Minneapolis Quakers Stand Up to ICE

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Discussion Questions:

1. Is there a place for “righteous anger” in your own spiritual practice?
2. How do we handle the discomfort of not knowing what to do? How does the Quaker practice of “waiting” help us in these moments of uncertainty?
3. How does a community maintain discipline in the face of violent provocation (like tear gas and shootings)? What sustains that commitment to nonviolence?

Zack Jackson  

For the past 2 months, ICE and other federal agencies have flooded the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul with over  3,000 armed federal agents, outnumbering even the local police force 3 to 1. 

They are targeting schools and waiting at drop-off lines. They are pulling people from their cars and homes. People are going grocery shopping and then are simply gone without a trace or a call to their family. But it hasn’t stopped at detentions. As concerned residents have shown up in support of their neighbors, the streets have turned violent. 

In January alone, two people were shot and killed by federal agents, and hundreds of others have experienced direct violence as a result of their witness. 

Many locals believe this is calculated political retribution. But if the goal was to break the community, it backfired.

Instead of giving in, neighbors are building robust networks of mutual support, disrupting ICE activities in incredibly creative ways, and showing up for each other like never before. 

And in the middle of that resistance, unsurprisingly are Quakers. So a few days ago, I got on a call with four Quaker activists who are on the ground right now in this rapidly developing situation. Please note that this episode contains descriptions and discussions of state violence so listener discretion is advised.

Zack Jackson  

I want to introduce you to Annika Fjelstad. She works at a school in one of the targeted neighborhoods. I asked her how her life has changed in the past few weeks.

Annika Fjelstad  

It’s all encompassing. When I wake up in the morning, I breathe differently than I did a month ago. When I go to bed, I am just like, This is real. I am called into this moment, and I don’t know what I’m called to do, but the notion that there is a great need and the world is depending on us is something I feel in my bones.

Zack Jackson  

As I said at the beginning, these are Quaker activists, so before we get into the specifics of their advocacy work, I wanted to know how their Quaker faith informs what they do and why they do it. Here’s Laura Kressin

Laura Kressin  

I think it’s the desire for everyone to be safe, for everyone to be taken care of, for everyone to feel welcome. I mean, that’s kind of what drew me to Quakers in the first place, is that feeling of welcome and community and compassion, and that doesn’t just stay in our meetinghouse that goes with us when we walk our everyday lives in our communities. So I think it’s just an extension of that and wanting to really fight this push to make certain people not feel welcome in Minnesota, because I’ve lived in the Twin Cities for basically my whole adult life, and immigrants are the reason why I like living in the Twin Cities, like they are part of the fabric of the Twin Cities, so I think that’s why we see such a huge number of people come out and show up for them, because they are our community. And it doesn’t matter if it’s negative 20 below feels like negative 30. We’re going to show. Up anyways, and I think kind of the administration underestimated that quite a bit.

Zack Jackson

For Troy Thielen, Quakerism offers some structural advantages to this work. 

Troy Thielen  

I think I would say that as Quakers, we typically don’t put a lot of emphasis on hierarchies and authority and to see the way that the federal government has tried to impose their will on our community. And you know, our belief about that which of God in each of us to see the way that they’ve demonized classes of people, and I think there was a real belief within some people, within the administration, that the majority of people would buy into their narrative, that they could demonize people, and we would turn against these certain groups in our community, against our neighbors. And they’ve really been surprised at the reaction.

Betsy Raasch-Gilman 

Yeah, I think just building on that, you remind me…

Zack Jackson

That’s Betsy Ross Gilman. She’s been doing peace work since the Vietnam War.

Betsy Raasch-Gilman 

Maybe it was last Sunday. No, it’s the Sunday before last we were in worship. Because, of course, worshiping about this all the time. You know, somebody got up and talked about the Quaker, I don’t know a saying or something. I’m not sure where it comes from, but approaching someone who’s on the other side of an issue saying, friend, I have a concern for your soul. And I thought of that she when she talked about that, and I thought there, I could do that. I could do that with an ICE agent, because I do have a concern for the souls of people who can be so cruel, of people who can be so heartless, having convinced themselves that they’re so that the world is so frightful, frightening, and who are so afraid, I have a concern for their souls that feels to me like it really something genuine I can bring as a Quaker. I could say that I mean it.

Zack Jackson

Many of the Quaker activists we’ve had on this podcast have told stories about how they have used silent worship as a form of protest, I asked our guests about the role of silence in their public work

Laura Kressin  

Yeah, I think for me, it’s the silence is what I maintain with my community. But when I leave the meetinghouse, like, that’s a time for words and actions and to really be activated and to use the because there is like, a level of, like, righteous anger. Of, like, I see some of the things happening, and I just get so mad, and it’s like, okay, let that be fuel to, like, push me forward, and not something that turns, like, into just like poison in my own body. Like, let it be something that keeps me moving and keeps me going, because it’s also like, there’s some times that it’s like, I want to lay in bed and curl on the ball and not get up and do anything, and because it is just kind of a depressing situation to be in. But also, this isn’t a time where, you know, I can afford to do that, and my community can’t afford for me to do that, like we need everyone to do their piece and to do their part, so to use that anger to move forward and to keep doing the work.

Troy Thielen  

I think sometimes as Quakers, we can become enamored with the idea of silence and start to think that the goal of what we’re doing is to achieve the silence. I think it’s important to remember that in our practice, we’re trying to use the silence as a means to become closer to the spirit, to allow our own personal ego a chance to rest, so that we can connect together with The Spirit. But that is really in order to become closer to each other in the Spirit, and then use that, what we learn from that process to move forward. And the silence itself is not serving the purpose. It’s the spirit. Is the goal.

Zack Jackson

The Quaker activists that I spoke to are involved with multiple organizations and local advocacy groups, but for Annika, the work hits even closer to home 

Annika Fjelstad  

I work at a school where 40% of our families are online. We have parents of kids that I teach that have been sent to El Paso. We are fundraising for them. What I used to do in my job, I can’t do any more because my students aren’t here. They’re all at home. I’ve been running out to houses and trying to get kids hooked up on hot spots, our school has been delivering groceries. Our assistant principal has completely managed to figure out how to hire lawyers to get our parents back home again, and I was late because A call came that one of our families needed to have a rental car returned, and he was afraid to drive out there himself, so we needed two volunteers, somebody to drive him and somebody to drive everybody back.

Zack Jackson  

That level of organized chaos might sound like it’s reactive, but the system supporting it, the lawyers, the supply lines, the communication channels, have deep, deep roots. Minneapolis activists actually began developing these mutual aid networks back in 2020, organizing through the COVID lockdowns and the uprising following George Floyd’s murder. Troy Thielen explains how the community is continually refining these systems of resistance and resilience.

Troy Thielen  

The mutual aid that was sort of started to be developed during COVID, one is mutual aid for people who are trying to hide, trying to stay within their homes, to not risk being abducted by ICE. And the mutual aid organizations and how people could communicate and procure and distribute goods. I think the learnings from covid definitely, that was a part of that. 

The other piece with constitutional observers and. And the coordination groups for that, I think that the understanding is that we as our community working together to just observe and document and provide more information and expose what the federal government is what and what ice are doing by just trying to be there and observe that and document it with a phone and potentially alert people when those activities are happening in their neighborhood, that’s really all we’re trying to do. But it’s pretty telling when that has been so effective, and it’s caused so much discomfort for these agents to just have the community know that they’re there and have what they’re doing being recorded. I think that’s pretty telling, that like that is what they don’t want to happen, and so we’re trying to make it through this situation right now and hope that the force that is here invading us will eventually have to retreat, essentially. 

So that’s kind of the strategy right now, and knowing that the federal government is looking for an excuse to escalate the situation and invoke the insurrection act, send troops in. And we know that our strategy of trying to keep what we’re doing peaceful, non violent, and demonstrate that we’re we’re not the ones that are causing this situation. It’s the federal government that’s like our best opportunity to try to resolve it.

Betsy Raasch-Gilman 

I love what Troy said, how Troy described the way that we’re trying to intervene in actual abductions. There are a bunch of other things that are going on too, largely in the mutual aid area. One of the ones that really gets my, I mean, really gets my heart, that there’s a group of mobile notary publics who will go to the homes of people who are vulnerable to abduction, and who ones who have children and that help them fill it out forms durable, durable powers of attorney for their children, so that if the adult gets kidnapped, the child, that there’s somebody who will has a promise to take care of the child and has legal authority to take care of the child, that that that just to me, is like, Oh, ouch, ouch, ouch. As a parent, I have to think about what happens to my child if I’m taken and make those arrangements, but the Notary Publics will go to the homes of people who are afraid to leave their homes and go over the forms in whatever language they need to and and get make sure that they get signed and notarized. So there’s, that’s another kind of form of mutual aid

Zack Jackson  

We’re going to take a quick break, and when we return, we’re taking that wisdom to the streets, to the target, and to a movement that is about to be tested in ways that it never imagined. We’ll be right back. 

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Zack Jackson

There’s a feeling in the air right now, a deep spiritual hunger for a faith that has dirt under its fingernails, a spirituality that isn’t just about thinking the right things, but doing the hard things. That desire to see faith in action is exactly what brought Galen Miller to Quakerism and to this podcast. Galen is a new supporter from the Pacific Northwest, and he told me that when he started looking for a spiritual home, he was using a very specific criteria,

Galen Miller  

And I was looking for ways to help in my own community, and I was looking for, where are the helpers? And I started remembering the Quakers. I remember, you know, a lot of the Quakers that I knew in Ohio were part of the peace and justice movements, and I just kind of was like, Okay, well, where are they here?

Zack Jackson  

Galen eventually found a small local worship group, but he also wanted to connect with Quaker’s long history of radical action, and that search led him to a certain outspoken abolitionist who is on our logo for season three.

Galen Miller  

I was a fan of Benjamin lay. I had heard of him before, and that episode popped up, and I was like, Who are these people that, one, know about Benjamin lay and are talking to you know about him? And what is this? It is amazing when I started listening to the podcast, and especially the interviews, kind of mid episode, it gave me that sense of there are other people in similar situations. And that was really, really important. And it’s still kind of a central part of how I practice.

Zack Jackson  

That sense of shared purpose is why Galen decided to become a monthly supporter. For him, financial support isn’t a transaction, it’s a spiritual discipline.

Galen Miller  

The simplicity testimony really touched me in a way that I didn’t think it would. And so I started really focusing in on things that I thought were important and trying to get rid of things that weren’t helping me in some way. And this podcast has been so valuable to me for that sense of community and that sense of, how do we help other people? For me, simplicity doesn’t mean taking away everything. It means purposefully putting your time and energy and resources into what matters, and so just giving a few dollars to what I believe is important. I think is has become part of my practice.

Zack Jackson  

For Galen, supporting this show is a way to stay connected to something bigger. He told me that this podcast doesn’t just educate him on where Quakers have been. It inspires him to see where they’re going and connects him to the active work being done in the larger Quaker world today. If this show offers you that same connection, if it helps you to find the helpers and fuels your own journey, I invite you to join Galen in that practice. 

You can go to Quakerpodcast.com and click support in the top right corner. It takes less than five minutes to set up, but it makes this entire work possible. 

And now back to the show. 

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Zack Jackson

Welcome back.

As the occupation in Minneapolis dragged on, the strategy on the ground began to shift. It wasn’t enough to just hold a vigil or bear witness to federal violence; the organizers wanted to stop the machinery of the operation entirely.

And this is where things get complicated. The tactics you’re about to hear move beyond simple protest. They are aggressive, and they are controversial, even among allies.

But for Betsy, lasting peace sometimes requires temporary escalation. 

Betsy Raasch-Gilman  

We’re tipping things in our direction, but we still need to push hard to get ICE out of here, and that the rebels are doing more and more with blockades, blockading the streets, blockading, whether temporarily or permanently, trying to keep ICE in from actually leaving the the their headquarters, their facility in the morning, there have been a couple of morning blockades to try to keep them from going to work at all, and the noise demonstrations at hotels to keep them from sleeping at night, which has been spearheaded by the Sunrise Movement, a youth led environmental activism, active movement. And increasingly, we’re also moving into trying to not only targeting the hotels, but broadening that to target restaurants which serve ICE agents and that there’s trying to get to withdraw the support the pillars of support that are keeping the ICE agents fed, housed, and then the third pillar is transportation, so that there’s the third the third target here is Enterprise Car Rentals, which is rented more than 50% of the car, about 50% of the cars that ice federal agents have been renting, have been coming from my enterprise rentals. So these are ways to kind of take the fight to them and try to deprive them of the resources that they need in order to do their jobs and that it’s very hard for them to carry on their work, knowing that they are so deeply unpopular and so deeply unwanted in our cities.

Laura Kressin  

Yeah, another corporation that we’ve been putting a lot of pressure on, Isaiah, has been working on is Target. So Target is a Minnesota Corporation, and they’re refusing to become a fourth amendment workplace, so they won’t ban ICE from their parking lots or within their stores, and there have been a couple instances of both employees and customers in those locations being detained by ICE. And so in Minnesota, which there’s a toolkit, I think if you go to iceoutnowmn.com there’s a toolkit to do for different actions, and even for some of the companies that Betsy was mentioning too, but people have been going into Targets as large groups, going in with a cart, buying some salt, because salt melts ice, and then returning it, and just doing that over and over again, and kind of clogging up the machine a little bit.

Zack Jackson  

The salt tactic is a perfect example of creative non-violence, jamming the gears of the machine without harming the people running it. And that distinction is crucial.

Betsy Raasch-Gilman  

One of the things about this campaign that the Sunrise Movement is really emphasizing is, let’s make friends with the people who work at Enterprise, these are not for by and large. There are folks who are relatively recently out of college and that this is a kind of a starter job for a lot of people, and it’s not them that we have a problem with. We have a problem with the corporate policy, and that we would like to invite people who work for enterprise to also to add their voices to ours, and to be working from inside the corporation, to also to raise these issues for their management. Why is it that we’re renting to these people, these agencies that are terrorizing our communities because they live here too. And so the approach with both Enterprise and with Hilton is not blaming the workers, but trying to enlist the workers to help us make the changes in their own corporations. So I would love to invite friends elsewhere to participate in the National Call in day at Enterprise next Tuesday, February 10, and then again, the day of protest on February 16, Monday the following week.

Zack Jackson  

Sustaining that level of pressure requires more than just strategy. It requires endurance. On January 23 a local coalition organized a gathering called “ICE out of Minnesota: A Day of Truth and Freedom. Despite wind chills dropping to nearly 30 below, 10s of 1000s of people marched in the streets earlier that day. Nearly 100 clergy members and Quakers, including Laura, were arrested while blocking traffic at the airport. It felt like a turning point.

Annika Fjelstad  

That day was really satisfying. There was, you know, it was just amazing to put on all your long underwear and all your coats and take out your hand warmers and be there with 20,000 people like it just felt so good to know that we were doing that together, and that people were noticing. And I think we all went home that day, super exhausted. And I mean, you know, the world isn’t going to change overnight, but you started to hear stories about like, is there a crumbling? Is this really a moment where things might change? 

And then the next morning, those of us who were in ISAIAH got a note from our amazing organizer, Vivian, who is really a miracle of a person for what she can pull off. But she sent this note that said I’m going to take the weekend off, and you all should too, unless there’s an emergency. And she sent that at 954 I’m 850 whatever it was, literally 10 minutes before they killed Alex Pretti so then we started getting this news, like they’ve got another observer and to be on that stream with Vivian, who just said, I’m going to take the weekend out. I mean, I was exhausted, and I’m just like a foot soldier. And then they’ve started saying, How are we going to acknowledge this, like, how can we have another huge March? I mean, there had been a huge, huge March after Renee Goode was killed, and then we had just had an even more huge march on the 23rd and the brilliance that came out that said tonight, everybody’s going to meet on their own street corner, and not all go to the same place. 

And we were so fragile as a community and people had all these mixed messages about that you should come and you should not come because there was still tear gas in the air. And so for the brilliance of saying, Whittier, Whittier can’t sustain that kind of a crowd. And yet everybody needs to do something. And those ISAIAH people, and I don’t know who else got this message out all over the state that said, Everybody gather on your own street corners tonight. And my spouse, Heather, just that was like her mission. She hadn’t really been into it, but she’s like, we’re doing it in front of my house. And she got wood, and she called all the neighbors, and she was looking for the candles, and I was like, I’m kind of cold. I don’t really want to go stand outside, even though, you know, yesterday I was Miss Minnesota. I can do this. But over the course of the evening, 20 people came and they talked to us, and we met four new neighbors who we had never met before, and it was so amazing to me to feel this solidarity in a completely different way than the being with 20 30,000 the day before it’s like now I’m with 20 people, and they are my neighbors, and we’re exchanging emails and we’re holding candles together, and I I just love the contrast of those two evenings, like it’s all part of it. It’s all ways that we are weaving community.

Zack Jackson  

In that simple act of weaving, whether it’s holding a candle on a corner or driving a rental car for a stranger, is what sustains a movement when the cameras go away, it’s a reminder that resistance isn’t just about dramatic confrontations. It’s mostly about showing up.

Annika Fjelstad  

One thing I appreciated in an article I read in Waging Non-Violence, a person said a lot of liberation work is standing around not knowing what you’re doing. And then there comes the moment where you know exactly what you’re supposed to do and that you’re in the right place, in the right time. And since I spend a lot of my life. I have always spent a lot of my life standing around, not knowing what I’m doing, wondering what I’m called to. I felt very affirmed by that to say, well, here we are in this moment together. We meet ourselves, each other on the street corners. The woman who helped me return this car right now, I only knew by a handle of O, who said she was also available. So I wrote to O, and I said, Hey, if you drive the car out, I’ll give you a ride back. And you know, she and I bonded like we were best friends forever. And there is something in that. That is deeply satisfying to say we can make community and we can experience solidarity together.

Zack Jackson  

Many of us outside the Twin Cities are feeling our hearts move to action. So I asked my guest what we can do to help. They pointed me to a number of local and national actions that are happening in the coming weeks, as well as ways to put pressure on those pillars of support that we talked about. You can find links to all of that in the show notes and on our website at Quakerpodcast.com.

And finally, don’t wait for the crisis to hit before you meet your neighbors, whether it’s a mutual aid network, a school board meeting or just checking in on the people on your block. Find the place where you can start weaving community now so that when the moment comes to stand you won’t be standing alone.

Zack Jackson  

Thank you for listening, and thank you to our guests Annika Fjelstad, Betsy Raasch-Gilman, Laura Kressin and Troy Thielen for your time and for your example. Please check out our website at quakerpodcast.com where you will find links to events, toolkits, and updates about the resistance and resilience in Minneapolis. 

You will also find a link to our new Thee Quaker Discord server where you can discuss this episode and help us build this digital Quaker community. A word of warning though, given the nature of this episode. Discord is not an encrypted platform, so for your own safety, please do not discuss any acts of civil disobedience that could identify you or another.

This episode was hosted, edited, and produced by me, Zack Jackson. Music by Jon Watts. 

Thee Quaker Podcast is only possible because of our supporters, so if this work has been meaningful to you, please consider becoming a monthly supporter. You can click “Support” at QuakerPodcast.com. 

And now, your Daily Quaker Message as read by Kent Laturno  

Kent Laturno  

Edward Burrough, 1659, “…We are not for Names, nor Men, nor Titles of Government, nor are we for this Party, nor against the other, because of its Name and Pretense; but we are for Justice and Mercy, and Truth and Peace, and true Freedom, that these may be exalted in our Nation; and that Goodness, Righteousness, Meekness, Temperance, Peace and Unity with God, and one with another, that these things may abound…such a Government are we seeking and waiting for, wherein Truth and Righteousness, Mercy and Justice, Unity and Love, and all the Fruits of Holiness may abound; and the contrary be removed, cast out, and limited.”

Zack Jackson  

to get Quaker wisdom in your inbox every day, go to dailyquaker.com that’s dailyquaker.com.

Hosted, produced, and edited by Zack Jackson.

Original music and sound design by Jon Watts (Listen to more of Jon’s music here.)

This season’s cover art is by Todd Drake

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