I hope to have a brain tomorrow that can write some words. 

For tonight I have two images I've seen in various places that tell you what the current state of things here is:

That is all.

In December 1984, I had been living in Washington, D.C. for a year and a half. My parents had just paid off their home mortgage that fall. And the political fractures in my family began to develop.

I didn't know it then, but one of the fault lines came from the Bernie Goetz subway-shooting case, which happened that month. 

I've had that idea in the back of my mind for years, and meant to write about it, but have never had the mental capacity, skill, or historical chops to go about it.

Now, historian Heather Ann Thompson has just written the definitive article about it for The Atlantic, and since I still subscribe (in order to keep paying Adam Serwer's salary), I can provide a gift link. (Title: How the Bernie Goetz Shootings Explain the Trump Era: A notorious event in 1984 divided New Yorkers in ways that feel extremely familiar four decades later.)

Please read it. Our minds are in sync. 

If you know about the case, its media coverage, and the trial, there's likely a lot you've forgotten, or you never heard about it correctly in the first place. I know that was true for me. 

And if you're too young to know about it, it's really important to learn about it in mapping where our country went wrong.

Ilhan is what democracy looks like, and it drives them crazy.

A few days ago, I mentioned I had heard on Facebook that a person who works with legal refugees has had 60 of her clients sent to Texas, where they were later let out, after checking their documentation — in Texas — with no way back to Minnesota. 

That's what's called Operation PARRIS*.

Today there was an op-ed in the Star Tribune (gift link) by Kathleen Motzenbecker, a refugee services director for the Minnesota Council of Churches, which spells that exact situation out in more detail.

So don't take any news you may be hearing about Greg Bovino departing our state as a big sign of a permanent win. They're trying to put some lipstick on their white nationalist pig.

They'll still be trying to denaturalize naturalized citizens (we haven't heard any backing down on that, have we?), and there's no word on PARRIS, either. And of course, some of ICE's goons are moving on to Maine, and I've heard Milwaukee, too. Hegseth, some news reports say, is still making noises about sending troops here.

Motzenbecker says PARRIS is an acronym that spells the end of refuge: a commitment the U.S. signed on to after World War II. At first, she assumed the program meant people would have to refile some paperwork, but then she realized it was

armed men in masks going to my clients’ homes in the middle of the night and taking people in their pajamas away in handcuffs. I did not imagine a paramilitary group roaming the streets at 7 a.m. and grabbing people from bus stops or out of cars as they went to their cleaning jobs...

Who are her clients? 

They were invited to our country by our government. They even paid for their own airplane tickets through travel loans they are required to pay back. Refugees are a vetted group of people who already cleared extensive benchmarks and identified as individuals who would be killed if they returned to their home country. Many were certified as victims of torture. I know because I read their files before they arrived.

All of this, of course, after the "declaration that only white South Afrikaners would be refugees." Followed by Trump calling Somalis “garbage.”

We know what the regime means because of its actions, and their misspelled "PARRIS" is a final bit of ugly leering about who is welcome. Integrity, my derrière. 

__

* Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening.

There are a couple of things that I hope will stick with me from yesterday's killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

In the second video circulating, the one that has more lead-up and better shows what ends up happening, the person filming is not surprised that Border Patrol goons attacked Pretti and forced him to the ground. That they started hitting him as he lay face down. The person filming just kept filming. 

That tells you that people in Minneapolis are now accustomed to scenes like that. It is normal. You maybe yell at the goons, and blow your whistle. But you know it won't do any interventional good. The only thing you can do is record it. 

But as soon as the gun(s) go off, the person recording reacts with some kind of exclamation and runs away, because someone being shot is still not normalized. 

How many more shootings will it take before our government killing us becomes something that is normal?

There was, as you might expect, much discussion and good analysis yesterday on BlueSky. People processing trauma. Sharing videos of people being interviewed on the scene at Nicollet Avenue (a few blocks from places I lived in my early years here in Minnesota). 

We all have different things that affect us. The one thing that I saw that really made me tear up was a short post by Bob Collins (@mylittlebloggie.bsky.social), who retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019. He was a news editor there for quite a while, but also was on-air, and created several blogs. Highly regarded during his career. Not a flame-thrower, by any means.

He wrote this:

We are outgunned. We are not outnumbered.

Reading it again now, it still gets me.

The last thing I think I'll remember is from the candlelight vigil we had in my neighborhood last night. It started at 7:00 p.m., coordinated with similar vigils all over the cities. About a hundred people came to the corner I organized. Lots of candles, and at first people were just kind of milling around, talking quietly. Then a couple of women near me said something about singing, and we figured out a song. They both had nice soprano voices and started off with a simple song that I didn't know, but could follow an octave below them. 

We went on from there, and of course the crowd joined in. We sang many of the usual songs, but the list also included "Lean on Me," which I would not have thought of. Then the minister of the adjacent Lutheran church led us in a song from the Poor People's Campaign called "Everybody's Got a Right to Live," as well as "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around."

After an hour or so, it was pretty cold and people trickled away. Some of the candles, in their glass votive holders, were left in the snow along the sidewalk. 

I was the last one to leave. As I was warming up my (electric) car, a person came walking past and stopped by the still-lit candles. He stood there at least until I drove away.

I'm too cold (after organizing a candlelight vigil) and overwhelmed from what has happened today to write anything.

So I just have this from Clara Jeffery, editor of Mother Jones, from BlueSky. Though I don't even like about half of what she writes on BlueSky, it seems like. Seriously. 

But as they've been saying... we all agree on the important things lately: 

This is a white supremacist paramilitary operation. Their goal—their stated goal!—is to force America to submit to the President's racist domineering vision for the country. 

The sooner everybody starts confronting it on the terms that they themselves have stated, the better. 

One of our local online alternative publications, Racket, has created an oral history of the ICE occupation. They posted it today without a paywall for the general strike. I don't know if it will be accessible beyond today or not.

The whole thing is worth reading, and I'm glad it will be available as documentation of this time. Here are a couple of quotes.

A young Eritrean-American woman, a first-generation immigrant, says she has been doing a lot to fight the invasion, but also sometimes is overwhelmed by it all and can't do anything.

And yes, sometimes that fills me with shame, with guilt. But mostly, it makes me furious. I have every right to be here. Our neighbors have every right to be here. Renee Good had every right to be where she was that Wednesday. The only ones who don't belong here are the ICE agents marching around in their ridiculous camo gear, doing their best to make themselves feel big and powerful, thinking that the more they shout, the more we will cringe before them. 

I am furious that I have to waste a moment of my day thinking of these fools. I am furious that Renee Good isn't alive today, at home with her wife and child. I am furious when I think of the families separated by ICE, Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump. I am furious that our state, which has already seen so much tragedy in just the past year, that is still trying to repair from the murder of George Floyd and the unwilling spotlight we were thrust into, is yet again a part of history through no choice of our own. 

A person from Monticello (Monticello! a far northwestern exurban town, most of the way to St. Cloud) wrote:

I was several feet from two ICE agents, whistling, and one [of them] yelled, “You’re obstructing!” and came at me. He tried pepper spraying from afar, soaking my pants, then as I turned away, I saw spray in the air next to me. Then he reached around, put the nozzle under my glasses and sprayed directly into my left eye. 

A Minneapolis dad wrote,

My daughter has a surface understanding of the situation — she "trains to beat up ICE" with friends at recess. Years from now, when she asks me how our family fought back, I want to be proud of the answer I give her.

That reminded me of how my sisters and I used to play "English and Germans" when we were children. Imagine that from now on children here will play "people and ICE." 

Here are some photos (not mine) that show some of the scale of today's huge march in downtown Minneapolis. It was –8°F ambient, probably about –20° wind chill. 

And finally, I was somewhat amazed to see this Associated Press story in today's Pioneer Press, which is generally considered to be the more conservative of our two local daily papers. As you may know, JD Vance was here yesterday for some triumphalist or damage-control reason. In the story about that (which was on the front page, but buried in below the fold in the center under a photo of someone else), this was the lede:

Insisting that he was in Minnesota to help "lower the temperature," Vice President JD Vance on Thursday blamed "far-left people" and state and local law enforcement officials for the chaos that has convulsed the state during the White House's aggressive deportation campaign.

He also defended federal agents who detained a 5-year-old boy while making an immigration arrest. 

The recent turmoil "has been created, I think, by a lot of very, frankly, far-left people, also by some of the state and local law enforcement officials who could do a much better job in cooperating..."

"We're doing everything that we can to lower the temperature," Vance said, adding that he wants "state and local officials to meet us halfway."

This was on the day after ICE/CBP had used the 5-year-old as bait to capture the child's dad, then shipped them both to Texas (despite the fact that the child is a citizen with other adults here to care for him), and Greg Bovino and dozens of his goons had paraded through South Minneapolis gassing people for no reason except to make a show of force and use the bathroom. 

And on the same day they were preparing for Pam Bondi's Department of Just-Us to arrest local civil rights leaders — without an arrest warrant — for disrupting the Sunday service of a church co-led by the local head of ICE. (What would Jesus do with a church like that? Knock over a few tables?)

That's the way this regime "lowers the temperature," and the AP clearly knows that is not the case, given the way its reporters wrote that story of contrast. The regime expects cooperation and "being met halfway" to fascism the same way the Third Reich did. 

Half way to fascism is fascism.

For some reason, the Star Tribune has started running a fashion-advice column once a week in its Variety section. I don't expect to be the audience for such a column, but it's hard to believe the triviality of the concerns described by the letter-writers.

This is my favorite so far: 

I am exhausted following all the fashion micro trends that keep coming up: angel core, whimsigoth, mob wife, tomato girl, etc. Is this going to continue in 2026, and do I actually have to pay attention?

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry after I read that. Well, that's not true, I laughed. But in a different sense it made me want to cry because the this country is so unfair: this person thinks she has nothing to worry about except fashion trends with names like mob wife and tomato girl (what?!) while her civilization is being destroyed all around her. 

Yes, I can bring the dumbest things back to hell in a handbasket.

I've covered my face with my hands several times today.

One time was a few hours ago when I saw this photo:

Star Tribune photo 

That's pepper spray. The person being sprayed is already fully restrained by three men, face down on pavement. I'm sorry to show a photo of torture. But it's important to show that this is not about training or body cameras. 

That was part of a very bad day in Minneapolis today. CBP's Greg Bovino is there, and J.D. Vance is coming tomorrow. They gassed large groups of people in two different places in residential parts of South Minneapolis (all caught on multiple cameras). They're doing everything they can to provoke violence against them.

An internal ICE memo leaked that urges agents to carry out home invasions without warrants, or warrants they write themselves. That's what they've been doing here, so it doesn't surprise us.

Between the gas and the home invasions, I think the BlueSky account known as GOLIKEHELLMACHINE has the right of it:

they are actively trying to get these officers killed and have been for some time 

The first one of the home invasion cases (as far as I know) was that of Garrison Gibson, a Liberian man who came here when he was 6 years old. The door of his North Minneapolis home was broken in by ICE and he was removed against his will. His wife recorded the kidnapping, while she demanded a warrant. Guns were pointed at her. Their child was present. 

This is the case I referred to on January 9. that made MPR's Matt Sepic say, "These are police-state tactics." Here's a new Mother Jones story on the case, with more details.

“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones,” [Gibson] said, adding, “like one stood by me on the right side of me. One stood on the left side of me. And they went, like, thumbs up and took pictures with their personal phones.”  

The second home invasion case was the one I mentioned yesterday, ChongLy Scott Thao, who was hauled out of his house in just his shorts and Crocs. In 0° weather. 

The other case, which I haven't mentioned, wasn't a home invasion, but almost as bad in terms of violated different rights we took for granted. A 23-year-old Somali American woman citizen was picked up from the parking lot outside her apartment building in Saint Paul for no legitimate reason. They said they would charge her with a felony. For what, it has not been reported. It's important to know that she has a history of seizures. 

They held her for more than 48 hours (the habeas corpus limit) at a county jail north of the Twin Cities. She had a seizure while there and they took her to a hospital — wrapped in chains so that she, as she put it, looked like Hannibal Lecter. This woman is 5'4" tall and weighs 112 pounds. 

She has since been released, through the intervention of a federal defense attorney, but it shouldn't have taken that level of effort. Of course, it shouldn't have happened at all. 

Today, Radley Balko had an op-ed in the New York Times (gift link) about the unfettered way DHS, ICE, CBP and the Trump regime have behaved since Renee Good's killing. 

It's a demonstration of their power to get away with anything, he says. It's about authoritarianism.

There are too many dispatches to include from here in the occupied Twin Cities. This is not “unrest”: It’s an entire state peacefully resisting military occupation and documenting the violent abduction of our neighbors.

I hope everyone has heard about the shirtless Saint Paul Hmong man taken from his house by ICE on Sunday, wearing just shorts and Crocs, in 10°F weather – without a warrant. Here's an MPR story on this travesty, and Marisa Kabas's earlier story. DHS is still making up things to excuse their execrable actions in this case. 

If you haven't, take some time to read Masha Gessen's New York Times commentary, and Lydia Polgreen's reporting from her visit here, which includes her observations from North Minneapolis last week when a baby was gassed as her parents tried to escape the scene. (Both should be gift links.)

Saint Paul schools are closed today and tomorrow so teachers can prepare to offer fully hybrid school starting Thursday, because so many students have been absent and it's not safe for them to come in. A Saint Paul teacher I follow on BlueSky said they are shuffling all the teachers so that some teach fully online classes and some teach in-person, rather than having each classroom be hybrid. Which makes functional sense, I suppose, but means students will all have no teacher continuity, and will also effectively segregate the classes, with white students in-person and the vast majority of students of color at home. Though I guess they're already spatially separated. 

A Facebook friend reported that a person she knows works with legal refugees in Minneapolis — people who have done everything required of them to achieve citizenship. To date, about 60 of her clients have been rounded up by ICE and separated from their families. They have been shipped, without any sort of hearing, to Texas where they know no one. They are held until their identities and paperwork have been evaluated, and then freed. That may take a week, or longer, in filthy conditions and with no changes of clothing. Then they're released in Texas. With no money. And they're the lucky ones.  

Those are just a few of the things I can put together out of everything that's happening, without reporting individual abductions that are happening everywhere.

I also want to share a story I've heard that is not known. People may have heard about ICE going into our hospitals to handcuff people to beds and terrorize people seeking care. This story is a bit different. 

It comes from a neighbor I know personally, and happened a week ago Saturday, January 10. She was present as a legal observer at Regions Hospital, which is the Level 1 Trauma Center in Saint Paul, on the north edge of downtown.

A Spanish-speaking man and his wife had been stopped by ICE. Neither one speaks any or much English. He had, as my friend put it, had "some medical concerns" during the stop, enough that the ICE agents took him to Regions instead of to the Whipple Building. (So they must have been serious enough to not ignore.)

At the hospital's Emergency Room, my friend the observer was with the wife, an interpreter, an attorney, a witness to the ICE abduction and the man's wife, who was sobbing "uncontrollably the entire time I was there.... Her voice was shaking when she could get some words out. I understood that she wondered if her husband were still alive, and if she would ever see him again."
 
The wife was not allowed to be with her husband in the examining room because he was in ICE detention, and was denied updates on his condition. Hospital staff said a social worker would come to help her but no one ever came. (I assume he was provided with an interpreter, which is hospital policy, but that's only an assumption.)

The five of us, sitting in an area off to the side, were quiet, not creating a commotion as we kept trying to find some assistance for the overwhelmed wife. I don't think other people in the waiting area were aware of this crisis or that anything unusual was going on.
 
Then ... perhaps four to six hospital security guards approached us as a group. Without conversation or questions or offers of assistance or support, they said we would have to leave. We asked if the wife and the interpreter could stay while the rest of us left and that was denied. 
 
Around the corner was an area of tables and chairs that no one was using. We asked if we moved over there, would that be acceptable for us to stay. That was denied. We continued to try to find a solution. The guards stepped away to a desk and all came back with a woman wearing a uniform who said she was a St. Paul police officer. I don’t believe she ever gave us her name. She wore a badge but I was unable to discern the number or a name on it. 
 
Hoping to capture that information, I took a couple of photos. The officer immediately told me there were no photos allowed in the hospital and I would have to delete them right away or she would take my phone. When I asked, she confirmed that yes, there were no photos allowed anywhere in the hospital. I didn't think that was correct, but there was no arguing with her so I deleted the photos because I couldn't go without my phone. 
 
The officer said we would have to leave right then or we would all be arrested. That also didn't seem correct to me but since having the wife arrested would not help the situation, all of us, including the wife, left into the night.
 
It seemed that the hospital and St. Paul Police had chosen complicity with ICE over patient health and family togetherness. 
 
The experience was shocking, sad and angering. I believed that the police officer had lied to us about permission to take photos and the right of any of us, especially the wife, to be at the hospital. Here was a woman obviously panicked and in grief. 
 
No one in charge at the hospital, that I saw, displayed any empathy or support to this person in distress. I did not see that any of them offered a single gesture of kindness, but instead sent us out into the cold and dark. I was very disappointed that neither the hospital nor the St. Paul police did not do better for this woman, the wife of one of their patients.

That's just one story of the inhumanity we are living with, and compared to being detained and shipped to Texas, where they might kill you directly (or indirectly since they have stopped paying their third-party medical providers!) or let you go with no money and no way home... it's not as bad. 

But it's not a way to run a free country either. It's apartheid. 
 

Thanks to Gina Murrell on BlueSky, I found out about an exhibit of Faith Ringgold's work in New York City. It's at the Jack Shainman Gallery in TriBeCa and the gallery has good photos of the works.

One of them is this 2010 portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

It's acrylic on quilted fabric.

This photo of the work is by Gina Murrell.
 

In that outside area between the entrance and exit doors of supermarkets, there's always something for sale. In warmer months, it's usually plants of some kind. Later, it's Halloween or Christmas decorations.

Yesterday, at one of my local stores, it was these:

Which I guess are remnants from the holidays, or just general winter luminaries (which is what it says on the yellow signs)?

I would never have guessed what they were for. Do you put a candle inside them? 

And then you store them all spring, summer, fall, and part of winter when they're not in use?

I don't get it.