This post has been a long time coming—at least in ICE occupation years.

The idea to write a blog about our current times in the Twin Cities sprang from all the various (and much-appreciated) check-ins I was receiving from friends and family in other U.S. states and in across countries. It was hard to explain things in a simple text; exhausting to feel the weight of doing the situation here justice in my descriptions and trying to engage people in calls to action while also answering the question “how are you?” I wanted my people who were outside the Twin Cities to hear what they aren’t hearing from national new sources— even liberal ones—and to feel empowered to do something to help.

I mentioned this challenge to a couple of close, local friends and they said they would love to share it with their people, too, once the site was live. I felt even more driven to get something up and also more pressure at a time when every new day was also a mental quagmire of how to do as many actions of resistance as possible while still holding down my job, taking care of my family and home, and getting enough sleep to function. But if I’ve learned anything over these past two months, it’s that you don’t have to do anything alone. So the three of us have come together to be the main voices of It’s That Bad. I am 1. My friends 2 and 3 are also here, thinking, creating, and maintaining the site (that last one is mostly done by 2, if we’re being honest). Our numbers might grow or they might not. We are here to share our own stories and seek to uplift others’ voices so that our readers get a broader view of what life is like in ICE-occupied Twin Cities. There are so many people doing an unfathomable variety of things to help their community and participate in the resistance, and we want to help tell their story. We especially want to highlight the creative resistance—art in all forms inspired by these times, created by our neighbors.

When we had the idea to launch this blog, it was during the time of peak national attention on Minneapolis. The news was showing the most sensational aspects of this occupation—the murders or Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the photo of Liam Conejo Ramos in his bunny hat, the ICE Out general strike which has brought accompanying marches of tens of thousands of Minnesotans through the streets in sub-zero temperatures. Those are all hallmarks of this time and will be images remembered in history. They ought to be. They deserve to be. But there are so many aspects of what ICE is doing here that are not being adequately covered. In many cases, they are the things that are the most chilling because they are more insidious and less publicized. Things like ICE officers releasing individuals from detention from the Whipple building (because in most cases they cannot find a reason to keep them in detention and only detained them as a scare tactic in the first place) and dumping them in the woods around that area in the middle of the night without winter gear or a phone. We’ll dive deeper into this one in a future post, but to this day, one of the most bizarre and horrifying things I’ve seen asked of the community by resistance networks is to purposely walk your dog in those parks and woods early in the morning and be sure to carry a thermos of hot water and a space blanket in case your dog leads you to someone who has been dumped there overnight by ICE and is now experiencing hypothermia—if they are still alive.

So we set out to share with our far-away people that it’s that bad. Now, in late February, when this site is finally going live, the administration has said that ICE is leaving Minnesota (much more on that later). The national media is following suit—they are digging a bit more into the things that the ICE occupation did to community here and the daily life experiences of those who were most vulnerable to ICE, but it’s mostly done in a retrospective framing. As if now that they are gone, we can talk about what really happened; but they are very much still here, driving around, intimidating the community, abducting our neighbors, violating constitutional rights. They are still making daily life in the Twin Cities a constant game of vigilance, weighing risks, planning ahead, and trying to do it all in a way that is sustainable for each individual, because we all know that this could go on for a long time. So it was that bad, and it’s still that bad. But our community has come together to protect each other and bear witness in the most astonishing ways. Those who have been able and willing have been changing their daily routines to accommodate life as usual (work, school, laundry, dinner) and life as unusual (giving vulnerable neighbors rides to work, patrolling schools during arrival, recess, and dismissal, doing laundry for those who don’t currently have access and can’t leave their homes, and making huge batches of food to deliver to neighbors who are sheltering at home or are on the front lines of resistance). I won’t put a toxic positivity spin on it. This is hard. In some ways, it’s how we always should have lived: truly in community. It’s also a way we should never have to live: protecting each other from violent federal occupation. We will be doing both here on this site: decrying the cruelty and insanity of this regime and uplifting the resilience and beauty of our community and it’s continued resistance—because it’s that bad, but it’s that good, too.

In solidarity,

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