Reflections from Minneapolis: The Way Forward is Not in the Heavens
It was negative 20 degrees outside in Minneapolis last week—so cold my eyelashes were frozen—but the temperature did not stop me and thousands of people from being out in the streets. I flew to Minneapolis to participate in a massive day of action, after organizers asked faith leaders from across the country to come and bear witness to what is happening in their city.
What I saw that day made one thing clear: The horrors are growing, but so is our resolve.
Minnesotans are showing up for each other. People came from across the state to defend their neighbors. They are organizing fundraisers to cover rent for immigrant families understandably too afraid to leave their homes to go to work. They wear whistles everywhere they go to alert community members to ICE presence. It’s this bravery that brought people in from across the country. This is solidarity: neighbors show up for neighbors, and the circle widens. This is the type of sustained civic resistance we need to turn the tide back towards democracy.
As the CEO of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, it felt urgent for me to continue the long tradition of American Jews rising up with our neighbors to fight for the soul of our nation and our collective safety. We are at a critical inflection point in the fight to stop authoritarian consolidation of power—which is no longer creeping forward quietly, but asserting itself openly and proudly, made unmistakably clear by lethal force.
The killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents awoke more people in our nation to the longstanding violence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. Minneapolis follows federal agents’ deployment to Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago. Good’s and Pretti’s deaths follow the killings of Keith Porter Jr, and Silverio Villegas González, and more than 30 people in ICE custody, last year alone. Not to mention those missing in ICE detention, with records deleted or never even created.
In the face of normalized state violence, collective power is also growing. Americans across the country are flooding their Senators with calls and emails demanding accountability. Congress was on the cusp of funneling billions more dollars to ICE and Border Patrol with Democratic support. But the movement that swelled in the wake of Pretti’s execution turned the tide—the bill is now stalled with Democrats in Congress fighting for changes to reign in these agencies’ abuses.
In just three days time, a diverse group of more than 1,000 organizations, including 30 Jewish organizations came together to say not one dollar more should be given to ICE and Border Patrol. In the letter we asked, “how many more people have to die, how many more lies have to be told, and how many more children must be used as bait and abducted, before Congress fulfills its responsibilities and stops these out-of-control agencies from continuing to violently attack our immigrant communities and communities of color, as well as their many allies and supporters?”
The fight is far from over. Congress is actively negotiating a new funding bill. With our partners in the immigrant rights movement, we are demanding Congress cut ICE and Border Patrol’s budget and meaningfully restrict these agencies. This includes removing roving gangs of agents from our cities, stopping immigration enforcement based on racial profiling, stopping enforcement at sensitive locations like schools, hospitals and houses of worship, stopping warrantless arrests, and ending family detention. I hope you will join me in contacting your members of Congress right now.
If our elected officials act with the moral courage displayed by so many of their constituents, the courage I saw on the streets of Minneapolis, they can mitigate the harm wrought daily on immigrant communities, and the broader threats to our civil rights and democracy.
For American Jews, this moment demands clarity. Our safety is tied up in what happens next. This regime didn’t come out of nowhere. It is part of a broader system of racial, economic, anti-queer oppression that has always been here, but has been allowed to consolidate its power, make more visible its intentions, and do away with the shrouds that attempted to hide those intentions behind policy.
Those same shrouds obscured the white supremacy and antisemitism we knew were always there. Because the same regime targeting our immigrant neighbors is fueling antisemitism by spreading myths like the “great replacement” conspiracy myth and using antisemitism as a smokescreen to justify its fascist policies.
And still, what I saw in Minneapolis felt like the best of humanity—our ability to be brave, to take care of each other, to find hope when it feels impossible. The community there is facing down monsters and responding by moving mountains for each other. This is how we fight and win freedom and safety for all of us.
Earlier this week, I spoke on an interfaith call joined by more than 8,000 people. I shared these words of Torah: In his final words to the Israelites, Moses implored his people to understand that we have everything we need to operationalize G-d’s commandments: he literally tells them the work of it “is not in the heavens.”
We must stop looking to the horizon for a savior. We must stop waiting for a hand to reach down from the seats of power. We are the only ones coming to rescue us.
