IATP is joining hundreds of businesses, faith communities, labor unions, schools, and nonprofits across Minnesota on Friday, January 23 in closing our office doors and putting away our keyboards for ICE OUT Minnesota: A Day of Truth and Freedom.
The call is for a one-day pause in economic activities across civil society: no work, no school, no shopping. Minnesotans are instead asked to gather in community and voice our shared demand that ICE leave Minnesota, and that the authorities open a transparent investigation to ensure accountability for the fatal shooting of Renee Good.
When President Donald Trump took office a year ago, we viewed the new administration with deep concern. We gave three reasons to mistrust the incoming administration: a demonstrated disdain for the truth and the importance of science; consistent efforts by the incoming President and his acolytes to disrupt elections and undermine the core institutions of our democracy; and the prevalence of hate speech that foretold an administration without regard for human rights or the laws created to protect equality and due process for all.
These past weeks of ICE brutality in Minnesota round out a year that has far exceeded our initial fears: the world, and the United States within it, is less safe, less trusting, and economically impoverished by the attack on our values and public institutions by this administration.
We are blessed at IATP. To date, our staff and their families remain physically safe. But no one is safe until everyone is safe. The continued disregard of ICE employees for the legal injunctions their behavior has incurred is a threat to all of us. The terror visited upon our city renders the street — and the office, the café, the school and the church — unsafe for thousands of people, including Native Americans, U.S. citizens, and legal immigrants. As we have learned in Minnesota, no one who questions what ICE is doing is safe from attack and arrest, or even lethal force.
The rule of law is premised on the ancient idea of habeas corpus. This is the idea that everyone matters — that rights are universal and unalienable. You could call it the first chink in the armor of the monarchy: an 800-year-old “No Kings” victory, which over time has come to mean everyone regardless of sex, race, religion or political persuasion is entitled to equal protection under the law.
All our work at IATP is premised on those inalienable rights. That is why we are joining the state-wide strike. We invite you to join us and thousands of others on Friday in demanding an end to ICE occupations of civic space in the United States.
To offer your support of our communities in the Twin Cities being targeted by ICE, find resources and donation links here.
