Above photo: Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha, a local workers center, organized a free food shelf near the intersection where George Floyd was killed by police. The organization sprang into action as soon as the protests started last week, handing out masks and personal protective equipment to protesters and gathering donations of food and water. Mike Ludwig.
I heard Joanna Macy talk about a Great Turning many years ago and now we who are on the ground in metro MN are experiencing a powerful manifestation of it. I, who have been longing for this all my life, did not truly expect to witness the profound realms of connection and knowing of our oneness with all of life that we are encountering day by day in multiple ways.
I could write a huge amount about the cruelty, the fear, the widespread trauma, the physical injuries, the ripping apart of families, devastation of lives, closure of immigrant businesses throughout the city, and on, but I want this piece to ignite your own visions of who we humans are when we follow love and connection.
Here are some of the threads of this web we have built through everyone responding from their hearts to what is happening. There is no sequenced plan organized hierarchically. For those taking on dangerous pieces, there is a lot of coding underway to protect identities. For every thread that I have named here, imagine three or four similar supports going on that aren’t listed.
Carpenters repairing doors for those whose houses have been broken into, doors kicked in and busted with a battering ram.
Tow truck drivers recovering vehicles left behind after an ICE abduction, in which they leave cars stopped or idling in the middle of the road. Every effort is made to learn who the vehicle belongs to and return it to the family.
Over 5 million Skymiles donated to help folks get home safely from detention facilities around the country. Those needing help can reach out for flight assistance.
A Signal Group called Laundromat assists those sheltering at home with laundry. They pick up dirty clothes and return them clean. Imagine being trapped in your home with no way to do laundry.
Various Signal groups for emotional support for people in different traumatic situations: commuters, observers, immigrants, medics and more. Acupuncturists and massage therapists offering free sessions. Audios that support activists’ self-care at youtube.com/@kaiasvien
People tracking ICE vans, blowing whistles, activating rapid
response networks so that there are many of us witnessing, filming, protesting arrests.
Vets and medics visiting sheltered families at no charge, watching for ICE vans as they go.
Training of 5000 or so who film arrests, getting as much info as possible about the victim for family and attorneys.
A system for phones in which an immigrant pushes a button as ICE approaches and word gets out with birthdate, country of origin, contacts, etc to a select group.
Groups of chaplains ready to help, present at nearly every action, sometimes kneeling in prayer as they are arrested.
Churches that have turned themselves into huge food-packing enterprises with 150 or so drivers daily who take a number of boxes out to people who are sheltering. A careful system that has drivers eating the list of names and addresses if ICE follows and stops them.
Resistance Singers who travel in groups of 1000 thru neighborhoods where people are sheltering singing cheerful songs so that they know they are remembered. Last week,
1500 people singing welcoming songs outside ICE hotels like “You are one of us, you know. You are one of us who knows that pain and love live in every heart. Don’t let fear pull us apart.”
Monitors around elementary – high schools with high immigrant populations during drop off and pick up hours to watch for ICE. People driving kids to and from school if parents are afraid to leave home.
Three or four huge rallies each week, at the sites of the two deaths, at the airport when flights are taking detainees to another state, at the Whipple Building where detainees are taken (before being released into below zero weather without a coat or hat, no money, no cell.) Small vigils at night on neighborhood blocks, people gathered around a fire with hot chocolate.
Art supplies collected and given to families with kids who cannot leave for school.
Immigration attorneys available when a person is released from detainment. Local sheriffs speaking out against ICE tactics.
Monthly activist meetings that include inspirational offerings, small groups to tend to emotions, sharing of all ideas coming through and something upbeat and motivational to end the meeting with.
The Wound is the Medicine
It’s challenging to find words to tell you what this experience is like for us personally. The tragedy of Renee Good’s death dissolved in one moment the unconscious “othering” that many of us of European descent have had about “only people of color not being safe in the US”. Frightening to have our white façade of safety fall, ah, but the liberation of belonging FINALLY to the larger family of all cultures is magnificent! “A Dozen Roses for Renee” tells a story about this. Yesterday, Feb 7, a Native American collective held an honoring ceremony for Renee Good.
Another experience we are having is enormous gratitude for whatever in our lives has taught us that we have the ability to care for the well-being of those we’ll never meet. You can sense people reveling in that joy when they smile as their eyes meet on a school block, at a protest, packing food and so on. Individual egos seems to need much less attention as an excitement about what collaboration brings us abounds. And the creativity that is unleashed… So many ideas coming forth that shine like facets of a diamond. There is much more that hasn’t become words for me yet…
Back to Joanna Macy who knew that people cannot move from Business as Usual to the Great Turning; they must go through the Great Unraveling to get here. We are in the midst of a gigantic Unraveling and that pain opens our love since they come from the same source: our interbeing with all of life. And, no one person or group is orchestrating this. It is coming from inside each of us involved.
