“I just got a text from our neighbor….There’s a parked unmarked SUV idling across the street with their lights off.”
“Do you think they’re looking at us?”
“I’ll go look out the window.”
“Don’t do that, they might see you.”
“Maybe it’s not us they’re looking for.”
“Maybe it is.”
“But you’re a citizen and I have followed every step of the process the right way.”
“That doesn’t matter anymore. We don’t look like them.”
“But we’ve been here for years. They’re only after the worst of the worst. Hell, we both have jobs.”
“You mean, HAD jobs. It’s been two weeks since you felt safe enough to go to work and the restaurant where I work hasn’t had enough customers for them to call me in for two weeks.”
“Where are the kids?”
“I think they’re asleep.”
“Maybe we should run. Maybe we should keep them home from school tomorrow.”
“Honey, I am so afraid. What will become of us if they find us?”
This is a conversation happening between mothers and fathers on dark winter nights in Minneapolis, a city in the United States of America in the year 2026.
If you have the wrong skin color, if you have the wrong accent, if you worship God in a different way, this fear may be coming your way.
In Minneapolis we are seeing the worst of America. Xenophobic rage played out demanding papers for people who look a certain way, who talk a certain way. Forcing U.S. citizens and others to provide proof that they belong here. And in lieu of providing papers, they are taking photos of people’s faces for a massive database of facial recognition software to collect information on people.
They are taking photos of license plates to find out who owns them. People who have done nothing wrong but driving while not appearing to be “American enough” are having their information and their faces recorded and collected. Images of faces and license plate numbers of protestors are being collected by our government.
And the net they are casting is far wider than you might even realize. On a warm summer evening in New Jersey last summer, I saw two men get out of an SUV at a Mexican restaurant. They had blank baseball hats on and masks on. They took photos of the license plates of the cars parked there. It didn’t dawn on me what they might be doing at first. Five minutes later it hit me. Collect the plates, run them in a database and see what comes up.
Racial profiling while dining.
In a recent story in The Atlantic, Adam Serwer interviewed immigrants who fled a police state for a better life in America. They fled a country that required them to carry papers as proof of their ethnicity only to find that America had changed to become like the place they’d left.
But this is supposed to be about the worst of the worst. ICE agents are walking the streets in armed packs and violating the Fourth Amendment with impunity. They are targeting certain segments of our population.
And yet we know that for all the claims about waves of rapists, sex offenders, murderers and drug dealers, the threats of those crimes come in much higher numbers from U.S. citizens. We know that the biggest drug dealers of recent U.S. history have been respected people running respected pharmaceutical companies in collusion with massive consulting firms. They schemed to flood our streets with over-prescribed legal opioids destroying lives and families with dependency, addiction and overdose.
But the blame for our failings must be placed elsewhere. That makes for good politics, a path repeated throughout human history.
Ernest Hemingway, who covered the fascist movement of the Spanish Civil War, wrote in “For Whom the Bell Tolls”: “There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.”
Has fascism arrived in America? Ignoring the Fourth Amendment, harassing people because they are different may fall just short. But the forced collection and detention of people based on ethnicity and the fear being imposed would seem to be indicators.
At the very least, there are some angry and cruel people in power. In “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald, a literary son of the Twin Cities, created characters that fit our nation’s leaders today: wealthy, powerful, corrupt and careless. The carnage left in their wake meant nothing to them as they went on with their opulent lives.
Angry and cruel people have no place governing others, especially with their power going unchecked. Governing should require empathy and compassion. Governing should require what Robert F. Kennedy once said after observing hungry migrant workers in America: “This is why you go into politics, because you can use your position to help people in trouble.”
But, while the CO-EQUAL branches of government refuse to check the executive branch, this march toward power has met its check. It is the power of the people, specifically the people of Minnesota.
There are networks of people, citizens and non-citizens, helping families, helping their neighbors. They are paying rents and telephone bills for people who cannot leave their homes to work for fear of being taken. They are bringing food to people who fear going to the store. They are escorting children to and from school, or bringing schoolwork and school supplies to the ones who are afraid to leave.
They are observing and recording what is happening there. They are using information gathering tactics to stay ahead. And as they do, ICE is collecting their license plate numbers and even following some home: a warning to let citizens know that they know where they live.
These brave people, just ordinary people like you and me, are doing something extraordinary. That is true heroism.
They are putting their lives at risk to help their neighbors. They see people who, regardless of race or religion or legal status, need help and they help them. They recognize our common humanity.
And they are recording history so that their fellow Americans and people of the world can see what is happening on the streets of this country. For us they are holding a mirror to what we have become. For the rest of the world, they are holding a lens that shows what is happening in what Ronald Reagan called “the shining city on a hill.”
They are recording history because the truth must confront people in power showing a callous disregard for it. Renee Good and Alex Pretti paid the ultimate price for trying to make a difference. And politicians are using their positions not to help people in trouble, but rather to smear and slander the lives of Renee and Alex. That is unforgivable.
The people on the streets of Minnesota defending the rights of others and the presumption of innocence against an armed array of force are doing what RFK stated: using their position to help people in trouble.
They’re extending a hand to help carry these people toward a day when their lives return to normal. A day when fear recedes and we can all breathe freely once again.
There will come a dawn in America where we live up to our aspirational founding. Actually, that’s not fair criticism. The people of Minnesota are already exceeding those aspirations.
Many people like to mention Reagan’s Farewell Address when he mentioned the “Shining City on a Hill.” Reagan’s speaking style often highlighted anecdotal stories to illuminate his broad themes and beliefs. The story from that speech shows an incredible contrast to what is going on in America now. It was about a sailor on the USS Midway.
“The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart, and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, and stood up, and called out to him. He yelled, “Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man.
“A small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor, who wrote it in a letter, couldn’t get out of his mind. And, when I saw it, neither could I. Because that’s what it was to be an American in the 1980s. We stood, again, for freedom.”
In Minnesota we are seeing people who are true patriots standing for freedom. They are that sailor on the deck.
To invert Hemingway’s quote about fascism, when it comes to the people of Minnesota defending the Fourth Amendment and defending their fellow human beings “There are many people who do not realize they are heroes but will find out when the time comes.”
