Minnesota Is Making a Whole New World
Love wins. Community is primary. Collective care is prioritized. And an individualistic, hateful, fearful reality is falling away....
You’ve seen the photos and stories all over social media. News outlets of all stripes are here and posting photos, videos, and analysis online. You’ve felt the rage. You’ve felt the despair. You may have even felt powerless. But don’t you dare. You are not powerless. Even if you don’t believe that, we here in Minnesota are showing you how powerful you are.
Learning: A Lesson for You
Friends, life is intense here in Minneapolis. I’ve heard so many of my neighbors and friends say that it’s so much worse than it looks on social media or on the news.
So know that…
...and…
…know that I feel Minneapolis rising up.
Today, I’ve heard so many of my fellow Minnesotans say that they’ve never felt so hopeful. Why today? Because today is A Day of Truth & Freedom: No Work. No School. No Shopping here — or the first general strike in MN in nearly 100 years.
Hundreds of local businesses shut down.
Tens of thousands marched through downtown Minneapolis this afternoon.
Hundreds of clergy flew in from all over the country in solidarity, and they began their day shutting down the international airport, known as MSP.
Dozens of these clergy were arrested as they kneeled and prayed — zip-tied and herded into waiting buses, then charged with misdemeanors.
Like I’ve said since all of this started: Minnesotans aren’t playing around.
SO MANY of us have decided: no more. We are done. We are not going to keep participating in this dystopian nightmare anymore.
We’re gonna do something different here.
And so we are.
None of this is exactly new in Minnesota. For generations, Minnesota has moved with a distinctive collective spirit. Civic engagement has always been robust. Voter turnout is usually the highest in the nation. The community of nonprofits is one of the most extensive and vibrant too. Our legendary winters have created an unspoken understanding: if you see a car stuck in the snow/ice, you help shovel and/or push them out. In other words, ice is something we’re used to collaboratively thwarting.
Communicating this vibe can be tough, for those who don’t understand it and/or haven’t experienced it.
Take this as an example.
This is the vibe.
And here’s the thing.
We’re not perfect. Obviously.
Folks say the racism here is way more nuanced and under-the-surface than it is in, say, Alabama. Y’all know we’ve had our share of police brutality here. Y’all may have heard all of the accolades and superlatives — Best Of THIS… or THAT — that Minnesota has earned over the years. And the addendum that those of us who care about these things always attach to those stories is this one: “…for WHITE folks.”
And still…
… because of the community-mindedness that just seems to be baked-in here, because people here really try to do the right thing most of the time, because our state has indeed welcomed many refugees and immigrants over the decades (and thus now has the highest Somali population and the second-highest Hmong population in the United States), and because we celebrate and deeply appreciate our wealth of diverse cultures here, and because we’ve always prioritized the arts and education here, and because of so many other reasons, I’m sure…
…we were the wrong state to try.
Over the last decade-plus, especially, networks of on-the-spot mutual aid and collective care have gradually been woven and developed. Those all got a steroidal growth-dose in 2020, during the global uprising for racial justice whose epicenter was here in south Minneapolis, at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, where George Floyd was slowly, dispassionately murdered by the MPD. And since 2020, new life and urgency have been simmering and growing. We’ve been seeding and growing relationships. We’ve been getting smarter. We’ve become ever-more strategic. We’re definitely more connected.
Think of this like a pot of stew cooking. Over the past many years, we’ve been gathering and washing and chopping up all of the vegetables… gathering all the rest of the ingredients… putting everything in a giant pot…. starting a simmer… and beginning to stir it all together.
Then a collective threat came to town — a violent, impetuous, hateful, poorly trained cadre of agents here to harm and disappear our neighbors. And the flame under the pot was cranked to high heat.
Now, the stew is reaching the potential it’s held all along — complementary flavors melding into beautiful symphonies, spices bringing out the most beautiful notes, what had all been separate ingredients becoming one big pot of delicious, nutritious, hearty stew that could nourish us all in a way we’d never been before.
Ask any of us here how we’re doing, and I can almost guarantee you that you’ll get two distinct answers, probably one right after the other:
1️⃣ I’m struggling. We’re struggling. This is rough. This is hard. So hard.
… and…
2️⃣ I am getting SO MUCH JOY from seeing my community rise up and thrive together.
Friends, here’s the thing.
As you can see, our ability to do this didn’t arise on the spot.
We’ve been growing it — week after week, month after month, year after year. We’ve been preparing all of the ingredients, one by one, and gradually starting to throw them all in together. We have a lot of folks primed to jump in and participate in the cooking, even if they feel like they don’t really know what they’re doing.
The extra fire lit under us all right now has been just what we needed to get all of these ingredients to start really cooking.
And I’m astounded at the results.
As I wrote last week (When Minneapolis Is David to the U.S. Government’s Goliath), we are essentially a rag-tag bunch of volunteers, ones with other day-jobs, fully thwarting a multi-billion-dollar army outfitted with every kind of legit weapon.
How?
What do we have that they don’t?
What indeed?
We have love.
We have community.
We have collective care.
We’re not playing here. This isn’t a game for us. We truly care for our neighbors. We are actively incensed when we see one of them murdered by our government. We will not stand by while other neighbors are kidnapped and disappeared off our streets.
We are not letting this happen. No way. No how.
We are claiming our power.
We are coming together.
And we are on a roll.
So.
If you’re not here, and this is inspiring to you, don’t just sit there being inspired. Do something. Claim your power.
What ingredients can you start gathering? Who can help you cook? And how soon can you get your stew on that stovetop and start turning on the heat?
Before new podcast episodes start coming out this year…
… how about you catch up on some you missed last year?
Two in particular seem to go with today’s message:
Ep 06 | Obedience Is Overrated. Listen in for lessons on resistance and the power of creative disobedience — ones I first learned on a transformative trip to Washington, DC when I was just twenty years old.
Ep 10 | Power Is Something You’re Either Giving Away... Or Owning. So: What’ll It Be? Listen in to explore your relationship to power. We’ll talk about the ways that intra- and inter-personal power dynamics… actually affect the big-picture power dynamics we all seem to assume are just “baked into” our wider world.
Conversation: Your Response
Got more to say? Visit the comments section!
Are you looking for some comrades to commiserate with? How about some peers to level-set something for you? Or someone to help you find what you need… because they did it themself last year? All of this, and more, is what I anticipate happening at Community-Weaving for Fundraisers.
Just fundraisers. Gathering for (virtual) lunch together. Twice a month. Year-round. Chatting and supporting each other via WhatsApp in between lunches. Being there for each other. All you need to do is show up, be present. I facilitate, organize, and create the container.
The Waiting List is open now. Get on it!
Practice: Make It Yours
Community is a practice.
What does that mean?
You can’t just gather a group of people in a space and call them a community. You also can’t grow the community for a while, then stop paying attention to it… and assume that the community will persist. You also can’t leave it up to others, because a community requires every single human present to be… present.
So.
What ingredient(s) can you start preparing… now?
Who can you reach out to that you’ve been wanting to know better? Text or email or call them and set up a conversation over a warm drink.
Have you noticed something that’s missing where you live? Something that would make life better for you and everyone else there? Gather at least one other person — ideally several people! — and tell them about your idea. Brainstorm together. Start figuring out how you could make it happen — together.
What is a talent you have that you don’t often share with others? You bake the most amazing ___________. You sing the most spine-chilling ___________. You write. You cook. You knit. You… what? Write down a list of your talents — especially those that you don’t usually share with others. Then, figure out how you can start sharing at least one of those with your neighbors.
Get started.
One step… then the next.
And before you know it… your stew will be cooking.
☺️
Inspiration: Something to Reflect On
Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
– Howard Zinn
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Thanks so much for sharing these honest, and surprisingly hopeful, impressions from the front line. I really needed to read this today.
Beautiful, Cecelia! Thank you so much for capturing the spirit to share with all of us and the longer term labors of love woven by community over time. It's been so powerful to see elder spiritual leaders demonstrating on the frontlines.