Steve

the party that wants to require ID to vote abruptly invalidating a thousand people’s IDs overnight seems like a pretty giant flashing red light

The band Gogol Bordello playing on stage at First Avenue in Minneapolis.

Gogol Bordello was just what I needed to night. Absolute energy blast of a show.

970 The number of agents deployed in Operation Metro Surge that currently remain in Minnesota. 407 The number of agents deployed in Operation Metro Surge and will remain in Minnesota into March.

This shows why you can’t trust headlines or press conferences from the Trump administration. We still need people out keeping watch and staying vigilant until every last agent is off of our streets.

So if you’re a quantity over quality kind of bird watcher, 4th Ave N and West River Parkway has what you’re looking for tonight. Enough crows that their cawing creates an echoing cacophony, like a crowd at a concert or a protest.

I kind of assume they’re going to revoke half of Minnesota’s PreCheck status after all the performative facial recognition photography we’ve been subjected to whilst blowing whistles and all, so I’m not too invested in this, but fun to see the bad guys in disarray.

There were a bunch around 2011 I think?

-Atmosphere and Brother Ali did shows in the front yards of homes facing foreclosure for Occupy Homes

-Lizzo played the intersection in front of the Dinkytown McDonalds for Fight For $15

-KRS-One Northside tornado relief show at First Ave

Pretty sure that AXS identified me, a human, as a bot and bounced my request while scalper bots they failed to detect bought up all the remaining tickets. If we’re going to let companies charge predatory fees to sell tickets, we could at least expect them to be good at it, yeah? Grrrrr.

Mine moved, I got to where I was selecting seats, and then it crashed out and sent me back to get in the queue all over again. I hate AXS so much.

I did not, but will look for it. I like turning to vintage internet silliness as an AI avoidance strategy.

Way too much of what I saw today was either:

A) obviously fake AI slop things, some of which I wish were true or

B) strange, awful, stupid (apparently) real things that I wish were AI slop

Frey heard “businesses impacted” and thought we meant Clear Channel, I guess?

Ice planning to acquire $38 billion in warehouses to create detention centers all over the U.S.

There is no easier or more important political position to take than to do everything possible to stop this. It will change our society forever, and Democrats are going along with it.

Just imagining the meeting on this: OK, people, CEOs have hired us to come up with a catchy slogan for their “Both sides de-escalated from whatever the tension was about” celebration. The Mayor’s on board… let’s brainstorm! There are no bad ideas.

While Walz, Klobuchar, Frey & their ilk steal Minnesota valor on TV, our City Council members are still out in the streets, protecting our neighbors ❤️‍🔥

UPDATE: He was just released. This shows that just indiscriminately took someone because they were Latino. Their illegal tactics continue so we still need neighbors to patrol, observe, and support our immigrant community.

And to be clear, the OT is Frey’s executive failure. He wanted them on the clock in crisis moments even though he wasn’t prepared to order them to intervene with marauding ICE agents. He had us paying for MPD to sit around in case we got out of hand, not to help us.

I’d love to know:
What did Frey promise Homan?
Why did Frey waste a year worth of MPD overtime keeping cops on call if he didn’t have the courage to give the order to intervene to protect Minneapolis residents?
Which of his campaign donors are evicting vulnerable tenants this month?

I have neighbors everywhere

I said provisionally, but yeah, maybe.

Dear neighbor, I am proud of you and our immigrant residents. Your resiliency, strength, and dedication have led to the announcement that “Operation Metro Surge” will end soon. It’s clear that the commitment of our neighbors made it untenable for ICE and federal agents to continue to operate its occupation of our city and state. This isn’t as a result of capitulation from elected leaders. This victory is yours, but we must not stop until ICE is completely abolished, and no more families are ever separated again. I will forever be thankful to those who patrolled, observed, and supported our community with mutual aid and daily tasks during these horrific times. Our community is full of heroes who will always be remembered as caring and loving. There are no words to show how thankful I am of every single one of you who showed up day in and day out. I hope you’ll join me in continuing to carry the whistle of resistance as our work is not done. I am still asking the community to remain cautious and vigilant until we can confirm what this truly means. They said they are not backing down from mass deportation but will be ending the operation in Minnesota soon. I recommend you continue your current plan until we can give you more information. We still need observers and the community to be on the lookout. These “draw-downs” are expected to continue through next week, which means we will still need help now and in the future. Additionally, we must never forget what they did to our neighbors and loved ones. They murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti, shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg, and kidnapped Victor Manuel Diaz, who then died under ICE custody. We are still mourning, demanding justice, and we will never forget. They targeted our immigrant neighbors and children, discriminated against our community based on skin color and accents, lobbed weapons of war on our parks, and completely shattered families who simply wanted to work, take their kids to schools, and

I am proud of you and our immigrant residents. Your resiliency, strength, and dedication have led to the announcement that “Operation Metro Surge” will end soon. 1/

Feels good to (provisionally) check one item off our to-do list.

✅ End Occupation
🔲 Prosecute violent ICE agents
🔲 Return our neighbors still in detention
🔲 Remove Noem and Miller
🔲 Abolish ICE
🔲 Repair the damage inflicted on Minnesota’s community and economy

Ugh. Get these fucking dangerous lunatics off of our streets. Abolish. Prosecute. Sue the rental companies knowingly providing vehicles for this dangerous use.

🎶 Southtown girls won’t blow you awaaaaay 🎶 (but they’ll catch feds in a sting)

One of the less talked about things with the federal government's attacks on Minnesota is that it's not just the goon squads, it's also across the board attempts to deny us Congressionally allocated federal funding.

Because we love our neighbors, apparently.

A view from the top into a full bin holding groceries like tomatoes, milk, peppers, soap, cheese, tortillas, chicken, toilet paper.

Very full bins stacked three-high in a truck as we added extra chicken before re-closing them.

The interior of an almost-full rental truck with diapers in the back and bins stacked two-high on the truck floor.

💪Mutual aid workout💪

Lift & open boxes. Sort for assembly line. Fill bins with necessities like toilet paper, soap, tortillas, chicken & add cookies & markers for kids. Carry heavy bins. Repeat until 🚚 & 💖 are full.

You can buy groceries for our vulnerable Minneapolis neighbors! Venmo: kevin-nye-3

Would also be interesting to see SD 59 precinct-level to understand support in North vs downtown.

Black and white dog doing a big stretch

Black and white dog looking up at the camera with big blue puppy eyes

Black and white dog reminding us that this belly won’t scratch itself.

This is Scooter. Zuul when she’s getting into mischief.

So Whipple roads get to be as blocked off as the Feds and HennCo sheriff want to protect evil, but Frey/MPD say neighbors don’t get to do partial blocks of roads at all to prevent evil. Cool.

Hospitality Minnesota members are choosing to house ICE agents for money and prolong the occupation that is harming their whole industry. They have so much more power in this situation than they’re leveraging. Nobody wants to risk staying in the same hotel as masked, armed kidnappers.

The City should be taking the lead here:
- Allow multi-day block party permits and waive fees
- Install emergency traffic calming yourselves
- Work with the County to do it on county roads too
- Connect PW staff or nonviolent safety orgs with RR efforts, so we can have trained marshals in busy areas