Haven Watch – Feminism and Religion

Part 1 was posted yesterday

The Minnesota resistance went far beyond Gene Sharp’s catalog of techniques. Minnesotans kept their resistance up through creativity, celebration, fun, and humor in those dark, cold days. On a cold, clear January night, hundreds gathered on Lake Nokomis using hand-held candles and ice candles to spell out the words, “ICE OUT.”

The annual sled art contest was turned into a spoof of ICE – with a giant cardboard bowling bowl rolled down the hill to knock down fascist kingpins – Trump, Putin, Orbán; a young boy on his plastic sled festooned with Monarca’s butterflies saying “We Are Family” and “Justice for Renée Good”; sleds with messages of “Resist” and “Love Melts Ice” on a giant heart; a sled decorated as a bottle of de-icer and one of a chicken wearing a whistle with the message, “ICE OUT MSP.”

The whistle was to represent one of the most noteworthy and effective resistance strategies. Whenever witnesses spotted ICE agents in the area or an arrest in progress, they would blow their whistles to alert those close by – short bursts to indicate ICE is nearby or long blasts to indicate ICE is actively detaining someone, with the added instructions to “Form a Crowd. Stay Loud. Stay nonviolent.” The whistles, most given out free by local businesses and activist groups, became a symbol of resistance and more importantly, solidarity, as whole neighborhoods came together to protect their neighbors.

“ . . . when people no longer have the space to construct homeplace, . . .”
Minnesotans mobilize – providing home wherever the need arises

On Friday, January 23^rd, seven hundred faith leaders from across the country heeded a call that had been put out just a few days before to come to Minneapolis to train, to observe, and to protest actions by ICE agents in the Twin Cities. Hundreds of them gathered in an interfaith service at Temple Israel. Others joined the National Prayer Call for Minnesota. And still others headed to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to engage in nonviolent direct action against the MSP airport authority, and Delta Airlines and Signature Aviation in particular, for their complicity with ICE in transporting those arrested either for deportation or for removal to other detention facilities.

While I was simultaneously livestreaming both the Temple Israel service and the National Prayer, Cal, my son, was among those headed to the airport. In the midst of my concern for his and others’ safety from both the bitter cold – it was -40 below windchill – and from the violence of ICE agents, came the words of Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman offering a prayer for all those engaging in the protests that morning. In that moment, my anxiety eased as I could feel them all being surrounded by the prayer shawl of protection. Then, in a stunning moment of synchronicity, the cantor at Temple Israel sang while a Buddhist priest on the National Prayer Call invoked the blessings of Kuan Yin, goddess of compassion – the compassion that moved the protestors to act, but also that which surrounded the protestors with care. For while thousands engaged in protests that day – 50,000 at the march in sub-zero weather, and thousands more daily participate in protests on the streets and outside the Whipple Building – the ICE detention center in St. Paul, or act as constitutional observers throughout the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota, even more are engaged in daily acts of sustenance and care to support the protestors and those afraid to leave their homes for fear of being detained and disappeared by ICE. These acts of care are at the very heart of the resistance.