The Green Study

It feels incumbent on me to use whatever tiny platform I have to write something, anything, about what is happening in Minnesota.

1998 was the year that Jesse Ventura was elected governor. I had just moved to Minnesota and after that election I thought Minnesotans were, as their state bird, absolute loons. I took a job at the University of Minnesota, followed by a management job in downtown Minneapolis. Having tired of the dating free-for-all, I placed a personal ad on Yahoo (the old school version of a dating app). Out of the responses came one from a man who lived a few miles from me. We exchanged emails, began dating, and celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last year. His family were full-on Scandinavian. I was born a first generation American into a family of introverted Brits who moved to the Midwest, so it was not a huge culture shock.

During my service years, I lived and traveled all around the country and abroad. People are the same everywhere. While this administration seeks to pit us against each other and grifters have captured part of the population in a cycle of propaganda and misinformation, there is nothing inherently different about Minnesotans. We’re not special or unique Americans, despite how tempting it is, under siege, for us to become superfans.

In the years since my move here, I’ve raised a child, learned about hot dishes, the color white as an interior decorating style (every room in our house is a different color – my husband bites his tongue), and bought Yaktrax. I’ve hiked in the beautiful parks, canoed and kayaked, and said you betcha way more times than I should. I was president of a parent teacher organization, volunteered with voting educators, worked shifts at food shelf warehouses, and now work for a community literacy nonprofit. I have lived here longer than any other place and Minnesota is my home.

I live in an older, first ring suburb of Minneapolis. It’s a spread out metro area of approximately 3.7 million people – spread out due to an affinity for trees, trails, and parks and, unfortunately, cars. The Twin Cities are small compared to other metro areas (16th largest in the US – 1/3 the size of the Chicago metro), but like most cities, where you have millions of neighbors, there are issues of crime and socioeconomic disparities. At the moment, we’re the public media darling of fraud due to the demented pumpkin’s revenge tour. The scandal has been a part of state news for several years, with investigations and prosecutions ongoing – it is not new to us, but now it is being used as a racist tool to attack the Somali community. And for creepy 23-year old YouTokkers to harass daycare workers while asking for access to children.

On Saturday, I attended yet another protest in a nearby suburb. Nearly 4,000 people were there, all of us cold, waving signs, being honked at in support, or flipped off in curious displays of childishness (always men in trucks). I often hear the fatalist discourse around protests, but they serve a purpose. They remind us we’re not alone in our concerns and fears around the deterioration of civil and human rights. They teach us, especially introverts like myself, how to show up and participate in collective action. We live in a society that wants us isolated, disconnected, and disoriented – collective action is a muscle that must be flexed and getting people to just show up is a marvel.

I want to shout out to the women in this country who have always done the work of community and mutual aid. I grieve for Renee Nicole Good, because she was killed doing what so many of us do on a regular basis – care for the most vulnerable in our society. Women have provided so much of this country’s social safety net while institutions, legislation, and society insists that we are less than. And we are punished for it. We are taught to smile and cajole and try our best not to enrage men, but they will still kill us. Renee smiled and said “I’m not mad at you” right before she was shot to death in broad daylight. At which point, the shooter said fucking bitch. I am haunted by the violent misogyny of it all.

For those of you consuming mainstream news, gulping down copaganda about deluded wine moms and socialist hellscapes, you are being intentionally misled. You are being told to believe that there is something special about this state and its people that make it preternaturally disposed to or deserving of this invasion. They want you to feel special and superior, so that when the violence comes to your beloved home, your town, your doorstep, your family and friends, you will be wholly unprepared.

Believe what your eyes have shown you. There is no way armed men can interact with a civilian community that won’t be regarded as an immediate threat. We’ve seen the recruitment ads, we’ve read about the shortened training, but most of all, we’ve seen with our own eyes how similarly they conduct themselves to feral packs of roving criminals. We are now a 3rd world country. Not because of peace-loving hippies or mutual aid communities, but because our own government has chosen to make it so.

Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.

As for immigration, the policies in this country are enough to give anyone whiplash. I have seen educated, skilled people leave this country even before the demented pumpkin’s reign because they had been waiting for citizenship for decades. The right way. They filed the paperwork, paid taxes, worked hard, and loved this country. It’s obvious our immigration system needs to be built better, in a way that is consistent and not determined by the whims of whatever shithead occupies the white house (I’ll capitalize it when it deserves it). US history is rife with hatred against immigrants, despite the patina of welcome. Policies shift with the goddamned wind, arbitrary and so often, political and racist.

The accident of where you were born, what government you spoke your first words under, where or how you fell in love, is not a reflection of character. Some Americans have deluded themselves into thinking they are superior by the accident that their parents screwed in Idaho and not Somalia. It’s a desperate sort of racism needed to prop up corrosive inferiority complexes. Just get the fuck up and make yourself a better person instead of blaming your shitty, miserable lives on others. The lazy American way: Get a gun, feel powerful. Get money, feel smart. Assault and denigrate women, feel masculine. Blame others and never do the work, never seek self-improvement or self-enlightenment, never try to understand anything systemic or bigger than your enemic, desperate little world. This mentality is marked in the most prosperous among us. It is nonsensical and self-destructive.

Lastly, we are responsible for the kinds of humans we want to be, even and maybe especially under duress. I’ve settled into a hot bath of righteous anger, salty language, and community aid. Today I packed books to send to homes where children can’t go to school because of the violence targeting schools. Elementary schools, folks. This is what domestic terrorism looks like. It’s not a mom in her minivan observing thugs in her neighborhood. It’s roving gangs armed to the gills finding soft targets, terrorizing those who have a sense of right and wrong, destroying property, causing physical harm, and taking out their impotent rage on vulnerable populations.

Minnesota is my home. And like this country, I’ve come to love it, in all its flawed and beautiful and challenging colors. We have to stand our ground for human rights and dignity, but that is not unique in the human experience, nor in the history of this country to fight for our homes. Minnesota is not special, it is just the place where it is happening right now. We have no choice but to take a stand. For us. For you. For the possibility of a true American dream where humans can live without fear or prejudice or malice. L’etoile du Nord – the star of the north – our state motto. I have to believe that we can resist tyranny, protect our neighbors, and light the way forward.