Mulford would have been proud. Mulford Q. Sibley was Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He was also my PhD advisor and dear friend. A nationally known scholar of political thought, his particular interest and focus was on nonviolent resistance. Some of those in my PhD cohort had come from places of violence with the specific intent to study methods of nonviolent resistance with Mulford. As the creative and impressive acts of nonviolent resistance unfolded in the Twin Cities this past winter, I often wondered how much those in the resistance had been influenced by Mulford, either directly or indirectly in ways they may not even have known.
Mulford introduced me to several classics of nonviolence, including the work of Gene Sharp, author of the 3-volume series, The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Looking through his second volume on the methods of nonviolent action, I saw among the nearly two hundred practices so many that those in the resistance in the Twin Cities used. The resistance was varied, creative, persistent, and grounded. It easily could have been following Gene Sharp’s playbook . . .
Formal Statements – public speeches, letters of opposition, declarations by organizations and institutions, group or mass petitions, etc. At rallies, at the State Capitol, from the governor’s and mayor’s offices, in mass emails the people spoke their opposition to the ICE invasion of Minnesota. We were not cowed into silence and submission. The opposition was vocal, dignified, and determined.
Communications with a Wider Audience – slogans, caricatures, symbols, banners, posters, etc. The slogan “ICE OUT!” was chanted at every rally and protest and posted in the windows of homes and businesses.[i] After the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents, the slogans appearing everywhere were “Be Pretti Good” and “We are all Pretti Good.”
Protest art and posters exploded – from textual to visual.[ii] They carried messages opposed to ICE – “ICE Out” and “Minnesota NoICE”; of support for immigrants – “Fight Ignorance, Not Immigrants,” “All Are Welcome Here”; and of love for Minnesota – a loon hugging an image of the state of Minnesota. One of my personal favorites is the one depicting the Morton’s salt symbol of the girl holding an umbrella in the rain – though in this poster she’s wearing a traditional ribbon skirt and is pouring out the salt she is carrying onto ice cubes. The text on the poster was: “Mni Sóta Makóce (Dakota for “the land where the water reflects the skies”) Knows How To Handle Ice.”
Symbolic Public Acts – displays of flags, wearing of symbols, prayer and worship. All over the state, people began flying the Minnesota state flag from their homes. It also was proudly waved at protests and rallies. Across the state Minnesotans were Minnesota proud. The resistance in Minnesota was admired around the country and the world for its creativity, perseverance, and its commitment to nonviolence, even in the face of horrific violence and provocation by ICE agents.
We began to see Melt the Ice hats -- inspired by Needle & Skein’s re-imagining of the hats worn in resistance to Nazi oppression -- being worn at protests and just walking the neighborhood. The MTI hats inspired a worldwide movement of knitters, with anti-fascist knitting groups continuing to gather and knit in protest across the country. They were quickly joined by those knitting bunny hats in honor of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos of Minneapolis who was illegally taken into detention by ICE agents.
On January 22nd hundreds of faith leaders from all religious backgrounds descended on the Twin Cities to join in collective protest against Operation Metro Surge. Wearing their clergy stoles, they marched and prayed. They held city-wide worship services. Many gathered at the MSP airport to engage in civil disobedience, risking arrest, to protest airlines’ complicity with deportations of those arrested by ICE.
At a sacred Dakota site near Fort Snelling, Dakota activists kept a ceremonial fire burning at an encampment they had erected there. They offered prayer, song, and dance at memorials and protests. One of the dancers, Samuel Xochikoyotl Torres, said, “These traditions, these prayers, the songs and the dances that we have, there is deep wisdom in that, and this moment requires a combination of resistance, fighting, of sustaining, protecting, but also grieving.”[iii] They were joined by Native drummers and Ojibwe jingle dress dancers. One of the dancers, Tracy Strong Dagen, who had responded to a call for ceremony to honor the lives of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, spoke of the healing power of the jingle dress dance, “We were always taught that the jingle dress helps you heal. Use it in a good way, and you’re going to be good.”[iv]
Drama and Music – performances of plays and music, singing. “Singing Resistance” began as a group of a few singers gathered after the murder of Renée Good – offering songs of healing, hope, resistance, and solidarity. The few quickly grew to hundreds and then thousands, marching through the streets, singing to ICE agents, singing in church sanctuaries and outside jails and detention centers in the hopes that those arrested by ICE could hear the love and encouragement in the voices gathered in song outside the walls. The singing has boosted the morale of everyone engaged in the prolonged struggle against ICE and gone nationwide. They’ve even put out a songbook.[v]
And then, there was the brass band. The community band, “Brass Solidarity,” formed after the murder of George Floyd and plays at George Floyd Square once a week. After Renée Good was murdered, the band started playing at her memorial and eventually began playing at protests around the city. The band brought joy to a grief-stricken city and also saw their role as calming tense situations in the daily round of ICE tear gassing and harassing peaceful protestors.
Processions: marches, parades. The most striking of the many marches around the state in opposition to ICE was the 100,000 who marched in Minneapolis on one of the coldest days Minnesota has seen in years. The marchers were undaunted by the -25 below windchills. So many showed up to voice their opposition that the march spilled into side streets so that the entire downtown was engulfed in a sea of protestors.
Honoring the Dead: Vigils spontaneously sprang up across Minnesota following the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Memorials with flowers, teddy bears, messages of remembrance, ribbons and candles, signs and written notes adorn the sites where Good and Pretti were killed. Thousands gathered for a public memorial ceremony for Good and Pretti.
Withdrawal and Renunciation – suspension of social and sports activities, walkouts, silence, student strike: Hundreds of high school students from several schools in the Twin Cities metro walked out of their classes to protest the presence of ICE agents outside their schools, the arrest and detention of their teachers and classmates, and the way Operation Metro Surge was making their friends afraid to go to school for fear of being arrested. They acted out of conscience, outrage, and solidarity.
Economic Non-cooperation – boycotts, nonconsumption, general strikes – On January 23rd, the entire state participated in a Day of Truth and Freedom in which thousands, perhaps millions, refused to go to work, school, or shop. Hundreds of businesses around the state participated, closing their doors for business, though some stayed open as warming shelters and gathering spaces for the thousands who had come out to protest that day. In addition, several businesses refused service and accommodation to ICE agents.
But the Minnesota resistance went so far beyond the catalog of techniques. Minnesotans kept their resistance up through creativity, celebration, fun, and humor in those dark, cold days. On a cold, clear January night, hundreds gathered on Lake Nokomis using hand-held candles and ice candles to spell out the words, “ICE OUT.”
The annual sled art contest was turned into a spoof of ICE – with a giant cardboard bowling bowl rolled down the hill to knock down fascist kingpins – Trump, Putin, Orbán; a young boy on his plastic sled festooned with Monarca’s butterflies saying “We Are Family” and “Justice for Renée Good”; sleds with messages of “Resist” and “Love Melts Ice” on a giant heart; a sled decorated as a bottle of de-icer and one of a chicken wearing a whistle with the message, “ICE OUT MSP.” (To see video footage of the event, click on the “Learn More” button below.)
The whistle was to represent one of the most noteworthy and effective resistance strategies. Whenever witnesses spotted ICE agents in the area or an arrest in progress, they would blow their whistles to alert those close by – short bursts to indicate ICE is nearby or long blasts to indicate ICE is actively detaining someone, with the added instructions to “Form a Crowd. Stay Loud. Stay nonviolent.” The whistles, most given out free by local businesses and activist groups, became a symbol of resistance and more importantly, solidarity, as whole neighborhoods came together to protect their neighbors.
Thousands of Minnesotans have been trained to be constitutional and legal observers. Their role has been to show up, observe from a safe distance, insure that those being arrested and detained are clearly identified and know their rights, and that the civil rights of those witnessing ICE detentions are upheld as well. In addition, witnesses voluntarily pulled out their cellphones to record ICE actions – arrests, detentions, violence – including the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Others followed ICE agents at a distance in their cars – both to let ICE agents know they were being watched and to be on hand should they be needed at the scene of an arrest. Many of those engaging in these activities were themselves arrested and detained with no legal grounds. People showed up daily, hourly, to confront, oppose, and bear witness to the often brutal and cruel actions of ICE agents. They were undaunted even amidst the tear gas, bullying, and threats of and actual arrests. And they never gave into violence themselves.
At the time that Operation Metro Surge was being carried out, I was participating in an anti-racism circle where the question was raised, “What are acts of resistance?” We responded with the usual – protests, sit-ins, walkouts, general strikes – but the response that touched me with its humanity and profundity was simply, “kindness.” As journalist Michelle Norris said of the resistance in her hometown, it was a “cocktail of kindness, community, and creativity.”[vi]
The group Haven Watch began with an act of kindness. When Natalie Ehret brought hand warmers, cookies, and protein bars to observers and protestors outside the Whipple Building detention center, her son found two girls who had just been released without coats or phones or rides home. He gave them food and water, brought them to their car and gave them his phone to call home. That’s what Haven Watch does now every day. Volunteers wait outside the Whipple Building where detainees are released — often in the middle of the night and even in winter’s frigid temperatures, without warm clothes, food, water, phones, ID, or transportation — and provide them with a warm sheltering car in which to wait for a ride, a phone, food, water, or a warm cup of cocoa. They have extended their mission to providing help with legal and immigration questions, healthcare referrals, economic needs, and more.
The kindness of Minnesotans extended even to those who sought to oppress them. When an ICE agent had a seizure while taking two women into custody, they provided him with medical care. When far-right activist Jake Lang was confronted with counter-protests to his anti-Islam protest in the midst of Operation Metro Surge, he was pulled to safety by Isaiah Blackwell, an African American man, and then was driven away by two unsuspecting Black women who saw only a bloodied man running down the street. They responded simply to his humanity.
The people of Minnesota responded to the attacks on immigrant neighbors with individual and communal acts of kindness – mutual aid in the form of grocery runs for those afraid to leave their homes, raising money for rent and electricity and medical bills for those unable to work for fear of being detained, taking children to school or bringing their schoolwork home, arranging playdates for kids who had been forced to stay isolated in their homes out of fear, massive food and diaper distributions, and just checking in and helping to meet everyday needs.
The Minnesota resistance to the siege of violence, intimidation, and oppressive actions has been the best of what Albert Camus called the ethic of rebellion – of at once saying ‘no’ to injustice and ‘yes’ to the inherent dignity of every individual. More than acts of sheer opposition, it has been grounded in positive acts of love and support, collaboration and community, and deep regard for the humanity of all – solidarity at its finest. It has been, to use Camus’s words, a movement of “insane generosity . . . which unhesitatingly gives the strength of its love and without a moment’s delay refuses injustice. . . .it is the very movement of life. . .”[vii]
The people of Minnesota showed the world that, to quote Mulford, “There is an alternative to violence. . . .We can . . . keep our ethical ideal relatively uncorrupted and at the same time overcome invaders and correct social injustice. In fact, we can in the long run accomplish these objectives better through non-violence than through violence, even against ‘totalitarian’ systems. . . . In trying to work out techniques and strategies of non-violent power, [nonviolent resisters] endeavor to show us how we can keep our integrity as human beings both with respect to means and in relation to ends. . . .”[viii]
Sources
Anti-ICE protestors use annual sled art event to hit out at Trump
Camus, Albert. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books, 1956.
Gallery of anti-ICE posters opens at Can Can Wonderland on Valentine's Day - Bring Me The News
How anti-ICE protest signs shaped the movement in Minnesota | MPR News
Hutton, Rachel. “From ‘The Good Life’ to good neighbors.” The Minnesota Star Tribune. March 6, 2026. E 1,4.
ICE OUT SING-IN Resistance Songbook
In Minneapolis, a community band has become part of the soundtrack of resistance : NPR
Minneapolis ICE Memorials: Renee Good & Alex Pretti
Minnesota faith, union, community leaders call for economic blackout on Jan. 23 - CBS Minnesota
Minnesota Native activists on front lines of ICE resistance
Sharp, Gene. The Methods of Nonviolent Action: Part Two of: The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Boston: Extending Horizon Books, 1973.
Sibley, Mulford, ed. and with an Introduction and Afterword by. The Quiet Battle: Writings on the Theory and Practice of Non-violent Resistance. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.
Singing Resistance Twin Cities wants to heal through song. They welcome ICE agents to join them.
The Coalition Behind Minnesota's ICE Resistance: Labor, Faith, Immigrants - Museum of Protest
Walsh, Paul and Kim Hyatt. “The Black man and women who rescued anti-Islam Jake Lang from protestors in Minneapolis.” The Minnesota Star Tribune. January 19, 2026.
Whistles become a tool of resistance and symbol of solidarity against ICE in Minneapolis
Wild, Elyse. “Q & A: Jingle Dress Dancer Answered Call to Ceremony in Face of ICE Violence.” Native News Online. February 20, 2026. Q&A: Jingle Dress Dancer Answered Call to Ceremony in Face of ICE Violence - Native News Online
*All photos are from Wikimedia Commons with the exception of Haven Watch, which is from their Facebook page.
[i] The term “Ice Out” had an earlier meaning in Minnesota as the day that ice on lakes melted and disappeared. The day is often noted in local weather reports. It has taken on a new meaning.
[ii] See Gallery of anti-ICE posters opens at Can Can Wonderland on Valentine's Day - Bring Me The News to see a few of the many posters.
[iii] Minnesota Native activists on front lines of ICE resistance.
[iv] Dagen, quoted in Wild.
[v] ICE OUT SING-IN Resistance Songbook
[vi] Morris, quoted in Hutton. E 4.
[vii] Camus, 304.
[viii] Sibley, 2.