Choose agency
Beloveds,
How are you doing?
Right now, that can be a hard question to answer. Everything feels scary, and overwhelming, and so incredibly consequential. Our immigrant neighbors are being deported and disappeared. Our trans neighbors and neighbors with disabilities are being targeted. The checks and balances that are supposed to preserve our democracy are being abandoned and ignored. We’re witnessing complicity from institutions and individuals who we thought would stand up for justice or care, and we’re having to confront the frightening reality that there is no perfect answer or solution to the threats confronting us. It’s a lot.
One thing that’s been helping us meet the moment with integrity and courage is asking, “What would we like to be able to tell future generations about 2025?” Our answers bring us back to hope, and back into our own power. We realize that we can tell stories about communities coming together against I.C.E. raids, about brave dissent in the face of authoritarianism, and about the opportunities we take to choose each other - the collective - every day.
We remember, as Mariame Kaba tells us, that hope is a discipline and a decision, and we remember that we are building the world we want to live in every day through our interactions with our friends and families and neighbors. We also remember the stories passed down to us, by our own ancestors. Celebrating and embodying their legacies of resistance, resilience, and joy guides us as we step into moral courage to choose each other and our shared liberation.
Keep reading for opportunities to step into your agency and transform values into action. Until next time, we're with you in care, rage, hope, and solidarity.
“When everything feels like it is simultaneously too much, and not enough, we must recognize the importance of beginning. As Mariame Kaba reminds us, we must strive to reduce the distance between our actions and our values. Whatever brings us closer to other people, whatever allows us to act, rather than simply react, is worthwhile. Inching our way forward will allow us to find our stride, and if we move together, we will become more powerful.” How To Be a Fighter When You Feel Like a Punching Bag
Our collective power: Across the country (including in St. Paul!), teachers unions are using their collective power to defend immigrant families.
“As a union, we also know that this is an attack on public education. It’s an attack on unions. They are trying to dismantle the Department of Education. They are attacking our public education system, which is supposed to be accessible to any person, regardless of immigration status. If they succeed, they will be destroying something that has been beneficial to communities for many years. As educators, we cannot stand by and do nothing.” Los Angeles Teachers’ Union Defends Students From Trump’s Anti-Migrant Crackdown
We are the many. They are the few. Minnesotans are joining the national call to action the week of May Day to stop the billionaire takeover. Join the May Day Week of Action and stand with the local unions working to defend our public systems and human rights.
Our liberation is bound up together: Student activists are being detained, imprisoned, and deported for voicing their solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Mohsen Mahdawi, Mahmoud Khalil, and Rumeysa Ozturk are among the scholars being targeted for exercising their first amendment rights. Say their names, share their stories, and stand up for their rights by writing to Congress and demanding their release.
“I write this letter as the sun rises, hoping that the suspension of my rights will raise alarm bells that yours are already in jeopardy. I hope it will inspire your outrage that the most basic human instinct, to protest shameless massacre, is being repressed by obscure laws, racist propaganda and a state terrified of an awakened public. I hope this writing will startle you into understanding that a democracy for some — a democracy of convenience — is no democracy at all. I hope it will shake you into acting before it is too late.” Mahmoud Khalil: What does my detention by ICE say about America?
Our humanity and our responsibility: Attacks on free speech and immigrant communities are strengthened by the United States’ violent legacy of incarceration.
We strengthen these attacks in turn by collectively abandoning and dehumanizing our incarcerated neighbors.
“Trump’s next move – in fact the primary focus of his thinking – has been how to remove American citizens to foreign prisons. And the group upon which he will workshop the next stage of his plan is another population that most Americans – long before Trump’s rise – have despised and dismissed: incarcerated citizens.” Americans Must Prepare to Fight for the Citizenship Rights of U.S. Prisoners
Take action: demand justice for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported and detained in El Salvador.
Then, get involved locally by supporting organizations who work with incarcerated folks - like the Women’s Prison Book Project, who provide women, trans, and gender expansive people in prison with free reading materials. REP for MN is hosting a Radical Study Series exploring the construct of crime. Community is a balm - we are more powerful together, and being together feels good.