What Would MLK Do in Minnesota? (5 Things)

MVP friends,

I often wonder what Dr. King (or Ella Baker) would be doing if they were alive today.

As of this writing, the Pentagon is readying 1,500 soldiers for potential deployment to Minnesota, where MVP partner organizations, grassroots allies, and residents are peacefully organizing to stop the chaos and cruelty sown by ICE. They are carrying on the legacy of creative, strategic, nonviolent civil disobedience.

In the freezing cold of the Deep North, against all odds, they are winning.

Here’s what MVP partners are doing and how you can help.

Photo: ISAIAH and others - protest and rally against ICE presence in Minnesota and in memory of Renee Good

How are MVP partners protecting Minnesotans (and all communities) from ICE?

Five big ways: 

1. Neighborhood Observers

Unidos MN is running Monarca, an immigrant-defense hotline (now fielding one call every minute) and rapid-response program that has now trained over 26,000 Minnesotans to observe, document, and respond to ICE presence throughout the state. Anecdotally, we are hearing that everywhere ICE goes, they are being followed by 5-10 cars, surrounded by whistle-blowing observers, struggling to meet quotas, seeming demoralized, and are increasingly deploying to less populous areas to avoid the resistance.

2. Continuous Public Protests

ISAIAH, Faith in Minnesota, and others are mobilizing faith communities and residents of all backgrounds to hold vigils, rallies, and peaceful mass demonstrations — to keep ICE cruelty front and center in the public consciousness, paint a clear moral contrast, and grow a powerful drumbeat of opposition to Trump’s authoritarian overreach.

3. Pressuring Corporations to Withhold Cooperation

Over 100 faith leaders sat in at Target's national headquarters in Minneapolis and are now slated to meet with the CEO on Thursday. Customers are clogging the lines at Home Depot buying and returning Ice scrapers, and are buying and returning salt from Target, complaining that “it doesn’t melt ICE.” As Minnesota-based MVP board member Laura Flynn recently shared, “Pressure campaigns are building on corporations benefitting from ICE contracts (hotels, rental cars, etc.) or that continue to allow ICE activity in their businesses (Target, Home Depot, etc.). To get ICE OUT of Minnesota, we need to move the institutional “pillars” that are upholding this occupation.” View the full list of companies, and take action (in your state!).

4. Mass Civil Resistance

This Friday, over 120 labor, grassroots and community partners are organizing a massive statewide “day of non-violent moral action”: No work, no school, no shopping, and a peaceful mass demonstration, all to focus the state’s (and the entire nation’s) attention on the moral repugnance and illegality of ICE’s actions, peeling away moral, political, and economic support from the agency.

5. Drafting Our National Playbook

MVP’s Minnesota partners’ work is a blueprint for action nationwide: “If they come to your city, do what Minnesota did.” We know the Trump regime is trying to make an example out of Minnesota to intimidate the rest of the country. MVP staff are checking in with organizers across the country, seeing how we can rally in solidarity with our Minnesota neighbors while replicating their strategies locally.

Already, MVP partners everywhere are on it — here’s a small sampling of their efforts, from over 1,000 “ICE Out for Good” events to MVP partner Siembra NC and their allies’ innovative effort to organize “4th Amendment businesses” (which MN organizers have adopted) and recent victory in pushing Avelo Airlines to stop deportation flights.

Photo Credit: IYKYK

How will Minnesota partners prevent state-led violence if federal troops are deployed?

The truth is: They can’t. 

I also don’t want to fearmonger here - Trump’s threats to invoke the Insurrection Act could turn out to be bluster.

But we do know this: Over and over, Trump has directed this regime to trample the dignity and safety of people who have the chutzpah to stand up to him.

Whatever happens, what MVP partners will do is present a united, nonviolent front — and shine such a powerful light on state-led repression that it backfires for them politically, as it has in the tragic ICE murder of Renee Good. 

MVP partners in Minnesota are grounded in spiritual discipline, centered in their moral clarity, and have trained tens of thousands of Minnesotans in using peaceful, de-escalatory approaches to standing up for their and their neighbors’ human and legal rights.

Their courageous acts of moral witness have already helped weaken the Trump regime. Public support for ICE has plummeted a whopping 30 points. Podcaster Joe Rogan is publicly comparing ICE to “the Gestapo” to his 20+ million listeners.

Bottomline: We cannot stop wannabe autocrats entirely. Our best defense is power in numbers, and to expose the regime for its naked lack of moral, legal, and political legitimacy — and that’s exactly what MVP partners are doing. Over time, these efforts are not only derailing and demoralizing ICE but also shifting the center of political gravity and winning the narrative war.

Graphic: “ICE Out of Minnesota” Day of Action: iceoutnowmn.com

What can MVP supporters do right now to help?

1. Donate

At the request of our Minnesota partners, MVP has created a special Rapid Response Fund to support crucial organizing across the state — organizing that will have huge national repercussions in our fight to reverse authoritarianism. 

You can contribute using this special link, and all funds will be earmarked for and regranted to Minnesota partners – in a strategic and ecumenical way – with the guidance of organizers on the ground.

(Note: If you’re making an offline gift, make sure to include “Rapid Response” in the memo line and/or email your MVP liaison or advisor@movement.vote to let us know the funds are incoming for this purpose.)

2. Get Involved in Minnesota

Join this Friday’s statewide day of action — no work, no school, no shopping. Learn more about how to organize your workplace or school to participate, and how to demand that ICE-enabling corporations withdraw their support and stand on the side of justice and civil rights for all.

3. Take Action Locally

Join the campaign to pressure corporations to withdraw cooperation from ICE! Go to our Minnesota partners’ Corporate Toolkit, use their social media posts, and add your name to sign-on letters for Target, Home Depot, Enterprise, Hilton, and Delta. Then, use this toolkit to turn your local Target store (or any local business!) into a “4th Amendment Workplace” that protects employees and customers from unconstitutional entry by federal agents.

Tomorrow (Tuesday), you can also join the Free America national walkout, and then attend this virtual training with MVP’s ally, Showing Up for Racial Justice, to learn more about how you can organize locally to pressure corporations to end cooperation with ICE.

Thank you for reading… and for all that you are doing, both within and outside of MVP, to help our country navigate this challenging time. Dr. King, Ella Baker, and millions of unsung organizing ancestors throughout the ages would be proud.

With love for our country and hope for the future,

Billy Wimsatt, MVP Executive Director
(On behalf of the MVP team)

p.s. - If you want background on why the movement in Minnesota is so powerful, watch this video, which tells the story of our partners’ work there over the past decade-plus, and check out this new NYT op-ed, which gives a view of what’s happening on the ground that flies in the face of all the right-wing hysteria.

And… I’m going to close with these powerful words being sung right now by hundreds on the streets of Minneapolis - watch this beautiful short clip (turn the sound on!) if you want to fill your cup and maybe also get moved to tears:

Hold on,
Hold on,
My dear one,
Here comes the dawn.