but like, I went to the store and strangers were casually talking about the protests, and casually talking about how the protests are a good thing, in all the time I’ve lived up here it’s never been like this, even at places like pride, even about our very calm completely cleared with the city protests, there’s been this air of “it’s not safe to talk about things like that in public” and for the first time ever, it’s not. im not exaggerating when i say everyone knows someone personally who’s been effected by ice, even mostly white mostly conservative area, everyone knows someone
and there’s been other things too, like, maga signs are getting taken down or vandalized at a rate I haven’t seen
it’s felt a bit surreal
I worry myself sick about my family member from Nepal, about her kids, about nurses and doctors I’ve had, about strangers I’ve met, about my friends and family who I know are at protests in the cities, and about every member of my community who I know relies on that government funding to get by
So it’s come my attention that there are a lot of students, particularly in humanities and social sciences disciplines, who need to hear this, so here goes:
Do the readings.
Oh my God, just do the readings. I promise, it gets easier once you get into the habit of it.
What makes a good student? Doing the readings. Literally just doing the readings is enough to make you a good student.
The readings *are* the course. The lectures are just priming you for the readings. The tutorials and seminars are just how we collectively process the readings. If the readings were intended to be optional, they would have been listed under the “optional readings” heading.
“Oh but I hate this reading! The author’s an idiot, they’re wrong about everything” Good. Do the reading and then tear it apart in class. This isn’t high school, you’re not expected to mindlessly absorb things anymore
If you’re in physics, do the derivations. Don’t believe that any equation given to you is true. Derive it. Convince yourself that it must be true, and understand the limitations of its truth.
The very first lecture I give my students emphasizes that they do not have to accept the readings as truth from on high. They don’t even have to like them! Critical reading is perhaps the most important skill I hope they take away from my course, and you can’t develop it if you’re not doing the fucking readings!
The point of the readings is to get everyone on even ground so you can actually DISCUSS them.
The difference between college-level discussion and tumblr screaming matches is that everyone’s supposed to have read the same shit, so everyone knows what everyone else is referencing.
Do you know what college-level discussion does not need? The fucking tumblr experience of a clueless dipshit walking in and asking why everyone is arguing about curtain colors, because you didn’t read “The Curtains Are Blue: A Quick Summary.”
Reading does not mean agreeing with. Reading does not mean endorsing. Reading just means you know what the fuck was actually written, and therefore you’re in a position to talk about it.
If you take one thing out of college, let it be this: If people have not read/experienced something, then their sincerest opinion of it doesn’t fucking matter. That applies to you, too. That’s literally one of the most basic things college is meant to teach you.
It’s okay if you fucking hate the readings. It’s okay if you disagree with them. But you have to read them because otherwise you’re paying a fucking fortune to be a goddamn twitter rando.
The term “ascending to idgafhood” been rattling in my head for days now.
it looks and feels exactly like this tbh
Me when I ascend to idgafhood:
When one simply decides she has won the idgaf war:
The idgaf energy surging through my body:
When I finally decide idgaf and a beam of light shoots from my chest, scaring the birds from the trees, signaling to the natural world that a protector it previously mourned as gone has finally returned:
Look. Treating black people you disagree with as more particularly loud scary and masculine is always gonna be mask off racist and transmisogynistic. Why do see you every black woman who hates your abuse denial as a man? Many such questions.
“Everyone who disagrees with me is a violent, weak black man secretly.” Yeah so that’s like. JK Rowling 101.
i feel like people dont think im serious when i say “death to America” but like my ultimate dream is for the USA to no longer exist like of course i dont respect politicians or cops or the law i dont want a “better America” i quite literally do not want the entity known as the United States of America to outlive me
LAND BACK today and every day forever we have to kill all settler colonies
