The Anti-ICE Movement Has Always Been About Protecting People

I’ve been working on this piece for over a month now, namely because I’ve undergone a change in the way I think about the way we talk about and frame social movements and civic rights.

This started with an article that pissed me off. A white, male neighbor in Minneapolis shared a fluff piece he wrote in a group chat, specifically about the anti-ICE organizing happening across the Twin Cities. I acknowledge that we are all human, limited by our personal perspective, and that I do not think this person wrote their piece to be malicious or purposefully ignorant at all. But I do think there is value in pointing out the failings of this piece— which again was intended to be lighthearted— if not for others at least as a reminder to me and my own writing.

This piece was published locally at the end of January, and made the overt claim that the politics of the anti-ICE movement are not why there’s been so much response from citizens, whether they’re directly targeted by ICE or not, and the movement here has caught so much momentum and seen so much success because we’ve been building infrastructure that facilitates a “care-giving” society. Ultimately, I think the point of the piece is correct: Minnesotans are investing time, attention, money, and most importantly care into their communities at an unprecedented scale, it has been incredibly effective, and it’s being under-reported by big news to keep you from seeing the hope we’re building here. 

I’ve been steeped in this lovely metropolis my whole life; I was born here, raised here, with deep cultural roots to the land, and a strong community built not only by my own merits but the merits of my parents and their parents. I am intimately familiar with the care Minnesotans have for each other, so the kindness extended by the community displayed in that article was no surprise at all. What was a surprise was the lack of focus on the immigrant and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People Of Color) communities being targeted. Immigrants were only offhandedly acknowledged once in the entire article. I have to acknowledge that the impact of this community organizing on BIPOC and immigrant communities was NOT the point of this article, nor is that the lens the author was writing with, as a white person. The point was to encourage the rest of the country to take a leaf out of our book and start investing care in your communities outside of Minneapolis, outside of Minnesota. But I’m frustrated with the response regardless.

This white lens is limiting and short-sighted. While in real life community organizing is going beyond the lens of white centric perspective, the way we talk about this community organizing online and elsewhere needs to shift to continue to encourage and facilitate real, systemic change. De-centering Immigrants and BIPOC folks from a conversation about ICE automatically centers a white perspective. Many of the conversations happening around the ICE invasion of Minneapolis--- when they’re not about how much we hate ICE--- are about the incredible beauty and warmth of Community and how connected we are to our neighbors. The power we are realizing when we stand together is palpable and inspiring. For many folks, especially newcomers to our growing metropolis, this is their first time seeing the impact of community care. For BIPOC folks and activists already steeped in community, this is old news we’ve BEEN trying to get everyone else in on. To remove us from the conversation is to whitewash all of the work that BIPOC communities have put into the existing infrastructure.

Much of the infrastructure being used now in the Twin Cities’ local anti-ICE organizing actually already existed, or is based off of past organizing, including from the Black Lives Matter centered organizing after George Floyd’s murder. During both crises, Lake Street, North Minneapolis, and BIPOC and immigrant owned businesses were specifically targeted-- first by police and out of town extremists like the Proud Boys in 2020 and now by ICE. Organizing both back in 2020 and now in 2026 has been centered on keeping these neighborhoods and businesses safe by building community and looking out for each other. Another idea we've been continuously using through both crises is “Joy is an act of Resistance”.

“Joy is an act of Resistance”, originally coined by American poet Toi Darricotte in her poem "The Telly Cycle", and it was recently popularized in black femme liberation spaces in 2022 and carried onward. Black communities, especially black women, have been systematically deprived of Joy and economic success. As black feminists and Black Lives Matter activists were experiencing a lot of burn out after the height of their momentum, joy became a revolutionary experience and a necessity. To survive COVID, amplified police retaliation amid police and prison abolition movements, and everything else the world has to throw at them and still find joy and engage in community is an act of defiance against the oppressors who would rather see them subjugated.

This experience is shared in other communities as well. Very quickly, other racial and ethnically based liberation movements and queer and disabled spaces, both in activism and online, began co-opting the phrase within their own movements and rightly so. #JoyisResistance began appearing all over the internet where it became removed from the original context that popularized the term. It began to lose its meaning. In the future, I’d love to properly examine where “Joy is Resistance” is true and revolutionary, and in fact I’ve found a lovely episode of NPR’s podcast, Code Switch, that discusses the nuance of that exact topic and I encourage you to listen to or read. For now,  I believe joy is resistance for all marginalized folks who have to fight for their own existence under Christo-nationalism and hetero-patriarchal capitalism. I think the only joy that is not revolutionary is that of the norm; the joy that is expected in this society, and rooted in compliance. There has been beautiful joy-based organizing in between the safety centered work while ICE presence was at its peak. This includes weekly block meetups for neighbors to get to know each other, cafes hosting free art nights and supply drives, free Lunar New Year events, I even went to a free open house sculpting day a local pottery studio offered as an alternative activity to mass protests on a general strike day. This work is all happening alongside direct action and sustains our energy and morale as the anti-ICE movement continues here in Minnesota even after the focus has shifted from raids to rent assistance for folks who lost their jobs doing patrols or legal aid for folks whose relatives were taken by ICE.

An especially relevant phrase is “Nothing about us, without us, is for us.” This is one of those revolutionary phrases that seems to be as old as dirt. Its first recorded use is in 1500s Poland according to Wikipedia. This is the idea behind “No taxation without representation.” This idea saw a huge resurgence from disability activists in the 1990s, and a more recent example can be seen when Joe Biden and others used it to argue that Ukraine’s status as a country should not be discussed without Ukraine’s participation. The point is, “Nothing about us, without us, is for us” is a prolific and powerful slogan within organizing. Right now, as politicians continue to work against their constituents, the work of liberation must be done by us and for us. The community building happening across the Twin Cities needs to be work “by us, for us”. During January and early February, BIPOC and queer owned small businesses were holding space for drivers doing patrols to keep their immigrant and BIPOC neighbors safe. Friends gave each other escorts to work. Parents in hiding took stock of what they had and what they couldn’t get by without and parents with the privilege of being safe enough to go shopping added extra groceries to their lists for their friends and neighbors. BIPOC and immigrant owned businesses requested neighbors watch over restaurants at opening and closing time and neighbors walked workers to their cars. Neighbors continue standing watch while neighborhood kids get on and off the school bus. These are actions meeting the actual needs of the community and it's a disservice to the people doing this work to ignore or erase who we’re doing this for (immigrant, BIPOC, and other targeted individuals) and who’s doing this work (Immigrants and their families, BIPOC folks and longstanding allies).

I've been avoiding name-dropping the article or the author because it's not my intention to start beef or controversy. Most of his article puts a lot of focus on shedding light on the mutual aid efforts happening here, the framing of it— especially in the headline— is simply a good bad example of a tendency I've been noticing in the way people, and journalists in particular, not directly targeted by oppressors talk about crises after the most intense parts have happened. It's one thing to want to share how inspiring and powerful the community care has been here— which does absolutely include our white allies who are putting in the work at every level of organizing— it's another to omit who we’re doing this for and paint the movement as previously being "just" an issue of politics, as Tom Vatterott implies in the title of his article "The anti-ICE movement isn’t just about politics — it’s a caregiving social movement".

If it's the aim of a journalist to spotlight the movement or capture the story of a community like ours, it becomes that journalist’s duty to respect the communities and people whose stories they’re sharing, otherwise they are extractive at worst, or misguided at best. It would be an assumption to say which best fits this author, but his piece angered me because it centered white joy, and that’s not revolutionary. And yet, his point still stands: the community care here must become the new norm, because this collective work has enacted the most change I’ve ever seen in person. To omit BIPOC and immigrant folks from the story is to gentrify the joy of our revolution.

To my White, privileged neighbors: your success and comfort exists on the back of BIPOC suffering. Your community care was built by the oppressed and our longstanding allies. We’ll happily help you, and welcome you and your hungry with open arms, but when the time comes to protect BIPOC, queer, immigrant, and disabled neighbors, it becomes your duty to stand with us side by side. It becomes your responsibility to step to the front lines and use the privilege that’s protected you for so long to protect those of us you can reach. When we’re talked over, it becomes your job to lift us up and hand us a mic. When white politicians politicize our bodies, histories, and mere existence, it's your job as allies to fight with us with all the love and fervor with which we fed you and taught you. If seeing all the beauty and benefits of the movement is what it takes for you to join us, then by all means, we want you to join us in our resistance. Our collective joy and care are some of our most important forms of resistance– with the caveat that joy cannot be our ONLY form of resistance. Never forget, this isn’t about what you can get from it. Our movements will not “save” you, you must meet us at the table and put in the work with us to build a better future for all your neighbors.

To my BIPOC, immigrant, queer, disabled, and allied readers: I see you. I see power in your voices and the work you’ve been putting in. To all of my readers who’ve been putting in all this work just for it to get glossed over in fluffy promo or watch white folks pat themselves on the back for being good allies when you have no idea whether or not they’ve earned it– it’s REALLY hard to put trust in people new to the movement. Every new person you let into your circle is a risk assessment. Every action carried out not by us, for us, runs the risk of steamrolling us. Every conflict within our overtired ranks takes energy and time and emotion away from our causes. It’s exhausting to do this work. I want you to know that I see you. I’m here with you, and there’s far more people than just me ready and waiting to have your back.

The article that inspired this op-ed and processing my reaction to it has been a wake up call to be more intentional about uplifting the community and work happening around me. Our advocacy for ourselves pays off when we’re all doing it for each other. Our immigrant neighbors and BIPOC neighbors have as much right to be here as anyone else on stolen land. Community care and mutual aid are inextricable from our anti-ICE and anti-authoritarian organizing, and both have ALWAYS been about people, not politics