How and Why Minnesota’s Network of Trust Organized Against Federal Occupation – Episode 4 of Unbuffered

Christopher Mitchell (00:15)
Howdy, and welcome to another episode of Unbuffered. I’m Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. This show is a little bit of a departure from our new show, from

as you know, I live in St. Paul, Minnesota. Talk about it at the beginning of almost every show. And I’ve talked a little bit about what happened when the federal government came to town and got up all in our grill here in Minneapolis, St. Paul, the surrounding area, the not so surrounding area, the areas around the surrounding area, where we had a big response in order to protect our neighbors. ⁓

There was a, I would say, significant overreach that I think most people have agreed with at this point. ⁓ And I’ve had requests from people that listen to the show and others ⁓ who would just be interested in having a kind of a candid conversation among some of the people that were involved with some of that. And so we’ve decided to do that. ⁓ Now, I think it’s worth noting that this show is about technology and how we organize society.

It’s about local self-reliance. And this is a story that is about that and it involves technology. I’ll talk a little bit about why, but fundamentally this show is more of a recounting of what happened in the order that many of us experienced it and how we thought about it and how and why we think Minnesota reacted the way it did. That’s what we’re going to cover in this show. We’re going to be Pretti candid about politics. ⁓ You know, I deeply respect that people don’t

always agree with me. In fact, people rarely agree with me. It feels like sometimes. ⁓ But I respect the people of different politics, different culture. ⁓ And I want to say, you know, if you are often annoyed when I start talking a little bit more about politics, about the Trump administration or other administrations, you might want to skip this show. That’s fine. ⁓ Our future episodes are going to be more focused on technology and less on on politics and touchy situations.

This is a deeply personal issue for me, the guests on the show today, and our neighbors. ⁓ So I wanted to say that this topic is related to technology. In fact, I did say it, I’ll say it again. And ⁓ the federal government used technology in terms of how it acted. The federal agents were using a real cutting edge technology in terms of identifying where their targets would be. ⁓ And then also trying to identify their targets and make sure that they were actually

the people that they were trying to get, that technology didn’t often work. ⁓ Wired covered a lot of that really well. They had some really Good articles on that. The federal government used modern these technologies to get their message out. ⁓ And the people that were responding, the citizens, the many people who were here, and I say citizens as people who take an ownership of the community, not necessarily people with a certain legal status.

We use technology in ways that are very important. We were denied certain technologies in terms of how we tried to respond to keep ourselves and our neighbors safe. And so this is a deeply, a story that is deeply technological, but I’m not going to hide behind that. This is a story in which we talk more about philosophy, what makes Minnesota react the way that it did. And then the last piece of technology that I wanted to mention, because I feel like data centers are so hot right now is that

being able to record video that you could get into the cloud and prevent the federal government from disappearing was very important over the course of this. And so we needed the data centers that were taking the video from our devices. We’ll talk briefly about that in just a few minutes. ⁓ We also, as a warning, just a sense of where we’re going ⁓ in the course of this discussion, we think that we could not talk about why Minnesota responded the way it did without also talking about George Floyd.

and the aftermath of his death at the hands of the police. ⁓ We start the show with covering the timeline of ICE coming to Minnesota and stepping up ⁓ issues along with Border Patrol. And then we talk about more about the Minnesota reaction, why it reacted the way it did. And in a previous show, my interview with Blair Levin, we ended talking about why we think this is all so important right now and why I think it’s worth doing an entire show on.

⁓ Nothing about this is meant to be definitive. You know, this is three people who are all actually not Minnesota born. We’re all non Minnesota natives who came to Minnesota, but have lived here for a long time and feel firmly rooted here now. ⁓ But, and there’s a lot of other people who were born in Minnesota ⁓ who have different experiences. So we’re not trying to take ownership of this or anything. We’re sharing our experiences. ⁓

Okay, so I wanna cover the introduction. This I recorded later because I messed up the introduction when we first did it live with David and Lisa. You might be asking who are David and Lisa? They are ⁓ long time Minnesota residents. David Brauer is a long time reporter in the Twin Cities. ⁓ I’ve really enjoyed following him. I followed him on Twitter for many years and now I follow him on Bluesky

He’s got really Good humor. He’s asking hard questions of everyone, including those that he agrees with. I thought that his writings have been terrific ⁓ for many, many years, probably decades. ⁓ And ⁓ he does identify himself as the chief remember of the 1991 blizzard. This is a seminal event in Minnesota living memory that is you cannot go a year without it being brought up. ⁓ So that’s David.

So welcome David.

David Brauer (05:58)
you.

Christopher Mitchell (06:00)
And Lisa is a long time South Minneapolis resident, ⁓ someone that I’ve known for many, many years. As ICE came to town and Border Patrol and ⁓ Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot, I would go back and forth with Lisa periodically ⁓ because I wanted to know what she was seeing and hearing ⁓ and her conversations with her neighbors.

I felt that her on the ground, South Minneapolis view of this is really interesting and important part of the story, both now and in the years leading up to this in terms of how neighbors related and things like that. the conversations that I had with Lisa to me suggested that it would be important to include her as well. So thank you, Lisa, for joining us.

Lisa (06:46)
Hey Christopher, hey David. So I just wanted to let David know that I also was here in 1991 for that blizzard. In fact, I had just gotten here in June of that year and that happened and I thought, oh my God, what did I get myself into?

David Brauer (07:01)
You know, Lisa, that’s a little bit like the people I’ve talked to move to Minnesota in like 2019 or early 2020 only to be confronted with a world historical event and then another world historical event or who moved here just before, you know, just before George Floyd. You know, I thought moving to Minnesota was a nice, quiet, relatively well-educated place. And it turns out we just have a major

Lisa (07:12)
Bye.

David Brauer (07:30)
global historical eruptions every five years now.

Christopher Mitchell (07:34)
So with that, I have a rough timeline and I’m expecting Lisa and David will be able to jump in a little bit, but I would put it back to like October, ⁓ September, October timeframe. I think we have a sense from Donald Trump, President Trump’s, ⁓

comments and truths and whatnot that he’s sending increased ICE into LA and other areas, eventually Chicago. I noticed in October was when Apple blocked ICE block, which for me was a major part. But David, it looks like you might have had something earlier you want to note before we go into that.

David Brauer (08:12)
⁓ well, just in terms of the timeline, I mean, you can go back to, ⁓ you know, Trump’s election or maybe his first election. If you want to go way back, I would say though, that local organizations in Minnesota, immigrant led organizations, ⁓ were planning for something like this, ⁓ over a year ago. there were efforts made in earnest immediately after Trump got elected and they didn’t know he’s, ⁓

bear fruit, weren’t always seen by the public. Let’s put it that way. But I would say we’re recording this at the very end of March. And I would say almost a year ago at this time, the small groups that were getting together were planning sort of what ifs and what do we do? I can’t say that they had very much of what ended up happening invented. This was obviously a widely distributed ⁓ reaction to the federal invasion.

but there were definitely a number of groups that were sort of laying the groundwork. The other thing, maybe more specifically to your point is in June of last year, ⁓ the federal government came in and a multi-jurisdictional task force and raided a grocery in the ⁓ Lake Street, Minneapolis and Hiawatha Avenue area. And it was a raid where the Minneapolis police department basically tried to keep the public

from intervening on the federal ⁓ task force. The task force included local law enforcement like the Hennepin County Sheriff, but we really saw that multi-jurisdictional amalgam of initials that the federal government subsequently threw at us. And we also learned at that time, I think people like you may have known this before, but this was when the activist community really got hip to it, that uploading video ⁓ while powerful,

can also be a tool of the state in terms of identifying people that are defending themselves against the government. about two weeks after that ⁓ confrontation, I guess, somebody was arrested on the basis of video. And it really set the scene for a lot of people who were doing ⁓ legal resistance subsequently to tell people, live streaming is great. It’s super attractive. It’s sexy. It made all the difference ⁓ in some cases.

but we’re gonna really need you if you’re gonna do legal resisting and observing and providing evidence to actually send your video up to people who can review it first to avoid people being unfairly targeted.

Christopher Mitchell (10:53)
that’s a Good point. And I think that’s one of the things where we’ll see a number of nuances between ⁓ options of how one acts and conducts themselves.

we’re gonna jump back into this, into the timeline. And I did also want to, one other thing, which is that like, I’ve always loved Minnesota. My family moved here from Pennsylvania and we came here during a recession. Family needed a job and Minnesota delivered in so many ways. I’ve been rooted here since, ⁓ but Minnesota also had, we’re not gonna sit here and say Minnesota was perfect. Minnesota had a significant and has a significant problem with a, ⁓

I think if you are a young black man, you probably have a 50 % chance of being involved with ⁓ the criminal justice system. Same thing for people who are indigenous. We have challenges in Minnesota, whether you’re in the rural or in the cities, with race and those issues. And I would say that this whole event really has made me love Minnesota all the more to see ⁓

kind of like a reckoning and people coming together in that way. And I don’t know that we would have necessarily guessed that. I wouldn’t have guessed that several years ago, just because we’re not. We’re going to talk about how amazing Minnesota is, but I’ll just say like there’s things that we have to work on still. So December 1st, I feel like is where we really see the cannon pointed at Minnesota with vilification of people who are of Somali descent, which I say because in Minnesota we have, according to the numbers that I’ve seen, like 84,000.

⁓ people who I think what identify as being Somali one way or another but most of them are American citizens. They’ve been here for a long time. I played soccer in the 90s with a lot of Somali folks. ⁓ They’re well integrated in some ways and in other ways they’re still neighborhoods that are very heavily immigrant and have that flavor about them. But they became a target of the president and others. ⁓

And ⁓ there was ⁓ anyway, this ratcheting up of rhetoric and whatnot over the course of December, started seeing more whistles and response to federal efforts ⁓ with raids in some of the neighborhoods that are more heavily Somali. ⁓ If you remember at the end of December, there was the viral video of the Somali daycare claiming that these daycares were frauds. And all of that turns out to be ridiculous, but sort of

keeps ratcheting up this sense that something’s going on and justifying a greater number of people who are coming from the federal government, ⁓ some of whom have been in these jobs for a while, some of whom seem to be hired recently. So that takes us to the end of December, more or less, and we end the year and start the new year with thousands of federal agents coming to Minnesota, primarily from ⁓ ICE and Border Patrol. ⁓ And of the two, I’ll just say that a former

a person that worked with me at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Maren did an amazing podcast called Bad Watchdog, two seasons about Border Patrol. Highly recommend it if you want a sense of just how messed up this agency is. I’m not gonna paint with a too broad a brush, I’m trying not to, but like Border Patrol is a fundamentally broken organization in ways that ICE isn’t necessarily. So there’s some differences there.

I would then jump to January 7th. We see more and more of ICE patrols and in Minneapolis in particular, a response of people who are organized and Renee Good is shot ⁓ on January 7th. this is something that happens and then there’s more and more footage coming out day after day. ⁓ But ⁓ this is like, I think that’s like the first major flash point for some of us where we’re realizing that this is a much bigger thing.

than we thought, it’s really getting bad. So let me pause there for a second ⁓ and just give Lisa or David a chance to weigh in about anything that you remember from those times.

Lisa (14:53)
I do remember when ICE and CBP ⁓ raided the restaurant down on Lake Street that David was talking about and the reaction of the local law enforcement. And I think that that was a bit of a realization that we were going to have to take care of ourselves, you know? And, ⁓ you know, later on when the police chief came out and said that they were going to

arrest or they were going to interfere whenever CBP or ICE broke the law. ⁓ It was a little encouraging, but I don’t think the majority of people, especially people in the immigrant community believed that to be the case. ⁓ as far as I could tell, it was not the case. ⁓ And that was one of my frustrations is I felt that there were so many instances when

⁓ our local law enforcement could be helping us out, but they weren’t. ⁓ I just thought that was incredibly frustrating.

Christopher Mitchell (16:01)
Mm-hmm.

David Brauer (16:04)
And I would just add to that, that mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey who I think famously and appropriately ⁓ basically told Trump to fuck off, got a lot of positive press for that. ⁓ You know, followed up by saying, at least as police chief, who the mayor directly supervises said that they would intervene when they saw ICE abuses. We’ve now learned through FOIA’s ⁓ Bloomberg News did a Good FOIA dump. ⁓

that they absolutely did not intervene and nor nor would they intervene. ⁓ So I would caution your national listeners who are excited about Jacob Frey to know that that the the walk is not nearly as strong as the talk. And ⁓ it’s depressing for those of us who live here to see him fetid at the same time that really there’s been no follow up. I want to go back on your timeline just a bit to remind

viewers of a couple of things. One, this is sort of lost now in the recall, but ⁓ the reason that Trump started talking about Somalis again was because ⁓ an Afghani national had ⁓ killed somebody, believe in Washington, DC. And this started a whole little chain of, know, the White House trying to leverage its immigrant hate over this issue. And of course, Trump’s brain being slippy,

slips immediately to Somalia. Suddenly, you, Christopher, as you mentioned, we’re hearing about sending ICE after Somalis, which frankly, everybody here laughed about because all the Somalis we know are citizens. Not everyone is, overwhelming ⁓ majority is. And I will say that ⁓ you mentioned too, the whistle campaign, which has been super successful, very noteworthy. That came really from ⁓ Chicago.

who had had a much smaller ICE invasion. The perspective, Minnesota had like 4,000 ICE agents. think Chicago had an awful invasion of like 250. So our invasion was about 50 times per capita of what Chicago faced. But Chicago learned from LA. one of the things, and LA learned from Charlotte, which had happened. So there is this sort of rolling thunder that Minneapolis really benefited from. And we got the whistle kids.

which included the whistles and how, when to blow them and what like three short blows indicate that ICE is in the area. And then three longer blows indicate that they’re right there. All of that came from someplace else that was not indigenously invented. And so to people elsewhere in the country that think this is coming for them, please feel free to contact any.

Any of us who know what was going on in Minneapolis, if you need advice, if you need tactics, your tactics will be different. They will. And I can already, I can already tell you in Minnesota, the tactics that worked in Minneapolis and St. Paul do not work necessarily in the suburbs or rural Minnesota, but they did work here because of density.

Christopher Mitchell (19:04)
Right and this was

Right.

Well, that’s thing is actually, I think they work differently in even Minneapolis than St. Paul and in the suburbs because of organization. And I think we’ll talk more about some of those differences, ⁓ toward the end. I had a frontline view of some of this. My wife is involved in, ⁓ with the PTO and, for the school, for our kids school. And, ⁓ and so she was kind of watching what was happening and we didn’t

reach out to others and didn’t, you know, it’s funny, kind of funny. I believe strongly in the Internet trying to make sure everyone has access to it. I never researched in my personal life. And so we were just sort of like, you know, trying to get a sense of what was going on. I talked to people I’d been active with. I’d been a protester years ago ⁓ and involved in that. so ⁓ like my wife through the stuff that she was in, she jumped in to try and organize some of the parents with school patrols and things like that. This is all happening right around.

right before Renee Good was shot and then also right after. Because also that same day, ⁓ the ICE agents were at Roosevelt High School. And I think, Lisa, you might have had some personal experience with that. They seemed totally out of control. And that was a second part of the wake-up call on that day, I think.

Lisa (20:28)
was not there that day. My kids graduated from Roosevelt a few years ago, but I could hear it. ⁓ I was close enough to know that there was something going on and it was all over, you know, Facebook ⁓ and the signal chats were talking about it. So ⁓ I was aware of it happening.

Christopher Mitchell (20:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So this is, and this is before the police department started doing press conferences. And we’re still, I’ll still trying to make, there’s a fog going on to some of us to try to figure out what’s happening and how are people reacting to it. But one of the things we saw was school principals and school security officers saying, please help. And when my wife was organizing this and reached out to the principal and the security officer to say, Hey, we want to do this thing. We think that we want to have some visibility. I kind of expected them to be like, please don’t.

we’re professionals. And instead the reaction from every school I’m aware of was all the same, which was, you, please work with us. Like here’s what we’re looking for. And, ⁓ and so for me, that was a sign that something was really different happening here and it was being perceived as a major threat. so, ⁓ later on, January 14th was when, that school that I’m familiar with how to walk out along with many other schools in St. Paul, they went to the Capitol and, ⁓ that was the night that in North Minneapolis, a Venezuelan man was shot.

which I will include here because it was also one of the signs that they were just lying about everything, the federal agents were. And we found out later that everything that they said about that encounter was not true. ⁓ So ⁓ it was interesting. The other piece about that night that I thought was relevant is that like a few random people who gave quirky clips to the press became international sensations and then went on to do more of kind of like reporting on the ground in some ways.

There’s a guy who kept dropping the F bomb who was just talking about, was a normal guy and he was just so pissed off that this was happening and this is ridiculous. he’ll be forever memorable in my head. ⁓ but yes. Yeah. And talking about like, just like, you know, he’s never protested before and things like that. ⁓ so, ⁓ later on in this middle of, middle of January, ⁓ mischief on in grand avenues, handing out the whistle kits and all that, they get featured by ABC news and they get hit with an I nine audit.

Lisa (22:22)
The Angry Minnesota Guy.

Christopher Mitchell (22:42)
where they start getting targeted. When the police chief for Brooklyn Park on January 20th says that his officers who were not white when they were not wearing their uniform were harassed and threatened by ⁓ ICE agents ⁓ and in detail some of that, that just ICE agents are out of control, ⁓ later the next day Brooklyn Park sees an increased number of raids and they get punished for having spoken out about it.

⁓ This is when we started seeing checkpoints on some of the highways and other places where ICE was asking people that they thought did not look Minnesotan, I guess, whatever that means, ⁓ to provide ID and that sort of thing. And there’s videos in the then-circulant social media ⁓ of members of Indigenous tribes ⁓ being harassed and taken, among others. ⁓

Liam Conejo ⁓ Ramos, the child with the blue hat is taken. ⁓ Many of the children in his school district ultimately, or in his school specifically in Columbia Heights, were later threatened. This is all kind of giving us, we’re just like, we’re freaking out. I mean, at least in my household, we’re just like, this is escalating so rapidly. And yet there seems to be widespread condemnation, but it doesn’t seem to matter. And I’ll just say like, I felt so powerless. ⁓

like white man, my whole life, like dominant kind of guy. And, and just like, I wanted to go out and cause scenes. And, and at the same time I’ve worked with enough people who are like, we don’t need another angry white guy showing up and shouting all the time, you know? And so I just felt like there was no place for me trying to figure out what I’m doing, ⁓ in this time. So we’re heading into that sort of the third week of January. Again, I don’t know, Lisa or David, is anything you want to add about what this time was like?

David Brauer (24:29)
Well, I do want to say that this was probably the most intense time when the number of raids were spiking. Greg Bovino, haven’t mentioned him, but Customs and Border Patrol fascist. Basically, the work husband of ⁓ Stephen Miller ⁓ shows up to really just be bashing people’s car windows, you know, holding up tear gas and throwing it at people, arresting people on on ⁓ absolutely no

pretense. I want to go back to Renee Good because she was the beginning of this section. Your national people should know that Renee Good and her wife and their child, attend a ⁓ public ⁓ charter school, believe, in one of the southern ⁓ Minneapolis or one of the southern suburbs. And they had actually gone through some legal observer training, which is why she was in the car and why she had the presence of mind to

basically watch ICE, which at the time was super concentrated in this area of South Central Minneapolis Park Avenue, 34th Street, which is where Renee Good ultimately got killed. But she had been trained and she was trained that it is legal to observe ICE. And for people around the country, I don’t know if your listeners have this mindset, but for people around the country, though, why didn’t you just let them do their jobs? Why didn’t you just, you know, you made it worse by

watching them and gathering and blowing whistles at them. Well, dudes and gals and enbies, had, uh, we’d had two solid weeks of them, the above, you know, abusing the hell out of everybody and absolutely illegal, absolutely unconstitutional. Uh, I have a grandson who’s in daycare. One of the staff members of that daycare on a weekend, not when she was working at the daycare.

was arrested, but what they did is they bashed her window in. She had glass in her face. She was taken to the Whipple building, which is a federal building that was repurposed as a temporary concentration camp, left there for four days without medical treatment before we were finally able to get her out. So when you talk about freaking out, Chris, this is, this is the worst two or three weeks.

of the whole thing because we do not know where they’re going to stop and they’re taking great joy in it. The Roosevelt incident at Roosevelt High happened in the adrenaline rush of the federal agents killing Renee Good. It was the same day. It was the aftermath of that when everybody was, everybody’s endorphins were just spiked. Everybody’s adrenaline was spiked. It was chaos and craziness.

Lisa (27:21)
Christopher, you and I had been talking about this earlier, you know, just for my own, you know, I feel I have a certain ⁓ feeling for Renee Good because I’m a white woman like her, you know, I have kids like her. I had for, you know, maybe a week, two weeks had been doing patrols, you know, with my car. And ⁓ I never really came across anything at that point with the exception of

Christopher Mitchell (27:21)
Yes.

Lisa (27:51)
one time and ⁓ that at that particular instance I got there right as the ⁓ agents were driving away with the people in it and ⁓ and I was I what I would do is I would work as ⁓ one of these people who would check license plates while I was doing other things at home and ⁓ she got shot and I saw the signal chats and I thought my god

I mean, I just couldn’t believe it. And that sort of was a bit of a wake up call to me.

Christopher Mitchell (28:27)
Yeah, I mean, we even explicitly mentioned Signal being incredibly important for all of this, a tool that ⁓ provides actual real authentication and, sorry, communications encryption. ⁓ And one of the things that want add to what David said, Lisa, that you just reminded me of is that we’re also seeing reports and speculation and all kinds of other things and not really sure how bad things are. What are we not seeing?

the number of stories of someone where one observer happened to grab the name of someone who was being abducted. I remember a young woman who ⁓ I believe was Somali descent, ⁓ maybe Ethiopian, ⁓ was taken in St. Paul and her parents were trying to figure out where they were because the people had gotten her name, but they had to wait until the parents were kind of asking around to say, our daughter went to the store and never came back and we don’t know what happened to her. And so,

There’s ChongLy Thao goes famous, becomes famous in St. Paul. He’s an elderly ⁓ man who ⁓ is taken out in his underwear ⁓ in like 10 degree weather after they bashed his door in without a warrant. ⁓ so like you said, David, and I think it’s important to note that because this is a time when from what we can tell, the goal is to terrorize immigrant communities.

in order to encourage self-deportation and also to try and get them to, and also try to like grab them and scare them. It’s also trying to provoke, we think, a response, a violent response that would then justify an occupation, a military occupation. And so there’s like, there’s all these thoughts that are clouding around at that time. ⁓ But many of this, and a lot of this is happening in Minneapolis. It hadn’t yet spread to the suburbs as much. It’s a little bit in St. Paul in Minneapolis, but I think it’s still mostly in the core.

Lisa (30:11)
There was stuff going on in Richfield.

Christopher Mitchell (30:14)
Okay, so the

so some of the core suburbs were getting hit then too.

Lisa (30:17)
Right, right.

So both my kids are ⁓ people of color. One is trans. And so we were incredibly on high alert. And in order for me to get one of my kids to their job, we have to drive through Richfield. And I did come across a few incidents there on the way. And again, it was coming up on this after it’s all over.

you know, and there’s not really anything you can do at that point. So it was just really scary.

David Brauer (30:53)
Yeah. And Chris, just want to, again, for national ⁓ listeners, I want to kind of contextualize some things. think overall more, there was more intensity in Minneapolis than anywhere else. ⁓ St. Paul also had intensity, maybe a little bit less. ⁓ But we have some inner ring suburbs. Richfield is one, Columbia Heights, where Liam is from, is another one that are ⁓ significant minority percentages.

more than say the neighborhood of South Minneapolis that I personally live in. And so the shape of this at that time was, I don’t know how far into the second ring suburbs and the third ring suburbs they got, but for sure, the first ring suburbs that more and more resemble what people think the city is, there was definite action at that point. But for Bovino, who wanted the big stage, he and his cronies

definitely concentrated on South Minneapolis. ⁓ It’s a little bit trickier over in St. Paul because actually the high, significantly high percentage of minorities live in East St. Paul and St. Paul is the Eastern city of the Twin Cities region. And so honestly, I think Bovino wanted the TV cameras and he wanted to make sure that he was in an area where they would be and that meant central and that meant high immigrant population.

And that met Renee Good getting killed. then not long after Alex Pretti who was killed in the Whittier neighborhood, a street called each street. And that happened the day after, ⁓ 50,000 people at least had shown up to peacefully demonstrate in the general strike in downtown Minneapolis on one of the coldest days of the year. know that got some national attention. And as somebody who in that protest, I can tell you it was really cold.

Christopher Mitchell (32:44)
Mm-hmm.

David Brauer (32:48)
But it was, it was a brilliant day. I’ll just leave you with this. It was a brilliant day because, ⁓ you, Chris, you’re making a great point about how sort of atomized people felt like they were trying to plug in, but they, if they hadn’t been trained as legal observers, they maybe really didn’t know how. I mean, Renee Good getting killed was, it was an outrage and a tragedy, but Alex Pretti getting killed was the one that convinced everybody. This wasn’t a one shot deal. And this was everybody into the.

into the defense of the city right after we had actually chosen to show solidarity and be helpful downtown. And that is when, you know, that’s when the lines were drawn and the population was all in, I felt.

Christopher Mitchell (33:34)
I agree. ⁓ I’ve been trying to figure out how to plug in with my set of skills as a photographer. And I’d started going to, I finally felt safe enough with my family to go to Whipple with the phone numbers on my arm ⁓ and to take photos ⁓ of license plates and attempt to help in that manner. There’s a whole process that was sort of, not everyone knew every aspect of it. I certainly didn’t, but.

I take photos that generally help them, people that were checking license plates to identify vehicles for their level of threat. The day before Alex was shot, ⁓ 99 clergy were arrested at Minneapolis St. Paul Airport. ⁓ I actually was at Whipple that morning where a group of, if I remember correctly, 50 to 70 people with shields shut down one of the roads leading to Whipple. The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office let him go for a while. We thought…

They were just gonna let them stay there for a while. Ended up ⁓ moving then to Minneapolis and just missed the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office attacking that barricade and breaking it up. ⁓ So it was a morning that was, it started off the day negative 40 degrees, true temp I think. And it ⁓ was very cold throughout the day. been mostly outside. And I got just a workout from the weight of clothes I was wearing.

But yeah, and then the next day to have Alex Pretti murdered and to learn more about him. ⁓ That then leads also to the federal government. mean, this is the time where the, to give you a sense, the American Indian movement, which has been at odds with law enforcement in Minnesota specifically for a very long time, issued a press release around this time thanking the Minneapolis police department for its efforts to try to like help people as the federal government was doing this. It was a very weird time with different.

people teaming up and trying to figure out how to get through. ⁓ And so in retrospect, it does seem like it’s calming down a little bit after that, Bovino gets kicked out shortly after Alex Pretti was killed. ⁓ You start seeing more, you get a better sense of the legal system, the judges saying, this is crazy. And I think most people still don’t appreciate just what a ridiculous farce it has been in the courts. Every court that has heard just about everything about this,

Nearly every of the challenges has been successful because the people who are here, the federal agents were acting so lawlessly. So Tom Homan announced the end in February 12th. I just read an article that came out today, I think, about how in greater Minnesota people are being taken. There’s no sense that it’s over. 10 to 20 people are taken to Whipple a day, it seems.

There’s a constant group of people there, the Haven people. There’s so many people involved that we’ve skipped over. So many immigrant rights groups that have really worked so hard. ⁓ One other thing that I was going to note is that ⁓ I had a little bit of a visibility in some of the mutual aid groups that started afresh, but like existing churches just did an amazing job. Some of them, right? Some of the churches, not so much. I live Pretti close to City’s church and ⁓ that’s where the big protest, there was a big protest there that has, ⁓ you know,

had people all reacting in all kinds of ways, ⁓ for me it just it was such a difference between that and the churches that were feeding 10,000 people. ⁓

David Brauer (36:56)
I just want to jump in here, Chris, and say that I’m not, I was raised Jewish, but I’m not a, not a religious person, nor do I darken the doors of houses of worship. But, ⁓ during those two months, January and February, ⁓ I had a chance to speak at a lot of churches that had opened their doors to be places where, ⁓ thousands of people, ⁓ 50,000, ⁓ overall could be trained as legal observers to know what.

not to do, to know what to do, to know how to stand up for your neighbors without causing the Insurrection Act to be ⁓ used. And I’ve never had a better view of organized religion in my entire life because there were so many congregations. You could tell that they were welcoming congregations because they had gay flags, they had trans flags. These were

I spoke at one in Cambridge, Minnesota, which is a red part of Minnesota, north of the twin cities. And I can’t say that, you know, the entire community was down with what we were doing, but I can say that there was a welcoming congregation there Methodist and they were great. so, ⁓ for those of you who are godless heathens, like I am, I can just tell you that I have never met more people of faith who have walked their talk at this time of crisis and,

and lived the best ethos that you can get from however you plug into whatever overarching force you have. it’s to this day, I tear up thinking about how incredible it was.

Christopher Mitchell (38:32)
Yeah, one of the sentiments that I loved, a friend of mine had shared a picture of someone who had written on a bed sheet and thrown it out their window. And it said, ⁓ first they came for the immigrants and I stepped up because I read the rest of the fricking poem. ⁓ So I do want to, is there anything else of the background that ⁓ we should cover for context for people? I mean, there’s so much more, but I think that gives you a sense.

David Brauer (38:45)
Right. Right.

I just, do want to speak a little bit to your point about the immigrant led groups doing it. ⁓ One reason, by the way, that the Minneapolis cops might’ve been helping the indigenous community is we were all kind of, our minds were totally blown by the immigration and customs enforcement agency coming to get indigenous Americans. I mean, if you wanted no other indication that this was racist as hell, that was the one you could totally drawn. But.

There were a number of Latino led groups, ⁓ Unidos through an effort called Monarca ⁓ Unidos and then Mirac, is another one, Copal, which is another one. These were groups that ⁓ were not led by white non-Hispanic people like ⁓ Chris and me and Lisa, perhaps. ⁓ But ⁓ they were the ones who’d been thinking about this. They were the ones who knew about this.

And they began laying the latticework that we all grabbed onto whether we knew or not. Maybe we grabbed onto it because somebody we knew grabbed onto it, but we never knew where it came from. So just really, again, want to underline the point that, you know, we keep us safe. We save us. That we is not a white ⁓ we that that has that has deep roots in this community in ways that are ⁓ if they’re white, they’re white Hispanic.

and in many ways not white at all.

Christopher Mitchell (40:29)
Lisa, any other thoughts before we jump into the why of why we think Minnesota is able to resist in way it did?

Lisa (40:35)
I’ll just second what David said. ⁓ I remember going to marches with MARAC last summer about this, you know, and they do a great job and COPAW had great training, observer training, ⁓ which I shared with a lot of people who could just do it online, you know. ⁓ So yeah, they definitely are the leaders that we need at the moment.

David Brauer (40:57)
So figure out who your Latino-led and your immigrant-led groups are in your community. If you don’t know, don’t be embarrassed. I mean, a lot of people here didn’t know. ⁓ There’s no shame in it.

Christopher Mitchell (41:08)
It’s a Good icebreaker

to admit vulnerability when you’re trying to like calling or meeting new folks. It’s a Good icebreaker.

David Brauer (41:15)
Listen,

when you’re training people, people show up not knowing what to do, but knowing that they have to do something. That is the most beautiful connection I think you can have with another human being. And you’re taken so far away from a place of shame at that point that all you want to do is make sure that you speak the words that allow them not to feel shame. I mean, I always told people that came to trainings, ⁓ not knowing what to do. You have taken the first step.

You’re here. ⁓ And so again, for people around the country, I don’t know where everybody’s reality is, but I can tell you that in a lot of these cases, there are immigrant led groups and others, civil rights groups that are, have thought about this and are talking to us and have talked to North Carolina, LA, Chicago, wherever. And so it’s okay to get to know your community better. We’ll talk more about this, I think in a second, but all of these connections you have in your community.

When the chips are down, they become these threads that get pulled tight, protectively. And it’s never too late in your community to start making those connections in advance of what’s coming. That’s really the lesson here.

Christopher Mitchell (42:31)
Now, Minnesota, we have an advantage because we are, by some measures, the most civically minded state. We vote in higher numbers than anyone else. We lead in national night out participation. I will say there’s some differences though. I think Minneapolis is fairly aggressive in this. I don’t see this in my neighborhood in St. Paul as much. We’re a little bit more, I don’t think I know my neighbors as well as many others do. And despite the fact that I’ve been here for like 16 or 17 years in this house, in this neighborhood.

You know, in talking about how Minnesota was ready to respond, and in particular, think Minneapolis taking the brunt and then inspiring others and also offering a bit of a playbook. Lisa, you, I think, had the best theory that I’ve heard, and I’m not saying that you’re the only one that came up with it, but why do you think Minneapolis was ready ⁓ for this when it happened?

Lisa (43:24)
It’s definitely not my theory.

I am not that smart. ⁓ But I can just speak from my own experience. And it kind of started with COVID because I am a lot like what you just described, Chris. I only know a few of my neighbors or I only knew a few of my neighbors, ones that might be right next door or right behind me. We watch each other’s house if somebody goes out of town. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (43:29)
You alone.

Lisa (43:54)
I think when COVID happened, was more of a, you people came outside of their houses more to socialize. So you might be out walking your dog and you’d see, you know, a few neighbors standing there talking and you’d start talking to them, you know. And, you know, then when George Floyd happened, I know from my own experience, I had even didn’t even know that my neighborhood had a group.

on Facebook. I’m sorry it’s Facebook but, but that and that is where telecommunications came in. So I went ahead and joined that group. And ⁓ you know, the next thing you know, we’re all like organizing walks around the neighborhood at night because there were some outside agitators that came during the George Floyd ⁓ protests. And ⁓ you know, we would share tips. You need to get another hose in case you have to put something out. We heard this from

you know, the police that you should watch for this and, that also kind of brought us together. So now we at least had a loose network and then this happened. And I think like David, I just love that explanation, that metaphor when the threads come tighter, when something happens. And I think that’s exactly what happened here because more of the people in my neighborhood were involved. Some of them, think work with some of those immigrant rights communities.

And that’s how I kind of got looped in, ⁓ you know, with the signal chats and with the different ⁓ groups of, you know, ⁓ patrols that we did just around the neighborhood and our local food shelf and this church. And we have a couple of vulnerable neighbors. And so we would give them rights to work, you know, or help out with their rent, you know, and all that is still happening. And I think it’s going to keep happening for a long time. And I think that, you know, this was an awful experience.

which is not over, but it has had some really beautiful side effects.

Christopher Mitchell (45:55)
David.

David Brauer (45:56)
Yeah, I just want to underline that. think Lisa’s got it exactly right. mean, when when ⁓ George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police happened, I live half a mile away. And within a couple of days, when when it really the uprising really developed, ⁓ the arsons that happened ⁓ mostly to commercial spaces stopped about two blocks away from me. So we had drawn pails of water.

around my house, we didn’t know if Arson was gonna come closer. My son, who was a teenager at the time, slept with a baseball bat out on the front porch of our house. The neighbor behind me in the alley, who I knew enough to weigh that, told me, not menacingly, but basically said, I just want you to know we have a gun in our house if something goes down. And it was one of those moments of that.

neighbor would have told me that any other time I would have gone, okay, we’re not talking to that neighbor anymore. But in that moment, it was, it was not a hostile act. It was community defense. And we all got our heads around that a little bit. Now in, in many ways to me, the ICE invasion was far worse because instead of being an awful weekend, which is what George Floyd was, ⁓

admittedly, a long aftermath and we’re still recovering from it. But ICE was day after day after day after day for two and a half months. But there is no doubt in my mind that if we all hadn’t lived through George Floyd’s murder and what happened there, what happened in January and February here would not have been as effective. And we also, by the way, knew that maybe this is implicit.

But we knew the cost of destroying our own community, which is enormous. I mean, we have not recovered from it. We were on the verge of, you could start to feel like we were recovered from it. And then, you know, Trump got elected. ⁓ So absolutely, absolutely a deep connection there.

Christopher Mitchell (48:10)
Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about that because I think for people to appreciate the describing the why your son was sleeping with a baseball bat there. I heard that story from a lot of folks. I remember at the time employees of ours that were in Minneapolis were part of their patrols around their neighborhood. And there was this sense, and I think you said it earlier, Lisa, when we were chatting, ⁓ that you don’t know who to trust, right? Minneapolis police.

Weren’t there weren’t friends at that point? mean, Minneapolis police has done a good job of trying to be more of a community ally since then, but this was at a very low ebb. Um, you know, in St. Paul, we felt a little bit better about the police, but, um, obviously we had had, um, our issues as well that were, that were not dissimilar. Um, and I think that people don’t appreciate, if you saw this from afar, even David, you said we burned down Minneapolis. I’m still not true. You said.

community, but I’m still not sure that that’s true in the sense that like there were marches in which there was arson. Some of that seems to have been provocateurs. Some of it was undoubtedly people who were there and angry. I’m sure there’s some of that, but I had a front row seat to where a midway burned, which is just north of me in St. Paul, a lot of minority owned businesses and a few larger national chains. And I happened to be there for most of it, taking photos and, ⁓

And the thing that struck me is that there was no protest there. ⁓ There was a group of people that opportunistically tried to ⁓ rob Target, flash mob kind of thing. And it spiraled in a number of different ways. And then that night, a lot of St. Paul gas stations burned. Those gas stations burned because of what I can only assume were organized crime. There were tactics in which multiple cars would show up. They would go for the scratch off tickets and they would try to grab the ATM and then they would light things on fire and run away.

These were not protests. So like, like this is definitely a sense that we are under siege from unmarked criminal elements, as well as the police, as well as who else knows what’s going on. There was a sense that law and order had left for like 48 hours.

David Brauer (50:21)
Yeah. And I want to be clear that the reason my son was on the porch and we had the, the, ⁓ water drawn was because people were just wilding out people who, ⁓ who, know, when society loses all constraints, ⁓ anything could happen. As it turned out, the worst did not happen to us. Nothing happened to us really. ⁓ but absolutely there were opportunities. was opportunistic locally based crime. I, I would also push back a little bit.

well, let me, let me just set the scene a little bit. Lisa mentioned outside agitators. I want to absolutely confirm that I walk, that’s my exercise. And I walked all over town all during this. And I can tell you, I saw cars with Florida plates and big beefy guys with guns. They were here for some reason. Did I see them commit an actual crime? I did not. But do I think that the opportunity was there for them to be part of the chaos? They were here. It was clear they were.

intimidating. ⁓ The police, we’ve seen video of people stopping in residential areas during, this is George Floyd, firing guns in the air to trigger a shot spotter, to be able to show that the Minneapolis streets are super dangerous when it was clearly a premeditation, ⁓ clearly making it seem worse. This was a real thing, but there were also crisis actors. And meanwhile, on Lake Street ⁓ in Minneapolis,

There’s a pretty famous documented case of cops getting out of unmarked cops getting out of an unmarked van to shoot a guy trying to defend himself. Later, he won a lot of money from the city. At the time it was like, can you believe those cops were in an unmarked van and they didn’t have identification? And then five years later, it’s the federal government as a matter of policy. So what you saw in Midway, we did, I saw on Nicollet, which is the way it got closer to me, but there were

just all this amazing crap that was coming together and it was insane.

Christopher Mitchell (52:25)
Yeah, so the trauma from that, and I think the sense that like, you need to know your neighbors and you need to have a plan, that set the stage, I think, as well as, I think, having been through that. It’s one of those things that like, you know, going through the experience, you end up stronger and just better able to respond in the moment. So when the federal government comes in then and begins acting in these ways, I think there’s a sense that like, there’s a muscle in Minneapolis and then…

Those of us in St. Paul that might not have developed it in different neighborhoods had different reactions. But I think we were rapidly like, we have to do this. We need to use Signal. We can’t use Facebook anymore because we don’t know if Mark Zuckerberg will decide this group is illegal tomorrow. Right? Like that’s sort of what’s happening. And that’s why everyone collapses onto a technology that’s, ⁓ that’s safe.

David Brauer (53:11)
thought that’s perceived to say proton male was another one that got used. I mean, I think when we were training people, people were asking us about OPSEC a lot as this thing rolled on and we had to say, A, we’re not OPSEC experts. Maybe I should have called you Chris, but ⁓ B, you got to assume nothing is perfectly secure and therefore all your communications have to be as if the most hostile prosecutor is reading them to the most unfriendly judge.

people didn’t get that at first. I don’t think I got that at first. And eventually we saw right-wingers come in and ⁓ invade some signal chats that could only have the best security they could. Everybody was trying their best. And when that happened, mass people changing their real names on Signal to nicknames that none of us can remember anymore. I don’t even know who I’m talking to sometimes on Signal. The other thing that happened

Again, this is for lessons learned national people. ⁓ Signal was great, but for a lot of normal people, ⁓ there was a very high noise to signal ratio, if you’ll pardon the pun. So people got overwhelmed really quickly. And we would see people show up at trainings who are like guilty about the fact that they joined their signal network and then they had to hop off. And we had to tell them, if you’re overwhelmed, if you’re paralyzed,

If you just, there’s too much going on, it’s triggering your anxieties, whatever. It’s okay not to be there. Maybe you find somebody who can handle that signal and tell you what’s going on or text you via a secure encrypted end to end text what’s going on. don’t drop out of the fight because you’re overwhelmed by technology and some of the legal observing networks. What we were able to do is we were able to say,

OK, you can send us the information securely, but we don’t have two way crosstalk. We’re not going back and forth about whether the license plate is ICE or not. We’re trying to tell people where the ICE is. And these are vetted chats. So the information that gets sent downstream to the actual people, responders like Lisa, ⁓ is being vetted. And it’s much easier to digest. It’s much easier to know.

The biggest thing we had to end up doing with that channel, being able to say this is the slow channel versus the fast channel, at least the low bandwidth channel, is we had to say, understand that people are so in the moment and so responsive, and ICE knows this too, that odds are if you respond to one of our alerts, you’ll get there after it’s over. Because ICE told our observers, ⁓

because the ICE people aren’t well trained. They said, you know, the average time of response in Minneapolis anyway, at the height of all this was seven minutes, which is by the way, faster than the police responses here usually. And in South Minneapolis where Lisa and I live, two minutes. Okay. So they knew that at some point a week or two into the surge, they knew that they had to smash and grab people that they could not linger because otherwise the whistle brigades would be there. And so

Anyway, that’s just a giant mix of how technology affected everything.

Christopher Mitchell (56:33)
Right. And one of the things about Signal is we’re limited. talked with Sascha Meinrath on a show about this more explicitly about the background of Signal that people can find in the archive, but ⁓ you get a thousand max people. And so if something would happen, you couldn’t get into the room and once you’re in there, you wouldn’t want to leave, even if you weren’t going to be active for the rest of the day or something, because you wouldn’t necessarily be able to keep your spot. it was, there’s a lot of downsides that we are trade-offs and

David Brauer (56:46)
You do. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (57:00)
I mean, I would have been at Whipple taking photos earlier if I had a better sense of who I could go with, but I had promised my family that I wouldn’t just go off cowboying around solo. ⁓ And so I had to wait till I had someone that would be with me ⁓ to go and to be active on some of this stuff. And I couldn’t just find people ⁓ because people had better OPSEC. There’s also a lot of security theater around it that is a little bit annoying about. I mean,

I will say that I’m not convinced that having a different name on signal changes the fact that these people have ⁓ the best ⁓ facial recognition in the history of mankind and drones and all of this. I feel like as soon as I was at Whipple, they knew who I was and they probably decided that ⁓ I was no threat whatsoever. ⁓ But it is one of those things that ⁓ it’s playing this game with you, trying to figure out what is taking a risk and what is not. ⁓

There’s something about Minnesota, I do think. And I don’t know, like, I think if they had come in April, I don’t know if it would have been the same. I think, I think that there’s a little bit of like, once you’re in the national news and like we’re proud Minnesotans and you’re like, there’s going to be a general strike and a March and it’s going to be one of the coldest days in the decade. know, top 10 cold days in a decade, perhaps like, yeah, I’m going, you know, like I’m going to clear the calendar.

So I do feel like there’s some of that resistance that came about, just like that pride of Minnesota that started coming out some. ⁓ But that wasn’t there in the beginning necessarily for the people that created the foundation that people like me could then later join onto. ⁓ So ⁓ yeah, I mean, we’re coming to a close here, but any last thoughts in terms of this? mean, I do think…

I do think I reflect back when I was helping one school set up a patrol. So they’d have a kind of a, wanted a 32nd warning before I swooped in in case they came for any of the families that were doing pickup or drop off. And I was talking with a person who had just left the teaching profession because of some of the challenges. And this is in East St. Paul and ⁓ she’d had a student that had, I’m sorry, in her class, she had one class in which multiple

students had lost close family members to death. And in several cases had been the ones to discover the body, her students. And she just was like, I feel like she was like, I’m a teacher. Like I’m, can’t, I can’t deal with this level of trauma. And she was taking a break. And I was saying, well, at least this is kind of hopeful. And she said, we thought that in 2020 and 2021 and then 2022 and 2023 came and everyone forgot about us. And, and, and kind of like, and the post COVID and

I am hopeful that Minnesota can sustain these mutual aid networks. know that David, you on the regular have links to fundraisers around the mutual aid groups. There is a great need to continue to help folks that have had their lives totally disrupted from this. And I guess my expectation is that Minnesota will come through better than we had with strength in networks, but it will still be not enough. Like there’s always going to be a need to do more that we’ll have to reckon with.

David Brauer (1:00:17)
personal charity, which I’m involved with now, because mutual aid really is where the game is, ⁓ cannot replace government, cannot replace progressive taxation. It can’t. We’re doing the best we can. We’ve done amazing work. Those of us that have given to mutual aid or organized mutual aid, the need is ongoing. The wound is long lasting. We’re going to be ground down by stupid wars in Iran and federal government cuts that have only started to bite.

It’s, it’s, it’s dire. But again, I do think because of who we are, we’re going to keep doing it. I really believe that because people have gotten, I mean, I hate to say it because it sounds self satisfied, but people have gotten a real world. Hi. Out of caring for each other, like a powerful indelible high. And I’m not saying we won’t go back to a lot of our normal lives if we’re allowed to, but

Christopher Mitchell (1:01:08)
Mm-hmm.

David Brauer (1:01:15)
That neural pathway now is seared in people’s brains. Good people, it’s just seared. It’s a highway now ⁓ in people’s brains. And I just, I’m not gonna be pessimistic about this moment for us as people of character.

Christopher Mitchell (1:01:34)
Any thoughts,

Lisa (1:01:35)
Yay, Dave.

David Brauer (1:01:37)
It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I mean, thank you. But I mean, we…

Christopher Mitchell (1:01:38)
David.

Lisa (1:01:39)
David! Yay, David!

It’s true. You’re right. I

agree. I mean, you know, I think that people who kept to themselves in the past and there was no need for them to, they didn’t think there was a need for them to help others out. ⁓ And, and that’s because things were good you know, as far as they knew. ⁓ But once that ⁓ trauma and once those needs were right in everybody’s face, they realized things are not that good for everybody.

and you know things are really good for me so maybe I can just even out a little bit and you’re right it does it does make you feel good about what you’re doing you know and it makes you feel good to see other people doing well doing better so I agree.

Christopher Mitchell (1:02:30)
Yes.

David Brauer (1:02:31)
just to put a put a point on on the end of this. I have talked to so many people who consider themselves introverts ⁓ and they have I can I can just have had dozens of these conversations where people have gone. I realized I can do this like I realized I can step up. I can be more public or I have this skill that I didn’t know that I had. Again, it’s an awful situation and you almost feel guilty about

talking about discovering your human potential at the worst time of your community’s life. But this is powerful. This is people feeling more capable. And, know, we’ve said over and over again in our trainings, there was 4,000 of them at the height. There are in Minneapolis 400,000 of us. In St. Paul, there are over 300,000 of us. In the Twin Cities region, there are over 3 million of us.

being able to paint those numbers, but see it, people grow through all of this. Again, you know, who knows what the federal government’s gonna throw at us in the next, you know, remaining Trump term. But we got as good a shot as we’ve ever had at being able to do what we can.

Christopher Mitchell (1:03:49)
Yeah, I’ve tried to volunteer after natural disasters and I spent four months in the Middle East studying peace and conflict in the year 2000 as part of a college program where I met with everyone from settlers in the extreme right wing ⁓ of the Jewish and Israeli society to ⁓ Hamas. I met with the Hamas spokesperson with a student group ⁓ and we met with lots of folks in between. I learned a lot and one of the things I did learn is that humans are at their best under pressure.

unfortunately. ⁓ And, you know, I spent some time in Gaza, I spent time in Lebanon, ⁓ in refugee camps afterwards, or in the in the camps. And so I saw a lot. And I would say that, ⁓ that we do our best under pressure in those circumstances. ⁓ One of the things that I want to I wanted to say that I didn’t get to, I didn’t work it in is that I think one of the reasons we’re able to respond that way also was some level of privilege.

which is to say that like, I knew that if I got picked up by the federal government, I was not going to be tortured, right? I was perhaps, I would not eat for a period of eight to 24 hours. Perhaps I would be in cold, uncomfortable circumstances. Perhaps I would be scared about what was coming next. ⁓ But I think a lot of folks that were able to do what Lisa was doing, there is a sense that like,

the horrible things that the federal government is engaged in are mostly not targeted toward us. And some of us have jobs in which my bosses would not have said, Chris, you’re fired for missing a shift if I got picked up and I wasn’t able to work the next day. ⁓ Further, I think having communications was really important. And I worry about the federal government trying to lock down

There’s always an effort for the federal government to try to remove the ability for us to encrypt things so well that they cannot see it. And I feel like one of the lessons I take away from this is that free people need to have the ability to keep secrets from the government. And we need to absolutely preserve that in these communications ⁓ because in a time when there’s overreach, we need that, even if it’s inconvenient that some of the people that are doing terrible things are

also keeping secrets that we would like to unlock. ⁓ so anyway, there’s two separate thoughts there that I, that I think we can weigh with really quickly. one is, think, is I think this sense of like some of the people who were responding, not everyone, some people took greater risks, but if I was, when I was out there, and, then, you know, so, so I did a few patrols, but then I mostly focused on the photography afterwards. ⁓ but, ⁓ but when I was out there, there was, for me, there was a sense of like, I’m probably not going to get shot.

I mean, that’s in the back of anyone’s head after what had happened. But there’s a sense of if I get picked up, I’m just causing the federal government paperwork. There was some sense that there was some level of protection, I think. So I don’t know. I don’t know if that resonates with anyone else.

Lisa (1:06:52)
I agree. mean, I, you know, as I mentioned before, I, my kids are both people of color and all their friends are too. And so I’m kind of like the shield and I have no problem with that. In fact, I expect that at a certain point we are going to have to be the ones that get picked up. And that’s really going to be the only way to protect people of color immigrants, you know? ⁓ And as far as like what you were saying,

⁓ about freedom from surveillance. I feel, and we’ve already talked about this Chris, I feel that we’re really being surveilled. ⁓ You know, I know that there are ICE agents that still drive around my neighborhood. I see them, you know, and sometimes they’re parked on a street and they’re sitting there with their laptops open. I don’t know what they’re doing, you know. ⁓ You know, I, I…

have a real problem with that lately. I feel like I’ve become much more aware of it and it really bothers me.

Christopher Mitchell (1:07:58)
Yeah, there’s some that go by the school in suspicious vehicles with plain clothes and others that go by in their full kit and they’re just trying to be seen. think.

Lisa (1:08:05)
Right. And there’s also some

that are calling themselves bounty hunters now.

Christopher Mitchell (1:08:10)
Right. Well, there are civilian bounty hunters now.

David Brauer (1:08:10)
Well, there are there are actual bounty hunters. Yeah,

we had a we had a nice vehicle go up our block. We don’t live on a very high traffic block. And what was funny about it was there were six cars behind him honking and using their horns and everybody came out to blow the whistles. So, yes, they’re still here and they’re still showing off, but we’re also still showing off back at them. Chris, I just want to talk to your privilege point for a second. ⁓

There’s absolutely no doubt. Like I have a tremendous amount of privilege. My wife is a lawyer. I’m a connected guy who used to be a journalist. People would notice me if I’m gone for sure. but I will say that Alex Pretti and Renee Good both had privilege, at least white privilege, and they got killed. And I will say that this is from the heart. I think I won’t speak for Lisa or you, but I will say that me and a lot of other people who chose to get more involved.

For the first time in my life, I really had to have a discussion with myself about whether I was willing to die for this. And I don’t want to self aggrandize because I never came close to dying. Okay. Never saw a gun pointed at me. Nothing like that. I always said I’m on the list, but I’m probably pretty low on the list. But at the same time, if you’ve ever had that conversation with yourself for reasons, and again, I’m 67, the first time I had it was 67, it changes you.

a little bit because I never thought I was willing to die for something. And maybe ultimately in the face of something I’ll flinch, but I can tell you a lot of us had to have that conversation in a meaningful way when we did not know how this was going to end. And to be able to say, I’m going to keep going. Fuck it. ⁓ that’s powerful. So again, never want to not acknowledge my privilege and the advantages that I have over people who are

being brutalized and imprisoned in concentration camps. But I will say that this, I think this touched all of us at some deep core that goes beyond privilege.

Christopher Mitchell (1:10:20)
Can I ask just briefly, and I don’t want to dive too deep or put you on the spot, were there any top line thoughts you had as to like, because I think a lot of people, if they’re being honest after Renee Good and particularly Alex, who came to the aid of another person in the way that I think any person naturally would, not thinking that it would be his final minute on Earth I’m just curious, for you, was it more a sense of outrage?

Like, was it, like, what was it? Because for me, I would say, like, it comes from anger and the sense of, like, ⁓ no, not in my community kind of thing. I don’t know if you have a sense of where it comes from.

David Brauer (1:11:02)
I can say that for somebody who’s a who has a diagnosis of anxiety and depression, ⁓ I was I’ve been like super motivated and like day after day after day in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever been in my life, which is really weird. Like who knew the pill? Who knew who knew the pill for ⁓ for anxiety and depression was state terror? But ⁓ I will say that the one day during this last three months where I could not really move and

Christopher Mitchell (1:11:16)
Good for a writer.

David Brauer (1:11:30)
could not do anything was the Saturday that Alex Pretti got killed right after that high of the protest that I I couldn’t not reconcile that in my mind. I could not process it. I could not draw lessons from it. I mean, anger was almost sure, but it was almost beyond what I was capable of feeling at that point. At that point, there was sort of, I don’t know, reflective trauma.

And I really had to shut down and get through 24 hours before the next day. I would say it was, you know, we got to keep going. can’t let these guys win after they’re killing us. And again, this is not something I’ve necessarily ever experienced before. Like most of the time I would tell you I’m full of crap and I’m just talking brave, but this was not that this was. And I think this was some people came to this conclusion much quicker than I did, but like, we’re really not going to let it go now.

Like we’re going to use our numbers, we’re going to show up, we’re going to be in your face. If you want to kill us, let’s see how that goes. ⁓ Nobody wanted that to happen, but I, and it was not bravado. can tell you with absolute, this was, we were in a foxhole together and we just had to get through it.

Christopher Mitchell (1:12:48)
I don’t know if it would have been different if we felt like there was a communications blackout. I will say I took tremendous heart from the protests in Boston. I can’t actually say it without having a very emotional response, but like the, ⁓ how they took courage from us. Like, and knowing that ⁓ a friend of mine ⁓ and colleague, ⁓ she pays attention to news in Italy and, you know, just talking to people that are outside the country who are like, you’re on the news every day. ⁓

It was, it felt more important at that point, I would say.

David Brauer (1:13:22)
Well, sorry, Lisa, I’ll try to shut up here in a sec. But one other thing I want to say about why I was so shut down that Saturday is the government came out right away and said he had a gun. Here’s a gun. I thought, and I thought, ⁓ God damn it. Now they’re going to be able to turn the narrative on us. Right. We knew what they did was an outrage, but I was worried about what everybody else, your friend in Italy, Boston, wherever I was worried about what everybody was going to think. that trying to sort of psych out what the world was going to do.

Christopher Mitchell (1:13:32)
Yeah.

David Brauer (1:13:51)
was like, that was when my fear took over that, that we’re going to, they’re going to lie successfully. And I was 180 degrees wrong and I have never been happier to be wrong in that everybody saw what it was within hours, if not right away. And, and, you know, why was Bruce Springsteen here on Saturday? Why, why would we’re, you know, why are we a national brand among people who at least know what we are? It’s

It’s because of that. It’s because of that day on top of a few other days.

Christopher Mitchell (1:14:28)
These are any reflections on any of that?

Lisa (1:14:30)
say ⁓ back when there was that first raid on the restaurant Lake Street really started my anger and it just sort of built and ⁓ I tried to get involved in the signal chats and ⁓ doing patrols kind of early on and ⁓ then Renee Good got shot and I had to kind of step back ⁓ because I thought about

the fact that I had people who depended on me. I gave my kids a place to live and they needed me. But then I was at a coffee shop, a different coffee shop with a friend ⁓ when Alex Pretti got shot and ⁓ my son called me and said, I just wanted to make sure you were okay because ⁓ somebody got shot at a coffee shop and that was it.

I was just so pissed. ⁓ And you know, they came out with these lies and I was, it was just a big eye rolling experience for me because of course it’s not going to be true. And you know, I was glad that there was video, which I didn’t really even want to see. I don’t like watching those videos, but I did watch that and I thought, okay, well, here’s the proof. So, you know,

I didn’t experience too much. mean, there were moments of sadness, ⁓ but for me, the whole thing has just been anger. You know, I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I like to protest because I can yell, you know, and I need that.

Christopher Mitchell (1:16:11)
Yeah, well, that’s one of the things

Whipple, the many hours I spent outside of Whipple, we met all kinds of folks from people that showed up that were like roughly, you know, middle aged men like me who happened to be wearing brand new boots and a brand new hat and wanted to learn more about what we were doing out there to.

David Brauer (1:16:29)
really

interested in joining your signal network. Could you tell me how, we had plain clothes people showing up at schools trying to fake being parents. And they didn’t, by the way, it didn’t work.

Christopher Mitchell (1:16:38)
Yeah.

No, I mean, that’s the thing is that I feel like the parents, like someone knows you or doesn’t. ⁓

David Brauer (1:16:49)
Well, this is what we

had to tell people eventually was you got to rely on a network of trust. If somebody vouches for you, then you can get in. is why people are having trouble getting into the signal networks.

Christopher Mitchell (1:17:00)
But then, so I got in a Whipple and then people would, a friend of mine would say, Hey, these other two folks want to come in. Can you vouch for them? And I’m like, I don’t think I can. Like, I don’t know. I’ll, you know, I can, I can try and give you some like tips, like, but like, and this is this it’s work. It’s difficult.

David Brauer (1:17:11)
I don’t know them.

Christopher Mitchell (1:17:19)
But yeah, mean, so I was going to say at Whipple though, there was people that I had run into in other aspects of my life and it was a different side of them at Whipple, very angry, loud, sometimes incredibly inventive side.

David Brauer (1:17:30)
Dildo throwing, that was one of the

best moments at Whipple when they were throwing dildos that stuck to the side of the ICE cars. And you can talk about the use of humor and sarcasm and undermining tyranny. that was it. That was whoever came up with that, A plus, power to them.

Christopher Mitchell (1:17:49)
Yes,

yeah. I think we have to end on that. I don’t think there’s any other way to end on a positive note. So yeah, I just want to reiterate, this has been our experience. Other people, I’m sure have some different thoughts. I’m sure I got a few things wrong here or there. But it’s one of those things that we live in a time and age where more and more people can tell their stories. And I hope people will and people can sort through it and better understand what it was like. So thank you, Lisa.

David Brauer (1:17:54)
It’s a Good no-fan done.

Lisa (1:18:18)
Thanks for having me, it was fun.

Christopher Mitchell (1:18:21)
Thank you, David. It’s wonderful to meet you and then to share this time with you.

David Brauer (1:18:24)
Yeah, thanks for asking me, Chris. And thanks for all you do with the Institute of Local Self-Reliance too. It’s done great work over the years. And I think maybe in this moment, people will understand the importance of all that work that’s been done over the decades. So thank you.

Christopher Mitchell (1:18:39)
Yeah, I hope so. ⁓ folks, there’s lots of ways to find mutual aid groups that will help. ⁓ But I’m always helpful. I’m always happy to help steer people in the direction. But some of the groups that you named earlier, Monarca, Copal, ⁓ are wonderful places to support ⁓ doing important immigrant work ⁓ as we try to make sure that I’ll just say that for the more conservative members of the audience who might have gritted their teeth through some of this.

We need more people to pay ⁓ into ⁓ Social Security and ⁓ Medicare. So ⁓ if there’s no other reason that we need immigrants than to soak them for their labor, ⁓ that is another reason, but that’s not the best. That’s the dark humor that comes from Chris Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I’m sorry to my bosses for being such a pain.

Jordan Pittman (1:19:33)
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unbuffered Podcast. We have transcripts for this and other episodes available at ILSR.org/podcast. While you’re there, check out our other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, Local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcasts. Email us at [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow us on Bluesky. Our handle is @communitynets.

You can catch the latest research from all of our initiatives by subscribing to our monthly newsletter at ILSR.org While you’re there, please take a moment to donate. Your support in any amount helps keep us going. Unbuffered is produced by Christopher Mitchell with editing provided by me, Jordan Pittman. Special thanks to Riverside for providing the song Caveman. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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