The Strength of Community in Minneapolis

I want to end this week with some ruminations about the resistance to cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's deployment of federal agents to Minnesota. It has been inspiring to watch the mass organization of volunteers who have rallied to the defense of their neighbors. At the same time, the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have shown that this resistance can come at a cost. I normally like to include a mix of news and opinion in my blog posts, but today's is mostly going to be opinion. I will certainly forgive anyone who doesn't want to subject themselves to something that, were it written on paper, would not be worth its cost. Whether this post is worth the bits and bytes that compose a web page is also probably debatable. Nevertheless, as I have said before, I have thoughts and I want to express them.

I lived the first 23 years of my life in the Midwest and still have family there. As such, I travel back frequently. As I have read about the opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in Minneapolis, I am repeatedly reminded of what I consider to be “Midwest values," though the same values probably exist throughout the country. Chief among these is a sense of community. Others have pointed out how fundamental to the Minneapolis resistance is the idea of neighbors helping neighbors. Adam Serwer has an excellent article about the opposition in "The Atlantic" that anyone interested in this topic should read. He picks up on this idea, writing:

If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it “neighborism”—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn’t be more extreme. Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

Serwer returned to this theme later, saying:

The federal surge into Minneapolis reflects a series of mistaken MAGA assumptions. The first is the belief that diverse communities aren’t possible: “Social bonds form among people who have something in common,” Vance said in a speech last July. “If you stop importing millions of foreigners into the country, you allow social cohesion to form naturally.” Vance’s remarks are the antithesis to the neighborism of the Twin Cities, whose people do not share the narcissism of being capable of loving only those who are exactly like them.

I grew up in a city that was fairly homogeneous, dominated by a small number of ethnic groups. What I return to when I visit these days, however, is an incredibly diverse place into which many immigrants have moved. But what I have noticed is not that the sense of community was shattered as Vice President and reply-guy JD Vance would have it. Rather, the community simply expanded to include the newcomers. A strong commitment to caring for others, even those who are different, exists across the political spectrum and can be found among right-wingers as well as liberals. My Trump-voting high school friend who is opposed to illegal immigration volunteers his time to assist immigrants. That may seem like a contradiction, but it is completely consistent with his values.

Trump, of course, would not recognize a sense of community if it bit him in the ass. A narcissist, the only reason Trump would help a neighbor is if he were paid a sufficient fee or received something else in return. This misunderstanding of the Midwestern commitment to community extends throughout the Trump administration. As Serwer pointed out, Vance has been shown to have been totally wrong about his understanding of community. Deputy White House Chief of Staff and world-class hater Stephen Miller and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristie Noem have chosen to isolate themselves from communities, both living on military bases. Miller lived in a neighborhood for a while, but fled when neighbors graffitied his sidewalk with chalk. Noem has such a misunderstanding of actual American values that she believed describing how she shot her puppy would somehow be appealing. These are not people with a deep understanding of "real America," but rather folks who are almost completely ignorant of it.

The attitude of those in the Midwest towards immigration is complex and nuanced. Of course, like anyone, those in the Midwest are opposed to crime. If Trump really had gone after the "worst of the worst," he likely would have found fairly broad support. But that's not what has been happening, and everybody knows it. Many, perhaps most, Midwesterners celebrate the cultures from which they or their ancestors immigrated. Minnesota's National Football League team is named the "Vikings" in recognition of the Scandinavian roots of many of the state's residents. Similarly, my high school's mascot was also a Viking. When I return home, I almost always eat at a restaurant named the "Stockholm Inn." These are not people who have forgotten their roots. They recognize that it is possible to celebrate one's roots, and even have different roots, while still being an American.

As new communities have moved in, they have been accepted and absorbed into the fabric of society. The current mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, is Kaohly Her, a refugee from Laos who came to America at the age of three. Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia, represents Minnesota's 5th Congressional District that covers much of Minneapolis. Much is made of the Somali population of her district, but they make up just 3% of the district's population. The district is 60% White.

Trump, Vance, Noem, and Miller could not have expected the people of Minneapolis to come together as they have to protect their neighbors because none of those four would do it for their neighbors. This is particularly surprising in the case of Vance, who is married to the daughter of immigrants. Usha Vance's parents immigrated to the U.S. from India in the 1980s. Usha, like her parents, is Hindu. Vance says that he wants to live around people with whom he has things in common, but in reality, he is a fake hillbilly who converted to Catholicism who is married to an Asian Hindu. Vance is an example of how it is possible to accept those who are different from you. But ignoring reality is just one more price for Vance to pay in exchange for power. For that matter, Trump has been married to two immigrants. Trump and Vance are simply hypocrites. Miller and Noem, on the other hand, are ignorant. None of them are capable of understanding the values of the Midwest.

Getting back to Serwer's article, he makes another good observation, writing:

Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs.

Serwer then concludes his article by reiterating this point:

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely souls with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

I am of the belief that the actions of ICE and Border Patrol in Minnesota and elsewhere have little to do with immigration. Instead, it is my suspicion that the ultimate target is elections and Trump's hope to interfere with them. Minnesota was targeted because it has voted against Trump three times. Noem wrote to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz offering to withdraw the federal personnel if he turned over the state's voting files. That is a strange demand from someone allegedly interested in deporting the "worst of the worst," but it makes a lot of sense if the intention is to interfere with elections. Regardless of the administration's plans, they have been disrupted in the cold, snowy ground of Minnesota. As Serwer put it, "Tens of thousands of volunteers—at the very least—are risking their safety to defend their neighbors and their freedom." This must have been the last thing the administration expected.