Cool Zone Media.
Hello, welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff Slash it could happen here episode? And this is a little pickup we inserted because James and I Hi, James, Hi, Margaret and Margaret, that's James. We're on each other's shows this week. We just spent three days in Minneapolis culminating in the general strike last Friday, and we were there to cover the rapid response networks and the mutual aid networks that people have been building, and that's what we're going to
be talking about in these two episodes. But the reason that we're recording this little pickup right here to listen to at the front of it is that nine hours after we finished recording these episodes, shortly after both of us had left the city, a man named Alex Pretty was killed by federal agents in what is obviously a
something that you all are familiar with. And we just kind of want to mark that because I think the tone and what we're talking about right now is we're so excited about these networks that people have been building. But obviously the tone would have changed a little bit had we recorded it only nine hours later, and we would have been talking about something slightly different, and that's just the breaks of podcasting.
Yeah, the fundamental message, I guess wouldn't change, but we all know that that doing what these people do can have terrible costs, and we were reminded of that again. Yeah Saturday morning. I guess we should just say that, like, we grieve his passing and we're sending our thoughts to his family and the people who loved him. Yeah, it's gond be a really hard time for him.
Absolutely, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Could Happen Here. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today as my other host is James. Hi. Margaret, we are doing a special crossover episode of it Could Happen Here and Cool People Who did cool stuff. And we're doing it because James and I are in sunny Minneapolis, which is true.
The sun was out. Yeah, yeah, I saw the sun. Yeah, yeah, I saw it through a cloud.
Of cold, cold air, the vapor of our own breath freezing. I have seen more people today with frozen eyelashes than any other point in my life.
But together. Yeah, I breathed into my goggles briefly and that froze, Yeah, from my eyes froze. Yeah, Yeah, it was minus thirty fahrenheit.
Feel I guess with windshill, what is that and what is that in Celsius.
They come together at minus forty, so it's going to be like minus thirty five and something like that. It was. It was for those who are not familiar cold, very cold.
And so the two of us came up to Minneapolis a few days ago and we have spent the past three days here talking to everyone we can about the rapid response networks that people have built to try to keep themselves and their neighbors safe from ice and federal oppression and the sort of federal occupation of the city, and so what we thought we would do this is kind of Neither of us have written scripts. Yet we
are still here. We just had a fun, slightly hectic day where we spent only about twenty minutes reasonably sure we were getting arrested.
We didn't get arrested. No, thank you, Comra train.
Yeah, we got on a light rail and were able to leave a kettle by a light rail, which is a new experience for me.
Yeah, I'm very European.
Yeah, and yeah, we came up here to talk to people and that's been like the story that I'm most interested in, right, is that we have all of these stories that are absolutely true. The stakes are really high here, but the things that people are building here are really incredible, and people know that they're holding down ice here in a way that no one would have expected, I think, And I don't know, So yeah, you want to Should we just talk about kind of our days?
I think I just want to ground people before we do that in that so much as if reporting on Minneapolis has focused on trauma, and so much reporting on migrants focuses on trauma, right, And I think people who have listened to our podcast know that that's not really a game, and so I understand when they hear that we've been in Minneapolis, I think we're going to talk
about horrific things that we've seen. I want to talk more about the beautiful things that we've seen, because I think those get missed and they're super important, especially if you're listening in another city in the US which will face some degree of this or is facing some degree
of this. Right, So I want to ground this in saying that rather than talking about the trauma people experiencing, which I'm sure will be incidental, I want to talk about how closely people are holding each other here and how special that is and what we can take from it.
Yeah, and like without obviously we're like, we're not trying to paint a rosy picture of what's happening here, because what's happening here is like I'm I'm a cold hearted journalist, historian person, and I was crying multiple times in the past couple days as people told me about some of the stuff they've experienced. But some of it has been you know, we've asked people, We've said, like, hey, what
do you want people to take away from this? And one of the main things is that kind of a like hey, you can do it too kind of thing. And the other thing that people have talked about is like it would be really nice for people to see that what we're doing is amazing here, even if it's like coming out of such such horrendous adversity.
Yeah. Like one of the things that I've taken throughout my career is in hard times, we can build beautiful things. Yeah, That's what I wrote my book about, really. Yeah, and what I've tried to report on all of the world. They think this is more evidence of that, and so like you're going to hear things which were amazing and the people who have done them are wonderful, but they're
not uniquely special. You can do all these things too, and like, I want you to see that it is possible where you live.
Yeah. So one of the first things that we did when we got here we talked about, you know, to put ourselves in the story. I drove a long way and James flew a long way and yeah, you know, I picked up James at the airport and we came to where we're staying and we were talking about like and it was late at night and we're like, all right, what are we what are we trying to do tomorrow? And what are we trying to see? And what are
we trying to learn? Yeah, And one of the main things one of the first questions we had was like, what's the scale of what's happening here? Yeah? Right, Like, like what were your impressions of the scale of what was happening? Mmm? We should talk without that.
What's happening here?
It's like really quickly, I bet you all know about it in the news. Why do I have a different tone of voice when I'm talking into a microphone? In this way, and so usually I'm in a zoom call, but instead we're both sitting in a bedroom on opposite ends of the bedroom. Yeah, talking into microphones, and I somehow have a different cadence and I don't know how I feel about it. Also, I've had to drink caffeine, which I don't do because we've had to do an
awful lot. And anyway, what was I about to ask you.
How widespread stuff is?
Oh? Yeah, well what was it? Okay, we're going to talk about what's happening here.
But yeah, so if people aren't familiar, right, ICE, which is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency charged with removing people from the United States who are non citizens right who are considered deportable. Specifically, the branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that we are seeing here is Enforcement Removal
Operations aka EOO. We're also seeing border patrol right in the last year, actually more than a year, and I right, this begun under the Bay deministration with Operation Turned to Send Her in the Central Valley of California. We're seeing border patrol agents used to do internal enforcement right of people who are generally documented, sometimes undocumented, but always non citizens. They are detaining them in the street. They are detaining
them outside schools. They're detaining them at the bus stop, They're detaining them at places to work. And when I say detaining, that's as they're grabbing people out of cars. They're snatching children and using them to bait out their parents. They're smashing people's car windows and pulling them out. They're barging into businesses. In one case, they ate at a Mexican restaurant and then arrested the workers there later that day.
I've visited a lot of places where terrible things happen. Right. The ship that is happening here, it's a ship that people come to America to get away from. It is men in masks with guns pulling people who have done nothing wrong, who are here not harming anyone, People who
do not have criminal records. Just for the I don't feel like I need to say that on this show, but I need to say that every time I talk about this, right, like, the vast majority, something like eighty percent last time I know to the status of these people have no criminal records, and a criminal record could be something like fucking parking in the wrong.
Please, I've been arrested Yeah. Also, I don't care. I would give you a lot of crime. Everyone listening to this has done a lot of crime. Whether or not you've been caught, you're.
Probably stead Yeah you went a little bit too late through a red light whatever, Like, I don't think that matters actually exactly, even if you're a lib, even if you believe it, our justice system is fair. It should be fair for everyone. There shouldn't be different consequences for different people. Let's move past set, right, So how wide spread is this? Margaret and I got in late. We sat up even later talking all the shitty Vegan pizza. We ate it. We kind of was Yeah, had better,
I won't name drop. We we work up the next morning, and within five minutes while waking up, we heard like beep beep beep coming down the street. Yeah. Both Mark and I ran to the front door, spent a while trying to put on snow boots, and watched an Ice agent rolling down the street in what they normally drive in, right, which a rental SUVs with the windows blacked out. Yeah, and people following them alerting the block that Ice was here, right.
Yeah, and we're not downtown. We like picked an area that's like slightly lightly out of it. But we got warned that nowhere is goon free. Yeah, and they were right, nowhere is good free.
Right. I mean we have probably been within a thirty minute radius of the spot we're staying at for three or four days.
Right.
We've seen ICE pile their car into a telephone pole. We've seen spent munitions on the floor, Ice tear gas and people a few ox from us, but they were gone by the time we got there. Yeah, and I don't want to get this out like front and center at the start. It was not Ice who kettle protesters today. It was Hennepin County Sheriff's office. It was not Ice who arrested people who approached them with their hands in the air trying to work out what was going on.
That was Helipin County Sheriff's office. I've seen press conferences with Minneapolis police. I don't know what their deal is. I'll tell you the Hennepin County Sheriff's office for actively participating in this. Right, I'm not buying this local cops good. This will shock listeners. I'm not buying the local cops good, federal cops bad. Narrative when cops get asked what site they're on there on the side of the other cops.
Well, it's interesting because the thing that you have is that you have you know, there's the great classic like if those are neutron times of oppression or siding with the oppressors, right, Yeah, because the overall situation here, it seems to be, is that you do have much more the oppressive force here as an outside forces concerned to any other protest movement I've seen in the United States, people are very aware that it is outsiders who have come to their city to steal their neighbors.
Yeah, right, And.
So because of that, the federal forces are the forces everyone's mad at, whereas a lot of the people who are standing up to federal forces are neutral or fine with police and even like the concept of other federal agencies. They just don't want people snatching neighbors. Now that's not universal,
but it's like some of the people we've talked to. Yeah, but what state level law enforcement has decided is that they are committed to keeping the peace and they can't keep the peace against ice, which they probably on some level morally know that they need to, but they don't. And instead they're like, all right, well we can mess up with the you.
Know, the protest protested there protested, right, But.
Yeah, like when we saw people drive down honking the very first thing that we experienced in this town, and we weren't sure what it was. We were like, is that is that people following ice and honking? And I had done fair about research before I came, and I kind of knew about the whistles, but I didn't really know about this like incredible network that people have built. Yeah that what we saw was not in any way exceptional, right, that was just.
A standard street on a Wednesday morning.
Yeah, And so we get into we get into my vehicle and we start driving. You know, we have some places we think we're going to go check out, We have some you know, friends who are local who are going to talk to us. And we get like two blocks three blocks before we find people protecting Somali Daycare.
Yeah right, we uh, well before that, right, we went to the food cop to get food. Yeah, And we went into the food corp. We got a food and on the way out, we see this big old sign on the door which is like we're closed on the twenty third Ice out of Minnesota. Yeah, I s had in Minneapolis whatever it is, and it's in English and Spanish, and it's like in solidarity with our migrant neighbors, we're
not opening. Yeah, And like obviously it's a food cop right, it's not a reactionary space that sort of planted a seed for me, like, ah, like this is a big ass business, you know, like like it's not a business that necessarily relies on migrant labor. But I can see it being a space for people who in solidarity. I
wonder how white that is right? And they even in the time we've been here, I've seen businesses put those ut that didn't happen when we were going out on Wednesday, right, like people being like, nah, this isn't right, but yeah, to go back. We What happened was that Margaret was driving. I was riding next to Margaret. I saw a group of people. One guy had kind of tanned for housers
on and I was like, stop, Margaret. Margaret slowed down, signaled and turned into the parking lot that these folks were at, and they immediately they had seen us right ham on the brakes and turn up in a vehicle with that estate plates. Then we then we better go speak to these people. We probably scared them.
What's going is we thought we scared them. No, yeah, they're not scared of us. No, they're looking to see if they're on to us. It's such a huge difference, right, right, because when people are scoping us out, they're not like, oh, that might be ice. They're like, is that ice?
Let's fucking get them. Yeah yeah, Like if that's ice, we need to roll, right, We need to we need to let people know. We need to start honking, we need to start whistling.
Yeah.
So we get out, walk over and we start talking to these people, and like that. The person who was most fourth, right, most forthcoming, was an older lady. I mean she shared her rages. I think it's fine to say I think seventy six. Yeah, it's probably a round zero fair andheighth, like even like that warmer than that, right, So, like, you know, mindus ten celsius something there. Yeah, not wearing a hat, yeah, just give a fuck.
Yeah, I'm chilly in my like brand new winter clothes, and I live outside in the mountain. I don't live outside anymore, but I live in the mountains.
Yeah, yeah, I'm wearing all my nice technical gear show on a Parker and yeah, and she's just like so zealous, is like she's so happy to be doing what she's doing and so proud of herself for being the person who did it.
Yeah. And she's not in an earnest way, like in a way that in a self congratulatory way, but just in a like I am one hundred percent convinced I'm in the right and I will talk to you, yeah, and I will say it with my whole chest. Yeah, Like, do you want to share some of the stuff you said?
I thought it's really one of the things that she said that, yeah, Like I mean, you know she I didn't get the impression she was like a wild political radical or something, right, and she's just like, you know, my father fought fascists in France and Italy, and like he would be proud of me, and like, yeah, I'm sure he would be. Yeah, and I'm.
Sure it would be disgusted at what's fucking happening.
Yeah. And you know, and while we're talking, the Somali family who's daycare it is, comes out and gives us symbosas and we're like no, no, no, no, we're journalists.
You don't have to give us anything.
We're like, not even helping. We're like, they're like, you're here, you're with us, you are taking food.
Yeah. I was like, no way, some monies we feed people like, yeah, what's your deally vegetarian? We're like, we're with vegan.
Yeah.
So he comes out, goes back, comes out with the vegan ones, you know, like and they were delicious.
Yeah.
No, there's some best foot I ever eaten. As we're standing there, more people come and go. So you're like, Okay, this is happening here, right, you know, no pun intended. And we as we leave, we talked to a few more people we leave, and and some of the other people we talk to are like and the people from different scenes, it's not you know, like it's not just an old.
Lady scene, right, it's a diverse crowd.
Right. And you know, when we talk to a father who I tangentially know through the metal scene, who is like, yeah, my kid goes to school here. Yeah, like no one is taking kids while I can stand here, you know, And he was like, I have work to be doing it.
You know.
He's like, we're supposed to be recording this band today or whatever. And he's like, no, I'm here, I'm doing this. There's no sadness, you know, there's just.
So he's like, this is what I have to be doing. It's the most important thing to do.
Every two blocks there are people on the corner. Yeah, usually two people, sometimes alone. And those what we later learned because we were like, holy shit, there's ice watchers everywhere. Yeah, those are just the marked people we see. That's the minority. Yeah, there are people driving constantly in very organized but entirely decentralized networks of rapid response where they have come together
in these like hyper local Signal loops. Signal is an encrypted messaging app that you can use on any device Android, iPhone. The government can't break its encryption. However, there's no truly safe system.
It's the safest one we have and it automatically deletes mess ues after a period of day if.
You set it up to yeah, and which you should. And so people are using this system, and you know, a ton of these people had never heard of Signal before in their life and now they're using this system. And also we talked to folks and people felt that like a certain level of transparency about the networks they're building is very useful.
Yeah, we should probably address its head on, like just to be super clearly. Yeah, I think we are sharing is because people have implored us to share it.
Right.
We did not sneak in and find its information. People openly gave it to us because they wanted you to hear it.
Right, Because they understand that this is the kind of system that is currently proving effective and they want people to learn from what they're doing, and so they've created hyper local systems like block by block. We have groups where neighbors are able to check in on neighbors and people are able to say, hey, I saw this thing right, you know, And so there is constant presence all over town.
And when I say town, we spent our time in Minneapolis, but we have talked to a lot of people always say the same Paul is doing a similar thing, suburbs are doing a similar thing. Even some small towns elsewhere in Minnesota starting to do this.
Yeah, I don't quite know where the town is, but if people are local, Like a few years ago, I went to a massive renfare here and already outed myself it's okay. I brought a cloak I must wear. Folks all the way out there are doing it too, which is that was that place had a rural Midwest vibe, let me tell you.
And so people are doing this all over. I have never seen unity like this.
No, Like the only time I've seen a city this much in lockstep is when I was in Comishlo in twenty twenty three. And where is that. Comishlo is the capital of what is generally referred to as Rajava, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. And at that time we were being bombed by Turkey. Turkey takes offense at Kurdish people having any autonomy. And this is what that felt like, because there is someone invading your town
and taking your friends. Yeah, and everyone. I remember there were funerals, right because so one bomb killed thirty four, say show the internal security forces, and I remember everyone rolled out for the funeral like it was like a general strike. And that's what it feels like here, Like you could walk through town the day that happened and see people were sad, but they were sharing their sadness. And here people are mad and they're sharing their anger but also their love for one another.
Yeah, even when someone was killed by ice. This did not stop people from doing this work. Yeah, it brought more people out to do this work because people are like, no, this, this work needs to be done. And on some level the scale is that, right, Like, because if someone is seeking asylum, like, no one runs unless they have a reason, you know, And so sending people back to the places that they've sought asylum from often just means killing people. Yeah.
I mean, let's look at the things that happened in the last month. Right, gay men being sent back to Iran, where the punishment for that is death. People from this community, Korene people, right being sent back to Mianmar where we know that they are directly delivered to a military prison. They are sending people back to Mauritania, where again you can be punished for being queer by death. Right, Like, what is happening here is that people's lives are at stake.
I think sometimes people think, oh, I think of Veni and you go out a place where life is less, you know, you don't have a target. No, that's not a deal. Yeah, we're sending people back to Venezuela. Right, We're sending people from the US to Venezuela. The US notably just kidnapped the president of Venezuela. Those people aren't going to have a nice time. Yeah, right, And if you were a US intelligence agen see and you wanted to insert people into Venezuela, that's how you would do it.
Yeah.
And Venezuela knows that Venezuella then that dumb and they are very paranoid. Yeah, and they are a state which has a great deal of ability to do violence based on that paranoid.
And so people are aware of the stakes and they're doween something about it, and what's cool. It's so interesting because at the same time, but you know, there's a little bit of like, yeah, we're built different and certainly around the colt that is absolutely true. And there is all of this stuff in the history of at least Minneapolis that people have built resistance out of, right, you know,
all of this very active multiculturalism going back decades. We've talked to organizers who grew up and you know, we talked to an organizer who grew up in the American Indian movement and was talking about like black and Indigenous solidarity going back to the sixties and seventies, right, and you know, and was saying like, there's all of this multicultural and solidarity. There's also all of these like cultural events, right. They have this huge Mayday parade right, or festival every year.
It's funny, I've spent a lot of time in Minneapolis, but I've never actually been here for this, but everyone's always talking about it where basically people go to this park and build puppets and build giant puppets together. But it's it's decentralized, and so there's all of this history of decentralized organizing. And in twenty twenty, of course, you know, the uprising kind of began here and people are very.
Aware of that.
And so they have all of these networks that have been built for years, and they weren't necessarily like crazy active in the intervening years. But people know each other on some level. And that's the thing though, because we expected kind of I expected people being like, ah, yes, they had all of these deep interconnections, and most people were talking to are like, no, I know my neighbors. Now do you know six months ago we had the we have these like small seeds, right, and so there,
so people here are and aren't special about that. But do you know what is special? Else I can die. I shut it to think, Margaret. I think what's special is the fact that you and I run anti capitalist podcasts. It's special as a lot of meetings, Yeah, that are interrupted by advertisements. Yeah, it is, it is different, it is, it is a thing. And here they are.
Yeah, thank you please in certain name of advertiser here for buying us a low grade vegan pizza which still cost us more than fifty dollars and reback. Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about like the structures that exist, right, and I think probably the way to do that is to break this down into two distinct, I guess categories. And I think these are distinct in terms of organizing for the most part. Right, one is mutual aid and one is rapid response. And I just
want to break down why people are doing mutual aid. First. First of all, we're doing mutual aid because it is the way that we build a better world by taking care of one another without trying to extract profit from one another. Why they're doing it is because people right now who are at risk of deportation are afraid to leave their homes. They are living like a lot of
Jewish people lived in nats. This is this is a comparison to somebody whose grandparents fled the Holocaust made for us today, like Jewish people did Nazi Germany.
Right.
The difference is this time they know their neighbors have their back. Yeah, and so they're afraid to go out.
Right.
Schools are offering remote education because kids are afraid to go to school because ice has been hitting school bus stops. Yeah. People can't go out and get groceries, and they can't go to their jobs, so they can't pay their bills. And so that requires if we want to take care of people, we have to feed them. We have to help them pay their bills, meet their material needs, get their kids educated. That is a heavy lift. Capitalism extracts
are pretty heavy fee for paying rent. Right, we give most of our lives, yeah, to capital so that we can get food and pay rent and clothes and shit. We have to do that without that here, right, and people are doing it. So they are organizing food drop off, they're organizing diaper banks, they're organizing to give people rides who might not feel safe driving by themselves. Yeah, they're
taking people's kids. Some often right. A scenario that I'm very familiar with is citizen children born to non citizen parents. So those kids, no one is safe when you have this many people running around with weapons, right and very poor training and then a lot of anger and yeah, not very good at driving in the snow. But their kids are still able to go out and go to school. But it's about idea for their parents are taken, right.
So you're seeing people organizing school runs, getting food for people. Then you've got businesses that are owned by migrants, right like there, or businesses that are largely staffed by migrants. So it's trying to keep those places afloat so that
community can continue to care for itself. But when it's workers can't come in, or what if the majority of the clean tell of the business and migrants, well, maybe people volunteer to do delivery, right, so that that business can stay afloat and those migrants can still get the foods that make them feel safe at a time when they don't feel safe. Whatever it is, right, people are meeting each other's needs without trying to extract, like find actual compas station from each of them.
And to talk about the decentralized nature of this again, and it's like hyper local like no org, many orgs, but no one org stepped in and was like, ah, this is the way to do it. Here's this top down flow chart. Instead. All of these groups started in different ways, like we've talked to people from like different neighborhoods where like ah, it all started like this, and then they paint a completely different picture from people from
three blocks over. Yeah. Yeah, and like you know, someone was like the mutual aid here started with one mom who was like, while I'm making food, yeah, and in her own kitchen made food.
Yeah.
And then it was like I will carry the entire weight of the world as necessary upon my shoulders.
And then other people.
Were like, okay, I'll help you lift this. I think of the have you seen the meme about like I can't lift weights with my anarchist friends. No, I can't lift weights with my anarchist friends because every time might pick up the barbell, like thirty of my friends come over and help me lift the bar bell while singing John Henry.
Yeah, that's perfect, And.
That's like what's happening here? Yeah, you know, And so one person starts doing this thing and people say, oh, that's a good idea, and there are these other networks that can then tie that in and people will be heavily involved in one network and have a little bit of an understanding what's happening in the other networks. Yeah, but enough people are talking to each other that they're learning best practices, they're learning what doesn't doesn't work, and
they're also changing to get to mean the threat. Yeah.
I think the other thing is here that no one's coming in with like tax deductible funding. Yeah. Right, this is just people taking care of people.
Yeah.
That has been sustainable for some time, right, like since since mid December we're now in late January. That is a thing that like there's a need for money, yeah, to keep banking that happen, and that is an area where people outside of Minneapolis going to help, they want to, So I just want to flag that. Yeah, and we will drop some resources at the end of these two episodes, and we'll drop at the end of the first episode and hopefully you'll if you feel so inclined, you'll be
able to help financially. But yeah, let's talk about rapid response.
ICE is not as large of an agency as they wish it was. You know, there's so much news about how hard of a time they're having hiring people, to the point where they like hired the like leftist journalist too, was like, yeah, applied as a joke, you know here.
You know.
And so they've they've had the surge here, the flood they called it, I believe of agents here and you know there's about three thousand I think ice agents in the city.
Yeah, I think it was metro surge here. Midway flood was Chicago.
Okay, And they can't do that everywhere at once. So if you play video games, Minneapolis is tanking. Did you know the concept of tanking. Yeah, you'd ask to be a video game. You do in Dungeons Dragons, I know, I know they do it. Yeah, you can tank in Dungeons and Dragons, but the actual Weirdly, I think the concept of tanking comes not from Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, later additions that this is a nerd tangent.
Anyway, James and Margaret talk about Dungeons Dragons eptomology.
Yeah, the concept is that one person stands there and takes the damage while other people heal that person and do damage to the people attacking that person.
Well prepared themselves.
Yeah. Well, in the video game version, as you you know, one person takes all the damage while everyone else is also helping do the damage back, because that's literally just the World of Warcraft version. But Minneapolis is tanking. It's the Twin Cities and Minnesota are tanking, and all of the ice agents that are here aren't somewhere else. Yeah. And one of the ways that they're making that possible it's a rapid response.
Yeah.
And rapid response that's what the name says. That is a way to respond rapidly. Which is the other Okay, this is the other question, and I have coming in Why does this work? This was my thought. I was like, why does blowing whistles at ice agents make them not able to kidnap people? So I was like does this work? That was one of the main questions we ask people. The answer is yes, it doesn't work all the time. This is still a tragic situation where if everyone involves
is kind of traumatized to medium to greater degrees. I don't want to say the lesser degrees. But what happens is is that if the ice agents are outnumbered, they usually don't successfully abduct anyone, even though they're the only harmed people in the situation, even though they theoretically the way that police would act. Being outnumbered it helps, but it's not as much of a game changer. Yeah, with ICE being wildly unpopular occupying force so far at least currently,
outnumbering them seems to often stop abductions. At first, I believe to Zemberish, the way that ICE was handling things was these big, spectacular raids that we've seen in a lot of places. Thirty agents are showing up and raiding this place, right, and so if you get a call about that, a rapid response can be twenty minutes, it can be thirty minutes. You can show up and you're still part of fighting against this happening. And this is what's happening all over the country, right. Yeah, So ICE
here adapted and started moving faster and faster. Yeah, and so now often these abductions take two or three minutes. So they were like, how do we get a crowd in two minutes? And when when an organizer first, like everyone here is an organizer. When a person who does this first suggested that to me, my thought was like, well you don't, Yeah, that's impossible, but it's not.
They do it.
Yeah, and they do it because everyone here in Minneapol. Like I not everyone everyone, but I I haven't run across too many counter examples. Yeah, is themselves willing to respond. Yeah. Like, and so when you hear people honking and whistles outside.
You go outside. Yeah, I mean we heard someone was mentioning that they had seen and to be clear, this morning again the real feel was in the minus thirties celsius and fahrenheit, which is the last Friday. But they have said they were on the block, they heard some honking, they come outside. There they were outside and cut off pajama pants and crogs, screaming and blowing whistles right like, and you we saw it, even when someone mistook us
for ice agents. Right and within a couple of minutes a couple of people are come and we were to go with your list like yeah, long hair like sap them range, Yeah, exactly like crusty like you can you.
Can see us coming but out of state plates. Yeah.
A city is made of people, right like that. The people are out there, the blood pumping through the veins of a city. It's not made of buildings. And there are people every were and when all of them are willing to show up, right or half of them? Yeah, Well, in the entire time we have seen here, the only person who has expressed any negativity about what is happening is a person in a truck today who was honking at a large protest that we were part of in
a way that was clearly adversarial. Oh yeah, yeah, literally one person.
He was also stuck.
Yeah, he was also stuck and have been stuck for some time and hid struggling with a merged situation that happened when.
We actually don't know as political opinions.
He was unhappy. It was just that's the only person I've seen express any upset, Like every the person checking us out at the supermarket, the people who we have run into a coffee shops right like Rando's outside the Dollar General store, people we see in the street. But people we see in the street are standing it. It's cold as fuck. No one wants just like vibing on a park bench currently, but everyone, yeah, is one hundred in it.
On the fuck these guys page, Yeah, like we we today we heard about an ice vehicle that crashed into a pole and This is actually fairly common, I believe, because one they don't know how to drive in ice, yeah, and Minneapolis is icy, and they were driving like a I don't know whether the vehicles all we were drive or not. It was the Ford Escape, yeah, but it was some not altering tires. Yeah, No, those were pretty
those were some California ass to ice. Yeah. And it's just crashed into a pole in a like pretty impressive way, like going at a decent speed.
Yeah. They both hair bags had deployed, the radiator was done, the engine block was you know, like, Yeah, they'd crumpled the front of the car. It's because they drive erratically when people are driving behind them trying to get rid of them, and they are driving ill equipped, both skill wise and vehicle wise. Yeah, and so we showed up. Yeah, an hour and a half after the crash. They just abandoned the vehicle. They're like, they came and got some
of their stuff out of the car. To your guess, Yeah, I tossed some seer guys.
We saw the canister on the ground of Safes Gas and they just left it there and they were not going to clean it up. I don't believe they will ever clean it up. That'll be on the local police or whoever, you know, city And we're standing there and a guy drives by and he's just a normal man. Yeah, no distinguishing features yet, no belief to be a subcultural or lefty or someone drives by and it is like,
oh shit, is everyone okay? And I was like, oh, that's a nice vehicle, and he just starts laughing, he barks his car, he gets yeah yeah, and this happens over and this is must have been happening over and over over an hour to happen. Yeah.
What else I noticed then was like, so we were walking up and this this person popped out of their house and was like, hey, what's happening. We were like, oh, I spiffed it into this pole. Yeah, And they were like okay, if you guys need anything, like I'm here, I'm taking care of some kids or an elder. I can't remember, but they were like, you need to come in the house. It's called just come to come knock on the door, like you need a hot drink, you know.
Like, and we're more press, We're not like hello, we are the activists.
You know. Yeah, like you know, I'm to be clear, I'm wearing a helmet mark. Were both wearing helmets with with big blue press patches on them. So one of the things I noticed is like, and it's been repeated a bit and then reported on a little bit, like these three D printed whistles. Right, Yeah, one of the ways that people identify someone was saying them that people know you're cool. It's like people are all carrying whistles
around the next like almost. I was just keeping an eye on this is as we met people throughout the last few days. Everybody had a caribbean with their keys and a whistle on it, or a whistle around their neck, or there was a whistle on a lanyard on their wrist. It's like a little marker.
And what's interesting is we've talked to people about how at the beginning, I know a lot of people are like, this seems kind of silly. Yeah, right, You're like, oh, they're the Federal I mean there's the Gestapo, right yeah yeah, and we have whistles and so it seems so absurd. Yeah, but there's so many parts of it they hate. They want to operate in secrecy. Yeah, yeah, we see watchers on every corner. We don't see ice, Like this is a city under occupation, but it's like visibly under occupation
by its own defenders. Yeah right, it is like infiltrated by federal agents. Not like you don't you know, I've been in places where you have like the the police rolling around in their tank things with Yeah, and like this isn't that because they can't actually express much force.
They can't even be seen as you go. They're trying their very hardest to hide, right, They have tinted vehicles, they cover their faces. They keep getting different rentals so people can't recognize it. Yeah, Like they are trying their best to blend in and failing. Yeah.
And everyone having a whistle. So not only is it effective because it draws attention to them, it makes you a defender. It's a very cheap and easy way you hand the whistle, and you're handling them responsibility. You're saying like you are now it's like, I mean he's handing some of their goddamn sword, you know, in a like night fantasy land way, right, Yeah, like you're one of us when we take care of each other, and you
are going to defend people. Yeah, and you're going to defend people by casting these people like it's so interesting because I'm so used to thinking like power doesn't need to hide, right, Like, yeah, you know, and when journalists are like, oh, well, what they really fear is the truth, and you know, I'm like, well, power doesn't need to hide.
But the power is not with the folks driving around and occupying the city right now. The more relevant power is with the folks standing on street corners who don't feel the need to hide, who want afraid, right.
And like, this is part of why I hate saying things like this. I think we're gonna win, yeah, And I haven't felt that way in years, And like, yeah, I think that this spirit, the spirit that is animating this city is the thing that will get us through it. And when I say when when conditions are all weird and hard and we're going to lose a lot of people, like we're going to lose a lot.
Of like grabbing people up the street hair every day to style of this.
Because when I'm like, oh, people are stopping so many abductions, they're also everyone we've talked to has stop abductions and failed to stop abductions. Yeah, and that haunts a lot of them. I think I think so too, And yeah, people are really torn between those two things.
Yeah, I'll just say that like as someone who's been in it for a minute when it comes to like advocacy for migrants, right. Yeah, If I go back three years ago to twenty twenty three, it was one hundred crusties and anarchists and Quakers and Sikhs who were feeding thousands of people in the desert, right, and in a big city metro area of three million people forty five minutes away. People didn't believe me when I told them it was happening, because nobody gave a shit, to include
the local media. Then I was in La Right in summer this year, and there were young folks there who were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, right, and did really inspire inst really inspiring stuff and very brave stuff. And so many of them were those kids who are in that situation where they are citizens and their parents are not, and they believe in the right to a freedom of expression and speech, and they came
to use it. Right. But I could walk five blocks from there, and it could have been any other day in La Right. I went to a fancy coffee shop I overpaid for a coffee.
Because the white people didn't give a shit. I mean, or you didn't for the most part. No, you're right, could have been they cared.
I think they cared. A lot of people say, oh, it's terrible, what's happening. Yeah, but you know, some people spoke to me about their film script la. Right, that's a given, But it did not feel like the city was locked in. This feels different to that. Yeah, it feels more locked in than it even felt in twenty twenty. Yeah, because everybody sees this is an external thing.
Yeah, but do you know what doesn't like doing transitions right now?
It's me.
I don't actually like doing it, but that is my job. And here's some ads, and we're back. The external threat part is really fascinating and is like a key to a lot of this. I believe, you know, the difference between the tone of twenty twenty, where it was this nationwide internal threat. This is still absolutely present, right, is absolutely all of the problems from twenty twenty, Yeah are still here at up Yeah. Earlier today and we watched them arrest a lawyer. Yeah, and we'll get to that.
But the thing I've been thinking about is that in protest movements you often say things like oh, what radicalized you? Or I got radicalized by this, or yeah, this isn't radical, even though it's higher stakes, more risk, like, yeah, it's not radical to say, man, I don't think you should kidnap literal children, you know, I don't.
Think Yeah, which is why very normal people are very pissed off.
Yeah, and like and one of the things has come up from multiple people, you know, and and the internet commenters will say, well, then why they vote this way? And that's just a that doesn't get us anywhere.
Yeah, what the are you doing?
Yeah, we've talked to a bunch of people who are like, oh, yeah, that Republican business is closed for the general strike. Or my neighbor who is very conservative, is pissed as hell. Yeah I saw a signed today and we'll get to the big protest. I sorry, what would Ronald Reagan do?
Yeah? The person right, So this person has not just thought that. Yeah, they have got out their pens and paper and their crafting supplies. Yeah, they've made that sign. They've got their ass down to the middle of town and it is minus ten minus fifteen, and they are out and about with their what would Ronald Reagan sign? Right, because they have that pissed off.
And no one's mad at them. Yeah, because at a certain point it doesn't matter.
Yeah, rather they were here.
Yeah, like exactly. And like the thing I've been thinking about a lot is that glad you're here, gets so much further than what took you so long. Yeah, And there just is a line. The federal government has crossed it. And the more people who are aware of that, the better.
Yeah. I think it's really important that part of the organizing here has been so wide and so inclusive and so broad and yet so focused.
Right.
Yeah, it's so focused on keeping their neighbors safe. And that's it can be so broad because most people think that's the right thing to do. That is what is allowing them to do this right now. Yeah, And it doesn't matter where someone was yesterday or in November of twenty twenty four, if they're on a street corner today looking out for their neighbors.
And I'll say that I'm not going to name them, but to shout out part of the reason I'm here is that like someone I know who I don't know, if they have a political ideology to their name, just you know, a young queer person I know was talking to them a couple of weeks ago and they were telling me about how, you know, I didn't understand the scope of the rapid response networks, but it's hard to see from outside.
Yes it is, yeah, yeah, and necessarily it's something that people don't always talk about to everyone, right.
Right, totally, And so, you know, talking to this person and they're like, oh, earlier today, I you know, went and stood in front of apartment building because of ICE. And I was like, your apartment building and They're like, no, about a block away, and I'm like okay. They're like, yeah, I just want to go stand out front to make sure ICE didn't get in. And I'm like, okay, I
don't quite understand, you know. And then they're like, oh yeah, and I you know, I go to the hotels where Ice are at and me and my friends sit there and write down license plates and I'm just like, and I'm imagining this is just like an activity they're doing. I don't quite understand, you know, But I'm like, why are you doing it? Right? And not that not that it's a it's an obvious answer on some level, but they're like because I told myself I was someone who
would do it's right. Yeah, And I think that then in all of our hearts, we tell ourselves that when it comes down to it, we do it's right. And like, you know, people like talking about like comparisons between now in Nazi Germany and the rise of fascism, and they're like, you know, there's the meme about like how we all ended up fascists. You're failing an open note test, you know, But Minneapolis isn't failing the open note test.
Yeah, yeah, they are passing with flying colors, right, Like I mean, yeah, I think you know you and I have both history appreciators, and history has taught us a lot, right, the big coalitions do better than small one or ones a fracturing too a million pieces that like leadership isn't
what we need. Participation is what we need. And yeah, you see a lot of it in action here and like all of us, right, like anyone who's spent any time reading, writing, learning, listening to history whatever has sort what would I do? We're finding out is that yeah, we're not learning at having thought what would I do? And most people have said what I wouldn't be one of the ones who did something, So they're doing something.
Yeah, And I think about maybe my last thought for today is that when ice abducts people, which they do every day, Yeah, did it just disappear people?
Right?
They just show up.
They pull someone over literally just for being brown, to be really transparent. Yeah, Like the police have come out and been like, could you please stop pulling over all of the brown cops? Yeah? Right, Like and when they when they pull someone over, they just take them and they leave the car, sometimes running, sometimes in drive, Yeah, and just drive away. And I was like, are we walking into a ghost town? Right? Are we going to
see this everywhere? And like, in my three days here, I haven't seen the abandoned vehicle except the ice abandoned vehicle that get crashed. But it is happening every day, and we have talked to people who see it every day.
And a very common activity is the ghastly approaching an abandoned vehicle abandons there the vehicle that has been the occas and trying to figure out who the fuck it was and going through and finding the information to contact people's loved ones and and say like, hey, your your wife has been stolen? Yeah, you know and like and that, and we were talking to you know, a decent number of the people that we talked to about this were Jewish and they're you know, talking about like this is
what my family told me about. Yeah, you know, and like that was one of the first things that someone told me that really made me cry. This whole thing has been like really challenging all my cynicism and detached us from from hard things. But hearing those stories and then just seeing the people who do that, which could be anybody. Yeah, because people step up. It's a god. I just a I I say, I can only imagine it, you know, but it like that's a that is a
daily reality. Here is someone will just stolen. Yeah, a person was just stolen, and I have to go through their effects to figure out who they were.
Yeah. I guess when we were speaking about that, I was thinking about experiences I've had in the desert right where you find someone's bag as they're walking through and
it's got too hot. They've taken off their bag, and you go through all the little ephemera, the little things that people thought were worth carrying across the world, and you try to piece together their life and work out who they are, and you look at pictures of their children, and you look at pictures of their spouse and their home, and you hope that they're okay, right, And in this instance,
they're not okay, right. And it's not the abstract violence of the structures of borders and walls and surveillances that have killed them or taken them. In this instance, right, it's five people in masks in a car over there, and it's happening in the middle of cities where people can see it. Right. Part of the function of the border is to take the violence away from where people can see it. And they got away with that for so long that they figured they could just bring it
into cities. And it makes my heart so proud that when people could see it, they said, fuck no, you're not doing this in my town. Because for so long I've believed that if people could, Like the reason I'm a Jeralist, right, the reason that I have spent a better part of ten years I'm like receiving trauma is because I really believe in my heart that people could if people could see the cruelty, they would care and
they would do something. And like this confirms that for me, Right, people can see it and they have cared and they have done something amazing, right, and that makes me so proud of them.
Yeah, the paradise built in hell, as Soulment put it. You know, people are finding community and a really active way and learning what people can do for each other and the levels in which people are plugging in. You know, there's a whole long sending cliche that for every front line access, there's ten support people. Yeah, and you're like,
well here, it's those lines aren't so clearly delineated. Yeah, because on some level, you know, we've talked to people who have been like, oh my my neighbor who you know has so many mobility issues that they can't leave their house.
Yeah, they're just.
Hanging on the front porch.
Yeah, on the front line. Yeah, exactly, because the front line comes to you.
Yeah, Like we talked to someone earlier who was pepper spread this morning while walking their dog. Yeah, you know, because while walking their dog they witnessed masked agents stealing a person. Yeah, well I about to do it for part one of it. Could cool people here and uh, we'll be back on Wednesday or whenever. It We actually don't know what the scheduling is going to be of this particular episode.
Yeah, we'll be back in the subsequent episod of the podcast. Feed you're listening to you.
That's right, that's right, And yeah, you're gonna final Let me say this, right.
I was really sad when I came here because my friends were dying Reshaba. Yeah, and I wish I was with them in a strange way, Yeah, because I know the sense of togetherness they feel and I felt that here and that was really special for me because I would struggle to be dealing with this alone.
Yeah, and we're gonna talk a bit more about rapid response stuff. And there's also just a point some articles people's way. There's a series of articles that came out from crimethink, which is crimethink dot com that have talked about some of the structures of rapid response networks. And people here are putting together a lot of resources about what they have and haven't learned. And we're gonna be talking about some of those things that people have learned
and things like that. But it's really worth understanding wherever you are because you're also that person who can hang out on your front porch. I mean not necessarily literally you hang out on your front porch. But it's like the idea is when the entire city mobilizes, it works. And I think that when we realize that we can mobilize the entire country, that works. That's my theory. Yeah, see y'all soon.
Hi friends, it's me James. I'm back, and I'm back because we ask in people on the ground if they could provide us with some links to places where people could donate that have been vetted that they knew would be going to people helping people on the ground, and
they provided us with a lot of different links. So I'm going to tell you what each of these links are, and if you'd like to donate, you can just scroll on down whichever app you're using to the podcast show notes and you can click one of the one of the links below. So there's rent support for neighbors in Phillips, rent support for neighbors in Central, rent support for neighbors in Powderhorn, supplies for political art making, protective gear for
legal observers, diapers, and menstrual supplies. There are abolish iced T shirts that you can purchase. There is a fundraiser for Northstar Frontline Street Medics and the Twin Cities Swirlitariat Bailfund. There are links for both of venmo and cash app donation there.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it Could Happen Here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.