Hi. I am the person who wrote the piece. I am not a bot, not Russian intel. YES I want money to go to organizations serving terrified, vulnerable people who are being hunted like dogs primarily because they LOOK like immigrants or other "undesirables."
People need help in MPLS, right now. Be skeptical of what you hear online ... definitely. But there is a limit. At some point you must accept that there is a major crisis, that people are in acute need, and that not helping is complicity.
Thanks for writing it, and thanks for stopping by. Perhaps I'm naive, but I wasn't worried at all that the article might be a Russian fake. Instead, my worry is that it felt like propaganda. Genuine heartfelt propaganda, probably from someone on the ground in Minneapolis, but throughout the piece I felt that you were likely leaving out information so as to create a more compelling call to action.
I don't know for sure that this is true, but I feel like this is a big hurdle that you'll have to overcome if you want to convince skeptical people like me who actually do care. Saying "I will not provide names, sources, etc." might feel necessary, but it makes it harder to convince people. I'm left feeling that there is definitely more to the story than you are telling.
Starting with your first example, "two teachers parked in front of the school were violently extracted from their cars and abducted by ICE officers". I'm not certain, but I'd probably be willing to bet this isn't the full story. Were they "parked in front" because they were at their jobs teaching, or were they attempting to prevent the ICE officers from doing something? Were they participating in a protest or just passing by?
I don't know--and it doesn't mean that what happened is right or proper--but I don't trust you to tell me if you think it might hurt the case you are trying to make. The result is that I feel like I need to at least partially discount the rest of what you have to say. How do we get beyond this?
I think you're right. I think that what ICE is doing is clearly a problem and speaking about it clearly and plainly is useful here.
Here are two good sources for the incident at the school (Roosevelt High School). [1] [2]
The first is from our local NPR affiliate: MPR. It has interviews with school staff members and describes their account of the day. The second is from our local NBC affiliate: KARE 11. It's a more recent article which describes the account of the day based on statements from Customs and Border Patrol. You can see some of the parallels between the two.
>“The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” a school official, who spoke to MPR News on condition of anonymity said.
versus
>[CBP Deputy Incident Commander Kyle Harvick] said a crowd began to gather as they were arresting the driver for impeding the operation. As agents investigated the area, the statement says a crowd gathered and some individuals responded with "combative shoves and pushes." Harvick says agents then attempted to arrest one of the individuals when a school staff member allegedly began pushing agents. The staff member was placed under arrest.
When you're weighing who to believe in this situation, it's worth calling out that CBP has lied before [3] and doesn't always operate within the law here [4]. That last link is particularly notable since it's a very straightforward constitutional violation where they broke into the house with a battering ram (on video, if you want to watch) to make the arrest--all without a judicial warrant. The provided an _administrative_ warrant instead, which doesn't allow forced search of private residences. The agents presumably know that and thought they could get away with it anyway.
People need help in MPLS, right now. Be skeptical of what you hear online ... definitely. But there is a limit. At some point you must accept that there is a major crisis, that people are in acute need, and that not helping is complicity.