Dear JCUA friends,

I grew up in Chicago, and joined JCUA when I was in high school. I’m now a senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, within commuting distance of the Twin Cities. I know you’ve all been following the news of the ICE occupation here, and some of you have come up to support, so I wanted to write and share a little bit of what’s been going on. 

It’s definitely a very weird time to be in Minnesota. On January 23rd, my friends and I joined a number of other Carleton students and faculty in skipping the day’s classes and instead going to Minneapolis to march alongside around 50,000 of our neighbors. While at the march, I found (with a little planning) my KAMII Rabbi Daniel Kirzane and a number of other rabbis from across the country who he was marching with, and the executive director of Twin Cities organization Jewish Community Action who was joined by leaders from other Jewish justice organizations from across the country. I was so heartened to see so many Jewish leaders standing up so fervently for the rights of our friends here in Minnesota. 

The next morning, unfortunately, zapped the joy and energy that Friday’s march brought. I woke up to simultaneous news of Alex Pretti’s murder in the streets of Minneapolis and of ICE presence on my college campus. I looked on my phone and saw Pretti ruthlessly beat and shot to death, and looked out of my window and saw unmarked ICE vans on the street. ICE has been in Northfield as long as they have been in Minnesota at all, but this was the first time they had come onto campus. The fear I felt for myself, my classmates, and everyone across Minnesota reached new levels. 

The contrast between the previous day’s joy in resistance and the immediacy of Saturday morning’s violence shattered any sense of safety on campus and in our state. With the march in the rearview, too, it felt difficult to imagine an outlet to work through these twin horrors.

And then, in distinctly Minnesota fashion, communities across this state showed up. Vigils have been a big part of the culture. At Carleton, the Chapel hosted its second ICE-related vigil this term the Monday after Pretti’s murder. I work at the Chapel and attend nearly every event the Chapel hosts. I have never seen the room so full. 200 people showed up (which on a campus of 2,000 students is a really big deal!) and hugged each other, lit candles, shared words about how they’re feeling, cried together, and coordinated how to help our community. I am so deeply heartened by the number of people I see consistently showing up. Food deliveries from the local food shelf to neighbors who are afraid to leave their homes have become new daily rituals for more students than I could’ve imagined. Attendance at a student group I co-facilitate called InterFaith Social Action has been higher the past few weeks than I can remember. 

In the nearly two weeks since Pretti’s murder, things have still not returned to normalcy. I see less and less coverage of what’s going on in Minnesota when I scroll through my Instagram feed or look at mainstream news coverage. But ICE is still here, spreading fear and violence. They’re here in Northfield, they’re in the more diverse nearby town of Faribault, and they’re in the Twin Cities. The Minnesota map on iceout.org continues to be full of sightings. And, there’s a real dissonance to being here right now, too. My classes have mostly continued as normal after the disruption on January 23rd. Carleton is not used to pausing our academic sprints for anything. I continue to have days filled with classes and meetings and homework, and talk with my friends about our usual mundane gossip or what we’re thinking about making for dinner tomorrow night. But our communities are still hurting.

Even in this dissonance between the ordinary rhythms of daily life and the ongoing harm unfolding around us I keep noticing small, stubborn acts of care. Whether it’s neighbors giving classmates a ride to a doctor’s appointment, volunteering at the food shelf, delivering meals to folks too fearful to leave their homes, or making good trouble outside of the hotel in town where ICE is staying, these new parts of daily life in Minnesota keep things moving. They don’t resolve the fear or undo the violence, but they push back against isolation and despair. It’s in these moments, often quiet and unremarkable on the surface, that I’m reminded where resilience actually lives. In moments like this, hope feels fragile, but also very real. It lives in packed chapels, in shared meals, in students choosing to act rather than look away. Minnesota may feel like a strange and heavy place right now, but it is also a place where people keep showing up for one another, again and again.

In solidarity,
Sophie Stein