Tears Alone Won’t be Enough: Dispatch From the Front Lines in Minneapolis

In 1965, as excessive state violence was being unleashed against the Black citizens in Selma, Alabama, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sent out a nationwide call to faith leaders: “The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all America help to bear the burden.”

Dr. King’s call for others to join him in leading a march to Montgomery was answered by clergy from across the country, marking a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement.

Sixty-six years later, in the same spirit and with the same clarity as King’s 1965 call, clergy in Minneapolis asked faith activists from across the country to join them in praying with their feet against the atrocities being committed by Immigration Customs and Enforcement against the good people of their state.

Upon hearing that my presence might be helpful, I immediately packed my tallit (Jewish prayer shawl), and on behalf of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, I jumped on an airplane. Arriving in Minneapolis on Thursday, here’s what I witnessed:

Images of Luis Ramos, a terrified and bewildered five-year-old in a tiny plaid coat and blue knit bunny hat, were dominating local media coverage. Coming home from school, just steps away from his front door, ICE agents took Luis from his father’s car using him as bait to lure his pregnant mother out of their home.

By the time I arrived in Minneapolis, only two days later, Luis and his father had already been whisked away to a detention facility in Texas.

Like Selma, Minneapolis has become this generation’s frontline in the struggle for freedom and justice.

Thursday night, as we were preparing for the next day’s mobilization with nonviolence training, a person with a distressed look on their face asked to make an announcement. Along with informing us that a car full of children had been tear gassed today, they had just received a message from one of the local schools warning people not to be deceived by flyers offering “food assistance” since this was one of the tactics being used by ICE to lure parents from their homes. There were other examples of ICE’s cruelty. Immigrants injured by ICE agents have been taken to hospitals and registered using false names so that their families couldn't find them.

In the face of this inhumane behavior, and given Minnesota’s expected below zero temperatures, it would have been easy to remain home, feeling depressed and yet powerless to help. But I recalled Rev. Jesse Jackson’s words, “both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.”

With this in mind, on the coldest day the Twin Cities area had experienced in seven years, I joined hundreds of other clergy and faith leaders at the Minneapolis St. Paul International (MSP) airport to protest Delta airlines complicity in over 2,000 deportations.

The designated “free speech zone” for legal protest was bursting at the seams with more than a thousand bundled-up Minnesotans who had turned out to support those of us who were to engage in civil disobedience.

Our action consisted of over 100 faith leaders kneeling down blocking the terminal, holding signs picturing the detained and disappeared. We prayed and we sang: “everybody’s got a right to live/love/learn and “before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail.” The assembled supporters chanted “Justice for Renee Good!”

With the bottom half of my face tucked into the bundles of warm clothing, I closed my eyes, and began quietly humming a nigun (wordless melody sung in a repetitive circular manner) to myself.

The man kneeling next to me, who I soon learned was the Community Engagement Organizers (CEO) program at Macalister College, asked if I was okay. He was grateful for our presence and wanted to make sure how we were handling the frigid temperatures.

The police lined up behind us with long clubs and chemical agents they had threatened to use. They arrest us. One by one, many in religious stoles, we stood and offered our bulky mitted wrists for handcuffing.

The crowd’s chants turned from “Justice for Renee Good!” to “Let them pray! Let them pray!” and we began to realize the significance. Our prayers were both exposing and healing the rot to which our country has been subjected for the past year that is now festering like an open infected wound.

While prayer can sometimes be meaningless, hypocritical, or even damaging. There are other times, when it can have a profound impact. As the Jewish siddur (prayerbook) Mishkan T’Filah says “prayer Invites God’s Presence to suffuse our spirits. Prayer may not bring water to parched fields,” but it ”can water an arid soul." The souls and spirits of the people of Minneapolis certainly need watering at this time.

On Saturday, I was preparing to leave Minneapolis when we received the news that Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, had been beaten and shot to death by federal agents. I traveled instead to the site of this murder to join with others who were holding a vigil and turning the crime scene into a holy site. I took the tallit I have been wearing over the last year to mourn the passing of my father off my shoulders and laid it on the pine branches among the crosses, candles, sage brush bundles, mala beads, and kuffiyehs. As the crowd circling the site wiped tears from their eyes, “Somali aunties,” who momentarily felt safe to leave their homes, to provide hot food from their kitchens to their fellow mourners.

Riding the city bus back to my hotel, I noticed that my fellow passengers were carrying gas masks and eye goggles for the tear gas that wafts through the city’s freezing air and one knew not when they might get tackled to the ground and sprayed directly in the face with a chemical agent. It felt more like being in the Occupied West Bank than in an American city.

Picking up a quick lunch, I had to knock on the door to be admitted to the restaurant. In order to check into my hotel, I had to use the doorbell to be let in, and to get into Ubers, I had to show a code. Because everyone is aware that ICE agents could barge in at any moment, they are taking extra precautions trying to keep themselves and their neighbors safe.

Many of the Uber drivers in Minneapolis are of Somali ethnicity. One driver, a US citizen who has been in the country for over 20 years, told me about having to show his naturalization papers (he now keeps them with him at all times) while trying to do his job. Another, a young Somali-American woman, told me that she has just spent days too afraid to leave her house, but then today had to get back to work because she needs to pay her rent.

What is unfolding in Minneapolis is frightening, but the response of its people has been inspiring. Between delivering groceries and supplies to those afraid to leave their homes, to roaming the streets with whistles strung around their necks so they can alert others when ICE is spotted, to rabbis and Jewish activists, including myself this past Sunday, keeping watch outside churches so Latinx communities can worship together, to providing emotional support—the work of care, mutual aid, and resistance, week after week, should fill us all with pride. And what was so moving to encounter was the degree to which everyone—from hotel staff, to restaurant workers, to Uber drivers—all expressed gratitude that so many of us had traveled to support them as they defend democracy for the entire country.

Like Selma, Minneapolis has become this generation’s frontline in the struggle for freedom and justice. And like Selma, it will be the disciplined, caring, and prayerful response of Minneapolis' people and their supporters that will win out in the end.