Being Ellen

Advocacy with Heart

On this day to honor the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I’m feeling both anger and complete helplessness.

While the media/press are focused on the Twin Cities, ICE is running amok out here in greater Minnesota. I live in Carver County, an exurb that is forty miles west of downtown Minneapolis. In the last two weeks, ICE has been taking people, some of whom are simply observing ICE officers as they drive around the community.

Just this morning, as I and a hundred other people attended an MLK Day breakfast in downtown Chaska, ICE cornered an observer who had been following them to report on their activities. ICE then smashed the observer’s car window, pulled her from the vehicle, and drove off with her. The incident was a half block from the breakfast—an incredibly sad incident that symbolizes just how far America has fallen.

I’m incensed—ICE agents apparently believe they can do whatever they want without any risk of repercussion. Donald Trump and others enabled that.

Please understand that Minnesota has stopped being a part of the United States. Instead, it’s become a geography unto its own where fascism reigns and the rule of law has evaporated. It’s now a state where anger at Donald Trump and his sycophants boils. Whatever you might call it—an inflection point, a moment of truth, a 1776-style resistance—we have reached it out here.

As for me, the idealist who grew up believing in the nonviolent example set by Dr. King, I’m experiencing a sense of utter and complete helplessness. Words and protest don’t matter to Trump, Noem or ICE. Apparently, neither do court orders. They are simply doing as they please, pushing liberal and enlightened Minnesotans into a corner and creating a powder keg of anger and resentment.

Do they really think we will simply cower, just comply, in the face of evil?

I feel the need to fight back, yet violence—as Dr. King showed time and again—is not the answer. I fear though, that not everyone will be so constrained.

Then what?

What Trump and others have forgotten is that Americans have long been taught to not simply go along. It’s part of that rugged individualism that Kristy Noem touts in her ICE recruitment posters—but ruggedness isn’t confined to simply one ideology, one political party.

Soon, eveyone in the country will truly understand how rugged Minnesotans are. I hope that I can be brave enough to join my fellow Minnesotans to proclaim, “Enough!” and spark the ruggedness of millions of other Americans.