Emma Janssen wrote a really good piece in the American Progressive about three small Minnesota towns who are dealing with ICE, still, even though they’ve more-or-less stood down in the Twin Cities. This is interesting:
The pastors and community advocates I spoke to in Northfield described their approach as more subtle and understated than has been seen in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Rychner described relying heavily on bonds between neighbors, leveraging the connections that already exist between congregants at the same church or parents whose kids are in the same class. “You can’t just send strange cars into neighborhoods of people who are already sheltering in place and terrified of any strange vehicle,” she said.
I saw this interpersonal philosophy of organizing on display in all the rural towns I visited. Residents consistently told me that the kinds of mass protests seen in the Twin Cities just wouldn’t translate to their communities and wouldn’t meaningfully help their immigrant neighbors. In fact, as Rychner mentioned, highly public actions and communications could have the opposite effect, drawing too much attention toward important community resources.
“In the Twin Cities, you saw the whistles and the reporting and the observation, which is all great and super powerful,” Graham said. “Here in Northfield, I think the reaction was quieter. It was more like neighbors helping neighbors.”
Even the ICE patrols and observers take a more restrained approach, to protect both themselves and the immigrants whom ICE targets. Washburn, who helps train the volunteers who observe and follow ICE vehicles, says that new members have to sign a set of written rules, which they call their “guardrails,” dictating that they won’t be directly confrontational with agents, won’t be disruptive, and won’t try to interfere.
Early on, Washburn said, she tended to get more in agents’ faces, making clear that she was following and observing them. But after Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed by immigration officers in Minneapolis in January, she re-evaluated her strategies to keep herself and her fellow patrollers safe.
Janssen visited three towns: Northfield, Albert Lea and Willmar. Northfield, a college town that is home to Carleton College, seemed to be fairing the best, relatively, with a lot of organization and help given to the immigrant communities there. Albert Lea, a meat packing town with a history of unionism, was doing OK, and Willmar, which I only recognize as the former home of the Minnesota State Hospital, is probably doing the worst.
One thing you don’t read in Cletus Safaris is the racism endemic to small-town living:
[Albert Lea resident Therese] Salazar thought back to Trump’s first election in 2016, when her daughter was in middle school. She came home one day and told her mom that white kids had been telling their Hispanic classmates: “You guys better pack up your bags, because you need to go back to your country. So hopefully you have your luggage ready.”
Salazar’s daughter is now in college, but [Albert Lea resident Irasema] Hernandez shared that little has changed in the town’s middle schools. Once ICE started to appear in December, her daughter came home and reported that white students had said: “All the brown kids, line up! They’re here for you.”
Albert Lea relies on immigrant labor in the meat packing plants, which are terrible jobs that are almost completely staffed by immigrant labor. Yet some of the whites in these towns would rather have a poor white town than a growing and bustling town with brown folks.
Janssen’s piece is a great example of Jay Rosen’s view of journalistic authority: I’m There, You’re Not, Let me Tell You About It. It’s remarkable because it’s rare.
