Letter from an Occupied Minnesota, Pt 2.

Tom Emmer and Cities Church will never understand Real Minnesotans

There are some cliches that just feel annoyingly true. We always talk about how Minnesotans will stop in any weather, even if they’re late for work, and they’ll help push a stranger out of a snowbank. Then they’ll immediately make some awkward comment, “looks like a cold one!” and disappear along their way. It’s not that in other places strangers don’t help one another, but there is something about this cliche that captures the Real Minnesota.

Minnesotan representative from Lake Crystal Pepsi, Tom Emmer thinks that those of us resisting the Occupation aren’t really real Minnesotans. This is the standard Republican “real America” bullshit that tries to demean and delegitimize a majority of the population. It also reveals that there are two definitions of what it means to be Minnesotan and right now people are actively choosing: what kind of state do I want to live in?

Tom Emmer’s Minnesota

In Tom Emmer’s Minnesota everyone is angry. They’re all victims—the big city folk hate them, godless atheists hate them, the blue haired lesbians hate them—these Minnesotans are constantly under attack.

This week’s attack (GASP) was a non-violent protest in a church just two miles from my house. It’s a “church plant.”¹ This church plant comes from Pastor John Piper, a man every evangelical (or ex-vangelical) in Minnesota knows because he has been a hateful politician masquerading as a Calvinist preacher for decades. The church in question was being protested because one of their pastors is the local field director of ICE. The offense of interrupting worship is somehow worse than making people so afraid they can’t go to church.

I don’t have a single second to spare to discuss whether this was a good protest tactic. Why? Because ICE is actively targeting not just Muslims at their places of worship, but Christians.² Masked ICE agents sit outside churches, hoping to intimidate people from coming to church or just to nab them as they leave. Almost no journalistic energy has been spent on the deliberate targeting of immigrant Christians.

Ignoring the people of faith actually being targeted feeds Tom Emmer’s narrative that it is conservative Christians who are the true victims here. It cedes the ground and allows right win zealots to pretend this is about faith v non-faith. Families had their worship service interrupted by a gang of evil atheists. The New York Times and other hackneyed and provincial outlets help feed this narrative by parachuting into small towns two hours from the Twin Cities to offer up the “one state, two very different views of ICE” narratives.³ That’s because this reflects Tom Emmer’s Minnesota: the Minnesota of division, of us versus them, a belief that those bad people over there deserve punishment.

Almost always this “us versus them” of rural versus urban and Christian versus godless heathens ignores the reality that many or even most of the people in these cities came from small towns. I came from a town of 3,000 and grew up evangelical. Hell, I even came to Minnesota so I could go to the evangelical Bethel University. Tom Emmer grew up in the rich suburb Edina, he went to an elite private school. And he’s Real Minnesota?

It’s also reflective of their brand of Christianity: that Christ came to offer a select group of good people who follow the right path the love of God. That because of their select status, they will be attacked, and their enemies are the enemies of Christ. They have been discarded and looked down upon by all these elite, godless people.

None of this is Christian, mind you. None of these people are Christians. Not a single moment of their energy or faith follows in Christ’s example. Cities Church’s list of beliefs takes a lot of time to talk about marriage and sexuality. You know what never shows up? Charity, loving one another, the poor: these don’t make an appearance. And what might such churches think of Deuteronomy 10:18?

He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.

No, these people hate Christ. They hate humility. The idea of turning the other cheek is anathema to them. They know only grievance and hate. Tell me what Jesus would have done if people disrupted his worship? Would he try to send them to jail? Don’t answer that. The most godless of you knows the answer.

But this is Tom Emmer’s Minnesota: grievance and revenge. The feeling of division and resentment.

Real Minnesota

Real Minnesota is happening right now, every day. All around the Twin Cities, you have people with no kids who volunteer to stand guard in 5 degree weather to make sure kids get to the bus stop safely. You have people delivering groceries to families they’ve never met. You have a sex shop that basically stopped all business so they could turn into a massive hub for folks to get basic supplies.

There are guys who are spending their days finding detainees who are being released without jackets and winter clothes into the deep winter.

@nowthisimpact

NowThis Impact on Instagram: "Volunteers in Minnesota are waiti…

In Tom Emmer’s Minnesota, in Cities Church Minnesota, you only care about those who are part of “your community” and that is a small chosen group of like minded people. In Cities Church’s Minnesota, Christ would be more upset by interrupting a praise song than he would about people being released into the bitter cold, helpless.

In Real Minnesota, it doesn’t matter if you’re Muslim, Jewish, Christian, queer, straight, conservative, liberal, or anything else: if you need help, you’re helped. It’s incredibly telling that the three central pillars of not just the resistance but the unprecedented level of financial and basic support has been the faith groups (Faith in Minnesota and Isaiah), labor groups, and the queer community.

It’s the Catholic Churches that are delivering tens of thousands of meals. It’s Democratic Socialists of America who are going business to business making sure employers and employees have resources. It’s Smitten Kitten and a host of other queer businesses and groups volunteering.

And these are strangers. The folks who are delivering food many never meet the people eating those meals. Maybe once or twice I will recognize another person patrolling the streets and observing ICE. It is not only fully decentralized, it is simply strangers stopping in the street to help strangers and then going on their way.

Because in Real Minnesota we care about our community at large. If we see someone stuck, we help. That’s what I love about Saint Paul, it has everything people pretend small towns have. It’s a place where people know that if there are kids hungry in their child’s classroom, then it hurts their child. A place where protecting the weak and powerless is an assumed duty.

I’ve learned more about the love of God from my godless heathen friends than I could ever learn from Cities Church. For me, these actions are faith tenets. Taking care of the powerless is a literal commandment. And for many or most people fighting along side me, they aren’t faith tenets, but moral and ethical tenets. It matters not. For me, making sure taking care of the poor is spreading love and for the most godless socialists I know, it is exactly the same.

The Occupation Continues

In the past week, we’ve seen the Minnesota occupation intensify. When I first wrote, I was motivated by a desperation that people outside the Twin Cities understood the depth and violence of the occupation. It warms my heart that not only have people reached out, but that national media seems to be recognizing that this is something bigger and more sinister. This is an historical moment.⁴

The list below is disgusting. I’ve run out of words to describe the immense evil that uses children as bait, that treats elderly men as animals, that preys upon families. I feel an intense anger and rage toward these psychopath ICE Agents and their accomplices: Tom Emmer, Cities Church, and countless others.

But I also feel sorry for them. I’m sorry that Tom Emmer and Cities Church will never understand Real Minnesotans. I’m sorry that they won’t understand the true gift of taking care of strangers. They don’t understand love. And right now I love my Minnesota more than ever before. We’re in an historical moment and every day people are rising to that challenge every single day. There is a love so strong here and no matter how much hate and division they want to sew, our love is so much stronger. It’s a love that transcends so many boundaries and breaks down barriers. I’m so proud to be a Real Minnesotan.

And that’s why ICE will lose. Tom Emmer and Donald Trump and all the spineless Republicans will lose. Because their mission is disruption and chaos. Their only goal is to make life hell. For Minnesotans, resilience is in our bones. You think you can defeat grandpas who put on three layers and a hi-vis vest and then greet kids as they arrive to school in zero degrees? You think you can cause chaos to middle-aged, lesbian project managers who will drown your sorry asses in a meticulous spreadsheet of license plates? You think you can defeat the refugees who fled war zones? You can’t. Because Real Minnesotans may have a million problems, but they know exactly who the enemy is and we’ll fight like hell for each other.

A Short List of Atrocities

I would like to try to document some of this week’s atrocities. We need to document this moment to properly understand the depravity and pure evil of the occupation.

1. The lasting image of the Minnesota occupation might just be the sadistic and senseless detainment of ChongLy “Scott” Thao. Thao fought in the Vietnam War alongside the United States. He is a US citizen. He is an elderly man. And ICE came to his door and bundled him out of the house in his underwear in front of his crying 4 year old grandchild. He was taken to a field and brought out into the temperatures close to zero and interrogated. They wanted to see his ID, the ID he tried to get when they grabbed him, but they wouldn’t let him. It’s a moment that shows not just the incompetence, but the hateful callousness of this entire operation.

2. Perhaps the most evil thing we’ve witnessed is the kidnapping of a 5 year old boy to use him as “bait” to arrest his father. MPR’s summary:

“Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let him take care of the small child, and was refused,” Stenvik said. “Instead,” she said, “the agent took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home, essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.” Agents later took the father and child away in a vehicle and sent them to Texas.

I will never forgive this. It’s a sickness and evil. And it is perverse that we are spending time talking about a church service being interrupted on the same day that this occurred.

3. They flashbanged the car of a family trying to leave the neighborhood, causing a 6 month old child to stop breathing.

4. ICE agents tackled an observer, pinned him to the ground and then sprayed him with pepper spray directly in his face.

4. ICE agents, dressed like they’re in Fallujah, regularly drive around schools and daycares taunting parents.

5. ICE Agents will take detainees, US Citizens, and treat them like trophies.

6. They arrested a parent waiting at a bus stop with their child.

7. Another sick story is the one observers reported of an ICE agent approaching parents and staff at a local high school. He pretended to be a journalist activist and inquired about the travel plans for how kids get to and from school. He then got into a car that was confirmed to belong to ICE.

These are the sickest fucks on the planet. They prey on children. Every single one deserves prosecution and I want this clear: I am a single issue voter. I will not support anyone running for office who doesn’t say loudly that there will be a massive independent investigation and prosecution of these atrocities.

1. A church plant is when a very large, successful church decides to “plant” a new seed in a different city to try to grow the base of its brand of Christianity.

2. Please note that it is equally disgusting to target Muslims at mosques, but I am emphasizing the Christian angle for this rhetorical point.

3. I’m not linking to the article. The NYT didn’t drive to Elmira, NY to ask for their opinion on Mamdani. Why? Because it’s incredibly stupid and reflective of parochial rubes.

4. At the end of my post last week, I included a long list of videos to try to demonstrate the level of violence and panic. You can scroll to the bottom to run through that.