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Welcome home. Y'all, this is Native Lampod. It's solo pod Day. I'm your host, Angela Rai. And today we are still talking about ICE just taking over Minneapolis, and the residents, the citizens there are not letting it go by easily. They are holding Ice accountable on every side. They are ensuring that they are protecting citizens from horns, car horns
to whistles. They are ensuring that ICE's road is not easy. Now, one thing I want to flag for you all these days, you can't necessarily trust the data coming out of this administration because they throw out numbers all the time that may or may not be fact checked. But the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam is saying, as of today, more than ten thousand people have been detained by ICE in Minnesota. What we know so far is some of
these people are citizens. They're saying they're all illegals. First of all, we all know that human beings cannot be illegal. They can be undocumented people.
But we know for a.
Fact They have even detained people who are Native American, indigenous to this country, people who've been there before them. Right, this is what we're up against right now, in this day and age, right on the other side of the Martin Luther King Holiday, I'm thrilled to introduce to some of you.
I know many of you.
Many many of you have seen her incredible journalism on the ground in Minnesota. And there's one of her first videos that I saw that just pricked my heart, and it is a young woman who is protesting on behalf of her neighbors.
Let's roll that clip here today.
I'm out here because I'm not and I want to protect my neighbors. These are all people that I love, and it makes me so mad that my class they's I can't even take it. Every day every day we're getting taken well, we.
Care, we care, We're so mad, We're so mad and hurting. Yes, what do you see as some of the solutions for our country and how we move forward from this moment?
We need to find better solutions to find people to get into the country. No one should be illegal on land that's not even belonging to our government.
This isn't our land.
Tell me how you found out about the death of Renee Good and how that impacted you.
How did it make you feel.
I think I was just on my phone and I saw it. It was kind of the same way that I kind of found out about George Floyd. I was just scrolling on my phone and it just made me feel violated, because no one should have to face so death that cruel.
And what do you think justice looks like?
Justice looks like getting everybody back to those family lists now got Tiken wrongfully?
I just blown away by that video, the power and the voice of that young woman, and the journalist who platforms people who ordinarily would be ignored or not given a platform to be heard at all. She is the reason when we say independent journalism matters, especially in a day and age where we are watching media companies bout to Trump every single day, putting people on air who are refusing, frankly, to tell the truth, to speak truth to power, and ensure that at the very least this
administration is fact checked well on the ground. In Minnesota, in Minneapolis specifically and in Saint Paul, Georgia Fort is doing exactly that, and for that she's winning awards including one that just was given to her yesterday on Doctor King's holiday.
Welcome, Miss Georgia.
Fort, Thank you so much for having me. Angela Oh, I'm thrilled to have you.
Thank you for being here, for making time in the mist of everything that's going on. I just want to ask you what you're hearing. We know Christy Nooam is saying that more than ten thousand people have been detained by ICE. What are you all hearing on the ground, particularly from local elected leaders.
We are actually witnessing for ourselves, us citizens being detained. We're hearing directly from impacted families of people who are going through the legal immigration process, who don't have a criminal background, that are being detained. And so where I, as a journalist, have researched some of these numbers right anywhere from sixty five to seventy five percent according to who you're checking with, of people who are currently detained
by ICE that don't have any criminal background. That is extremely alarming, and like you pointed out, it's contradicting the narrative and the statistics that we're getting from our federal government.
I'm curious to know.
When you first learned that ICE was going to be making its way to Minneapolis.
What crossed your mind?
Well, I think my biggest concern was for the everyday residents here and knowing that we were ground zero in twenty twenty, knowing that there is an organizer community here, a protest culture, I guess you could say, of people who are not going to just lay down and take injustice, take mistreatment. And so my biggest concern was how my
things escalate. And you know a lot of people may or I guess, may not have heard that there was a huge action that happened here back in June, right before the assassination of Melissa Hortman, and so at that time, people were tense thinking that we were going to become this target, and it kind of then was just it felt like a one time thing, and there was nothing happening here up until recently when they announced Operation Metro Surge, and so all of those worst case scenarios were actually
now seeing play out in real time. So I want to stay here for a moment, because you talked about George Floyd in twenty twenty, Before George Floyd, there was Filando Castile, and now it seems like from an outsider's view. So this could be wrong, but from an outsider's perspective, it seems like the very law enforcement that you all have watched abuse the rights of your citizens, hurt, harm, and even kill. And I'm thinking specifically about the Minneapolis
Police Department. Now this community has to seemingly rely on this same police department in the face of ice. Are you all seeing that in the same way or does it feel more like this community is doing this on their own and law and this other law enforcement isity is more or less coordinating with Ice. Well, it's a bit of both. And yeah, I would also urge people who have not followed what's been happening in Minnesota, you know,
before twenty twenty, to even look at Jamar Clark. There was an eighteen day occupation at the fourth Precinct in the middle of winter, and so the things that have been ruminating here boiling here, have been simmering for a
long time. And I say both and directly to answer your question about the relationship there with local law enforcement, because back in June, and I think it's it's significant to look at how things played out and the posture of the Minneapolis police chief back in June and the posture of the mayor back in June when the federal government first came here, right, because two weeks before that first federal raid in Minnesota, the DOJ rolled back the
dissent decree on our local law enforcement. There are dissent decrees in a lot of police departments across this country. Right. Our consent decree here, it was enacted after the murder of George Floyd, after the federal government under the Joe Biden administration investigated and uncovered patterns and practices of racial discrimination and civil rights violations, and so they put forth this consent decree. So why did the federal government roll
back that consent decree? No one ever was really told why it just happened. The only other state we saw this happening was Louisville, where Breonna Taylor was killed. Right, So these two states very interesting. Then a few weeks later, the federal government is here. They do this huge raid. But everyone here locally, all of the share triff, the mayor, the police chief, they stand in unity and they say, oh, this was not an ice raid. This was a federal
raid against sex traffickers. And so they really held the line for the federal government. Now you fast forward and you see our mayor on television using profanity, grand standing against the federal government. But he kind of allowed them to come in and held the line for them and be kind of became a local spokesperson on behalf of their operation. So what we're I think there's that caused a lot of mistrust to see the police chief take
that stand. And then when you're on the ground, regardless of what they're saying in press conferences, when you're on the ground, we're seeing local law enforcement agencies actually extend the crime scene in order to allow federal agents to leave these scenes safely. We're seeing city equipment used to
put up barrier between protesters and these federal agents. So you know, we're I'm following what local elected officials are saying in the press conferences, but what I'm hearing from the people who I'm interviewing on the street is they're waiting to see the action that matches up with what locals are actually saying.
That is such a profound point and what struck me, honestly, Georgia is so often I feel like across the board, nationally, white elected officials like the bar for what they have to do in order to get like overwhelming support is so low, like oh, he can do the dougie, you know, and it's like you can, you know, you get this
this overwhelming support. So to hear you say that people are seeing kind of this walking contradiction between what elected official officials are saying stay the f out our city or keep that f out or whatever versus what they've actually done to facilitate some of that action is profound. We did get a question from a viewer and I meant to ask this, so I'm glad they brought it. Daja Peterson asked, what is Operation surch Can you define that for us or describe it?
Well, that is what the federal government. That's what Christy nom announced as a title for the deployment of thousands of federal agents here in Minnesota. And so it's just kind of a name that the federal government has used to basically come and occupy the state of Minnesota. I believe at this point are over three thousand agents ice agents here in our state. That number actually is larger than the combined number of all of the local law
enforcement agencies combined in the metro area. So that's what Operation Metro Surges, Operation Metro Search.
And then the other thing that I want to do, just so we can put a video or an image to Operation Surge, is play what Ice was doing on Sunday.
Let's roll that clip so for those who are.
Listening, they detained and walked a man purp walked out a man out of his house, half dressed with just boxers and an open robond.
You can't get close, y'all know you can just change your mind and go home.
Stop doing the Scots and ship right.
So I wanted to play, especially the clip of the man who is an elder clearly an elderly man. I know you know this story, Georgia, but I want you to talk about this man is walked out of his house. I don't know what the temperature is in Minneapolis right now, but it's too cold for him to have an open rollbond in boxers.
The most important fact about that story is that was a US that is a man who has gone through the process to become a US citizen. He was embarrassed in front of all of all of his neighbors, taken out in seven degree weather, and some people said he had just gotten out the shower. All he had on was boxers and crocs, an elder, a US citizen. And so to see those types of mistakes quote and I say air quotes, mistakes right, made over and over and
over again, it is extremely disheartening. And I think it signals going back to like the consent decree, right patterns and practices. When you mainstream media wants us to look at one isolated event at a time, No, take do
zoom out. Let's look at the aerial picture. Here. We are seeing the patterns of unconstitutional arrests of you as citizens, the violation of due process for people who are not citizens, attacks on journalists, attacks on peaceful protesters, attacks on legal observers, and many even let's say, arrest of people who maybe should be arrested. They're happening violently. And so to see these patterns continually perpetuated in America without any checks, without
any balances. We just we had a federal judge who issued an order to basically reinforce the law prohibiting these ice agents from attacking peaceful protesters and journalists and whatnot. But it didn't stop them, you know. And so the question I think that I'm asking myself as a mother and as a parent. Who, yes, I work as a journalist in Minnesota, but I also live here. What is
going to stop them? Yeah, because our governor has made please, he said whatever political ego he had aside, and he went on a national platform and said, please, can we turn the temperature down here? We have seen these types of concessions from so many elected officials here who now today we're learning many are being subpoena into some type
of federal probe. And so I am continuing to challenge myself to find language to talk about the reality that we're living in, not just in Minnesota, but in America. And it's frustrating because I think that media is very powerful obviously, that's why this is the work that I do. But to see mainstream media not contextualize what this government really is, call it what it is we are now in and authoritarian regime that is not going to follow the constitution, that is not going to abide by the
orders of federal judges. And the longer that we refrain from actually using the language, the longer it's going to take for us to find real solutions to move our country forward.
What do you feel in this moment, Like you talked about being a Minnesota resident, you talked about hearing the police from at least the governor to abide by the constitution.
Like, calm down, because this is not it.
We're not going in a good direction as a resident, as a mother.
Are you afraid about what's next?
Absolutely? Absolutely so.
What drives you to keep be cause you're not just like reporting on it from videos you're seeing online. You're going to the heart of the protest, You're going to the heat of the action. What is driving you to be at ground zero in spite of that fear?
We cannot be neutral about the dismantling of our democracy and still expect to be protected by it. We cannot allow our fear to paralyze us to the point where we decide to do nothing, that we just become spectators and then just live with the consequence of whatever this administration is doing. And so I am activated by my ancestors. I feel like I stand on the shoulders of I to b Wells, who documented lynchings that was probably extremely
controversial at her time. I imagine that because she had such a narrow focus and because she decided to tell the stories of people who are lynched in their families, and not so much so of the people who are lynching them. She was probably accused of not being objective and being an activist, and probably all the same things that I hear. But it did not It did not prevent her from continuing to do that documentation, which now fast forward years later,
is extremely essential to us understanding that era. It is extremely essential because of the continued attempts to erase our history. I stand on the shoulders of David Jackson, the photographer who took the horrific image of Emmitt til which touched the hearts, the minds, and the souls of so many white Americans and activated them to do something. And so I understand the power of media and the power of storytelling. And if I allow my fear to paralyze me, then
I feel like they have won. I feel like in twenty years we won't have an accurate reflection of what is happening. And I think it's essential because you mentioned this, like in your opening, this administration has a history of Lyne. So who is going to be the archivist of this moment, who is going to gather the truth and hold it so that future generations can have an accurate reflection of what this moment is really like.
Speaking of what this moment is really like. One place that I say all the time, Georgia is a safe space for me.
It is where I met God.
It is in the church, and even in the church in Minneapolis it is compromised.
Let's please roll this clip.
David Easterwood is a pastor here. He is also the director of the field office for ICE and Saint Paul, So someone who claims to worship God teaching people in this church about God, is out there overseeing ICE agents. Think about what we've experienced, the murder of Renee Good at the hands of ICE, a Venezuelan national shot by ICE, a six month thought baby who almost died as a result of ICE unleash the military gray weapons on our community.
How dare you claim to be a pastor of God and you are involved in evil in our community.
Wherein Jesus would be understanding.
And we're about worship these moods, We're about straining the love of Jesus.
To talk to them.
As a solders.
Had gathered for worship wish we do every Sunday, and we were interrupted by this group of protesters.
We asked them to leave, and they.
Obviously have not lived.
I gotta tell you, Georgia, it blew my mind to see David Easterwood's name on letterhead as the acting field director for the Saint Paul Office right for ICE.
That's I think that's his title. That is an.
Intricate role in what is happening there, a primary coordinator for what is happening on the ground with immigration and Customs enforcement. I bring that up to say, I'm trying to figure out what bib what I read. You know, like, I just don't understand, and I know people do what they have to do for work, but this feels like a bridge too far.
Were you able to speak with him? This, of course, was on your socials.
Again, if you all are not following at by Georgia, for you are missing out. There is no coloring of the truth. It is all facts, no fiction, telling you what's really going on. You get to hear from protesters, from residents, from people who've been detained. Of course, you saw Don Lemon in that clip. If you're watching, you heard his voice. If you're not watching, they're going after Don Lemon allegedly with the KKK Act.
I'm so sorry.
The irony of going after a black man utilizing the KKK act is astounding.
And he's there just like you, reporting on what is happening.
He didn't organize this, as you said that this, I mean, Minnesota is a hotbed for activism. They know exactly what's going on. They don't need y'all to organize this. They do need y'all to report on it though.
Yeah, and it would never happen to a white journalist.
How about that.
I think there has been a progression of white Christian nationalism, yes, and to see Christianity politicized, to see Christianity weaponized, even pointing to the man who was arrested and charged for the assassination of Melissa Hartman, this was a man who was a Christian who did missions trips to Africa, right, And so there is a lot of documentation that Christian churches have been infiltrated with people who have their own
political agenda, and this protests, this demonstration brought awareness to that. I want to be mindful, a lot of people in the black community identify as Christians and have had a very strong reaction to seeing this happen and the thing. As a journalist is not our job to agree or disagree, but to documents. And I did a follow up post on my coverage around this saying civic civil disobedience also is not to be agreed or disagreed with. It's a
decision that is made by organizers, activists, protesters. Historically speaking, we just came off of Martin Luther King Holiday, right, Like, he was arrested twenty nine times, so he's revered now. Many people never make reference to the twenty nine times that he was arrested. It was highly controversial during the time of what he was doing and breaking the laws,
but it did result in change. Yeah, John Lewis revered the he tokenized the word good trouble right, also arrested many times, as recent as October twenty thirteen where he was demonstrating at Get this and immigration protests. So there's long history. Rosa Parks, right, she's the one who allowed for our public buses to be desegregated and was the face of the Montgomery bus boycott, also arrested, So you know, I wish that again mainstream media and even the public, like,
we have to stop having selective outrage. We have to stop looking at these issues in a vacuum. How did all of a sudden national news A make Don Lemon an independent journalists the face of this story. B. How did they start talking about this story as though it just poof came out of thin air, as though this is not the same state where a US citizen named Renee Good was just fatally shot by an ICE agent.
And essentially we're learning that the decision maker, his boss, is a pastor at a church, and now there's actually a protest there where he is a pastor, Like, how are we not how are we isolating and just talking about Oh, now the conversation is our church protests appropriate? Would this be okay if it happened at a mosque?
How are we not talking about the unconstitutional arrest of citizens that we're seeing happening every day, The due process violations with the people who are not citizens, the attacks on journalists, the attacks on peaceful protesters, the attacks on legal observers, the failure to render aid to a US citizen who is brutally shot in her face, the failure to investigate the death of a woman a U A citizen who is brutally shot in her face, How are
we we're not talking about that, but we're talking we're debating about if a church protest is appropriate. How are we not talking about the dismantling of our democracy in real time, but we're debating if a church protest is appropriate or not. I'm sorry, I'm not interested in wasting my freedom right because now maybe I don't know. I don't know if I'm being investigated. I don't know what's happening, right.
I'm not interested in using my freedom that I have, my breath, that I have left in my body to debate about that when the facts are unconstitutionals of citizens are happening every day, regardless of your race, religion, socioeconomic status, your gender, your political affiliation. If you call yourself an American, you should be concerned that you, as citizens, are being unlawfully arrested by ice and nothing is happening. There's no recourse,
there's no repercussion, there's no consequence. It's happening, it's allowed, and it's being normalized. So this is what our society is becoming, this is what our culture is becoming. And it's not just gonna happen in Minnesota if nothing is done about it happening here, It will happen in your city. It is just a matter of time. It's not just
urban cities. We're hearing reports in Rochester, Minnesota, in Wilmer, Minnesota, in Duluth, Minnesota, Encircle Pines, Minnesota, in rural areas that this is also happening.
Well with that, Miss Georgia Fort, I am so grateful for your time our modern day I to be well speaking truth to power, just with facts, just with facts, and with a camera. So thank you for your mic, for your camera, for your courage, and for doing this for all of us. We are absolutely your family here in Native Lampod and look forward to having you back on soon to tell us one what's happening and definitely what we can do. Folks can follow you at by
Georgia Ford on Instagram. Any other handles you want to drop or call to action you want to issue for folks who are watching at.
Home, Support this podcast, support Don Lemon, support other independent journalists like myself. My website's Georgiaford dot com. We have to invest in support in our independent media because media is under attack too, and so if we're not here tomorrow, if the DOJ strong arms us and we can't continue to do what we do. How are you going to be informed? How are you going to find the truth?
It's good. Well, thank you so much. Welcome home, y'all. Until next time, see you soon.
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