Things are not good here in Minnesota.
And still, I am incredibly proud of our community for refusing to accept authoritarianism quietly. People here are organizing, protecting one another, and stepping into leadership roles that history will remember. We are not lying down. We are showing what resistance looks like in real time.
Not to be political, but #FUCKICE and anyone who believes this is acceptable or normal. What is happening is not about safety. It is about power, fear, and control.
Black and Indigenous peoples have lived inside a violent police state since the very beginning of this country. This is not new to us. What feels new is that more people across the United States are choosing to side with humanity instead of the Trump agenda. That shift matters. It creates cracks in systems that rely on silence and compliance.
ICE Out of MN Day is this Friday, January 23.
We will be standing in unison with other businesses by taking time to reflect and to publicly voice our concerns. This comes as ICE continues to burn through more than one million dollars a day to harass and intimidate U.S. citizens here in Minnesota. That money is being used to destabilize communities, not to protect them.
Although many businesses will be closed, I strongly encourage people to think deeply about where they spend their money every single day. This weekend is an opportunity to redirect support intentionally toward BIPOC owned businesses and restaurants that are being directly and disproportionately harmed by ICE violations.
Now is the time to be deliberate with every dollar. This is the moment to stop feeding billionaires and corporate systems that profit from fear while our neighbors are struggling to survive.
From a restaurateur’s perspective, deciding whether to shut down Owamni this Friday has been incredibly difficult. Our amazing staff needs hours. Many of them rely on every shift to stay afloat. At the same time, business has already declined because people are afraid to move through the city. People are afraid of being harassed, detained, kidnapped, or murdered by our own government.
Restaurants across the Minneapolis area are in real trouble right now. Workers feel unsafe. Entire teams are carrying stress that goes far beyond normal economic hardship. And while our staff is predominantly Native, we are not exempt from targeting. We are being watched. We are being impacted. We are part of this reality whether we like it or not.
The mainstream media is not accurately portraying what is happening here in Minnesota. The scale, the fear, and the daily harm are being minimized or ignored. It is critical to pay attention to how this unfolds, because we were not the first city to be targeted and we will not be the last.
What we can promise is this. We will be a pain in the ass for ICE no matter what.
This moment demands that we learn from one another. How to organize. How to resist. How to create real support networks for people who need them most. How to protect each other when institutions refuse to do so.
And we will continue to do what we have always done best. We will feed people healthy, nourishing food. We will care for our communities. And we will refuse to look away.
