Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Tell Me You Aren’t in Minnesota Without Telling Me You’re Not in Minnesota
What the hell is Jay Caspian Kang even going on about in his latest New Yorker column?
“Do Americans still believe in mass protest?” Kang begins, and it never bodes well when a writer leads with an unanswerable question. Except when (see above) I do it.
As his words roam around this imponderable query, Kang’s topics range from Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter. There aren’t protests anymore. Except when there are. But those aren’t “spontaneous street actions.”
There have been reasons to doubt the acuity of Kang’s political analysis before. You can’t even argue with any of this because Kang is just a classic online bullshitter, less interested in advancing a credible argument than in kicking around suppositions, valid or not.
But then he makes some observations about Minnesota—and hey, that’s us:
There are many possible reasons that Minnesota, in particular, has remained relatively quiet. First, there’s the weather: street demonstrations in America wax and wane with the seasons; summer is usually the period of highest activity, especially in places with brutal winters. People might also be frightened after watching [Renee] Good get shot in the face and then hearing the Vice-President effectively give ICE agents permission to do what they please.
What’s that? I couldn’t hear you over the quiet of all the whistles.
And contrast what Kang imagines the effect of Good’s killing was with this quote in the New York Times from West St. Paul’s Ashley Lopes, who began patrolling her neighborhood after ICE killed Good: “Because of what happened to Renee, I felt like we had nothing to lose anymore. Why should she be the only one who put herself in danger?”
“But many Minnesotans might also no longer be sure if protests today will lead to change. If this is the case…” Kang rattles on. Look, man, we are struggling to protect our neighbors out here. We’re conducting food drives and standing guard outside daycares. We’re mobilizing in Signal chats. We’re tailing ICE vehicles and patrolling our commercial corridors. And yes, we’re out at the Whipple Building protesting every day.
Anyway, this is a timely reminder that when writing about a complex situation, especially in a place you do not live, it’s a good idea to look at what people are actually doing, rather than idly wondering about what they’re supposedly not doing. But that would require curiosity, focus, and maybe even a little digging.
ICE Out(side) of Minneapolis
While most of the news of ICE activity in Minnesota has focused on the Twin Cities, it’s important to remember that this is a statewide invasion. Immigration troops have been fanning out across the state, and smaller Minnesota cities with large immigrant populations make a ripe target for them.
MPR reports that Rochester, Detroit Lakes, Perham, Park Rapids, Faribault, and St. Cloud are among the cities where ICE has abducted residents. Both the Strib and MinnPost have also written about the statewide ICE invasion.
Though the locales are different, the behavior is the same: aggressive, unsafe driving; threatening observers using their phones to document ICE actions; targeting isolated individuals of color.
Though the towns are smaller, many also have pockets of observers and resisters keeping an eye on the goons. And still, the disruption of children’s education is the same.
“Every day educators are walking into classrooms where there are empty seats,” says Heather Bakke, a teacher in St. Peter. “We wonder if these students have been taken, or if they’re staying home out of hear, or if they’re staying home to take care of younger siblings since their parents are gone.”
DOJ Hemorrhaging Attorneys as Becca Good Smear Campaign Begins
Six career officials resigned Tuesday from the U.S. Department of Justice because their higher-ups have chosen to smear Renee Nicole Good’s wife, Becca, instead of conducting a civil rights investigation into Renee’s killing, the New York Times reports.
The most prominent resignee is Joe Thompson, second-in-command at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, who has been conducting a multi-pronged fraud investigation. Among the other resignations was Thompson’s deputy in the fraud cases, Harry Jacobs.
Rooting out fraud is one of the Trump admin’s pretexts for the current ICE invasion. But to quote MPD Chief Brian O’Hara, who does know the right thing to say to press on some occasions, “When you lose the leader responsible for making the fraud cases, it tells you this isn’t really about prosecuting fraud.”
The attorneys resigned because of the direction the DOJ was taking in response to Good’s death. For starters, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has said “there is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” in the Good case. Instead, U.S. attorneys were being directed to investigate Becca Good, Renee’s widow.
The president, vice president, and DHS secretary have already baselessly smeared Becca Good. Now the DOJ is out to paint her as a wildly radical activist because she joined her neighbors in watching out for ICE abuses, which makes her no different than just about any parent in the Twin Cities right now. Running a smear campaign on a widow is some sick shit, legally speaking.
Fuck Around, Freeze Your Ass Off
If you have a January 16 birthday, the one thing you know for certain is that the coldest weekend of the year invariably falls in the middle of the month.
This year will be no exception, Paul Huttner reports for MPR News. While January temps have been five to 10 degrees warmer this year, Wednesay is already a bit colder than it’s been, and the Twin Cities will hit zero by Sunday morning.
I know what you’re thinking: Ah, finally a chance to stop talking about ICE and talk about our favorite subject (besides ourselves)—the weather.
Well, not really. We’ve seen that ICE can’t handle the ice. Now let’s see if they can endure the cold. The real cold.
If we’re all rubbing our hands together right now, it’s not to keep them warm, but with glee. It is time to harness our regional superpower: our irritating pride in withstanding inhuman temperatures. Make sure and hit those shivering dumbfucks with your best Minnesotan “Cold enough for ya?” when you see them.
And here, for no reason at all, is the first movement from Shostakovich’s “Stalingrad” Symphony.
