Joy, Healing, and the Resolve to Keep Fighting at No Kings in St. Paul

St. Paul, Minn.—Minnesota’s Twin Cities have been the site of grief and suffering for more than three months, since the ICE siege began, but on Saturday the streets were filled with joy. This was the official “flagship” of the global “No Kings” protests, and some 200,000 people crammed the grounds of the state capitol for a celebration of the area’s resilience, community, and defiance of the Trump regime.

Yes, they showed up to hear Bruce Springsteen sing his hymn “Streets of Minneapolis,” to listen to indefatigable Senator Bernie Sanders and local anti-ICE stalwarts Governor Tim Walz, Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan, and Attorney General Keith Ellison, and to see the octogenarians Joan Baez and Jane Fonda, along with Maggie Rogers and Tom Morello, rock out and dance to the civil rights anthem “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” alongside the astonishing locals Brass Solidarity and Singing Resistance. But mostly they came to celebrate one another, and to heal.

If you’ve ever tried to figure out how the Twin Cities resisted Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security so successfully, you heard some great stories. I want to focus on two. Natalie Ehret, the founder of Haven Watch, recalled how her pro-immigrant work began when she and her two sons were delivering hand-warmers to anti-ICE protesters at the Whipple Detention Center, and her 21-year-old son Jack discovered that two young girls had been released from custody and were “wandering in the cold, freezing,” she told the crowd. He put them in the family car, gave them food and water, and lent them his phone so they could call relatives. Haven Watch started that day, recruiting volunteers to meet immigrants being released from Whipple, without food, winter clothing, money, or their identification papers. That led to a more robust program to meet the ongoing needs of the detainees. “It wasn’t organized or well-rehearsed. We didn’t know what to do. We just acted,” Ehret said. “Strangers paused their lives. They showed up to stand and watch at a gate…without regard for their own safety or comfort, or even their own lives.”

It turns out Jack had been diagnosed with brain cancer three years earlier—I had heard of Haven Watch, but I didn’t know this part of the story. “He has always been kind, but that experience changed him. He understands now what most of us don’t: How short life can be and how important true human connection and kindness is,” Ehret went on. “Don’t walk past suffering. Act. Even when it’s not easy.”

Flight spotter turned 50501 activist Nick Benton described to the crowd how he and a friend suddenly discovered ICE shipping detainees out of the city, and began tracking the flights. “We’ve woken up full of rage after a nightmare,” said the self-described “plaid-clad working dad.” He denounced “silent businesses and cowardly politicians,” and continued: “Be the neighbor that Mr. Rogers knew you could be…. We keep us safe. No Kings is a great start, but we also need to be done with cowards.” He then led the crowd in a call and response, “When I say ‘No Kings,’ you say ‘No cowards.’” And he closed with “Fuck ICE.”

The first half of the program, the most locally centered, was emceed by comedian and Abortion Access Front cofounder Lizz Winstead (who also, full disclosure, happens to be one of my best friends). She made sure the day was about ordinary Minnesotans who stood up for one another. “You know how to show up and show out!” she said in her intro. “Please take a moment to be proud of yourselves!” I’m not the only one who loved Winstead’s work. MeidasTouch posted my favorite joke: “You chased out the fun-sized fascist Greg Bovino, you chased out that evil Kristi Noem. She’s so evil, I’m starting to think her dog took his own life,” and it has hundreds of thousands of views on social media.

But Winstead did more than make jokes. She asked the crowd to text “Vote” to the Minnesota Election Protection Network, which trains election observers and monitors voter suppression reports. The group got 14,000 texts in the next hours, a strong retort to critics who question the value of these protests, which drew 8 million people on Saturday. Indivisible cofounders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, who happened to celebrate their 11th wedding anniversary that day, announced a new Minnesota-inspired day of economic shutdown, on May 1. They, and everyone, emphasized the importance of getting mobilized for the November midterms. These were not people celebrating themselves in the (cold) spring sunshine. (But if ever a people deserved to do that, it’s Minnesotans.)

I was moved by the strong current of Native culture on the program. Ojibwe healer and singer Dorene Day Waubanewquay sang in her Native tongue what she called “a healing song for all who have suffered in this time.” It had never before been sung to a non-Native audience, and it was haunting. I love Bruce, but that song meant even more to me. Minnesota poet laureate and Ojibwe scholar Heid Erdrich read “a crowd-sourced poem on justice.”

Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan turned to her Ojibwe heritage, as a member of the Wolf clan, to explain Minnesota’s resilience: “The role of our clan is to insure that we leave no one behind. You have been showing what it means to leave no one behind.” Flanagan mourned the two ICE monitors murdered in January by Customs and Border Patrol agents, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, as did many others, including Springsteen. “They should be alive,” she said. “We say their names, we honor their memories, and we turn our grief into action.”

As the program was running late, Flanagan teamed up on stage with her “brother,” Keith Ellison, to make room for more to speak. I found that gesture moving. Three other national leaders deserve credit for comparable grace: AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler, American Federation of Teachers leader Randi Weingarten, and SEIU president April Verett. They let others who had planes to catch speak first, and also made room for local leaders who were in danger of being cut from the program. Thus they spoke last, to a mostly departing crowd. It was a gesture of solidarity that went beyond speech-making. It wasn’t lost on me that they happened to be three women. But all day we saw different types of leadership emerging, as far away from the misogynist cruelty of the Trump regime as could be imagined. It should give all of us faith that we’ll find our way out of this nightmare.