Here’s how you can help support protests.
Reports from the Twin Cities indicate that citizens are helping neighbors every way they can. Today has been dubbed a Day of Truth and Freedom, in light of ICE’s craven siege on the area’s residents. Stores are closed, and people will be marching downtown in protest. Unless they’re patrolling day cares to keep their most vulnerable neighbors safe.
As Alicia Eler reported in today’s Minnesota Star Tribune, Minnesotans have come together despite sub-zero temps. “They’re organizing food-donation drives, community days and comedy fundraisers. They’re pitching in on mutual-aid efforts or creating their own tight-knit community-support groups. They want to help immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes.” The city’s tested protest network is alive, and working hard.
Bookstores continue to step up. Most indies are closed today in solidarity—like Excelsior Bay Books, Cream and Amber, Tropes and Trifles, Magers & Quinn, Milkweed Books, and Birchbark Books. Just to name a few.
Black Garnet Books in St. Paul, a Black-, queer-, woman-owned bookstore, is also closed for business today. But their team is co-hosting an action via its sister company–the downtown Minneapolis abolitionist design and production studio, Blackbird Revolt.
Today at Blackbird, between 11am-1pm CT, protestors can acquire free “Abolish ICE” crewnecks and protest signs. The hub is gathering donations for distribution, too. If you’re in the area and packing heat, marchers need hand and toe warmers, snacks, and coffee and tea.
In Linden Hills, Comma Bookshop is also hosting a sign and whistle making action during the same hours. Earlier this week, staff posted on Instagram that they’d be “closed for business” but “open for community” this Friday.
If you’re a Minnesotan unable to march today, there are still other ways to support.
Elizabeth Foster, proprietor of Inkwell Booksellers, told me that in addition for closing in solidarity with today’s strike, her store will host a fundraiser for Ayada Leads, a nonprofit that “works to uplift the political and social power of Diaspora women and New Americans.” Visitors can purchase a cinnamon honey latte at the cafe, and for the next two months Inkwell will donate 20% of the sales from this beverage to the public policy org.
“On days we are open, we will continue to function as a community space and provide a warm, safe place for people to go,” Foster told me, by email. “We have never required a purchase to use our space and that principal has never been more important than it is now.”
