The “Power, Peril and Importance” of What's Happening in Minnesota

In Minnesota, I heard a talk by Ian Bassin, a founder and the executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that works to ensure election integrity. In a follow-up conversation, he told me a story that perfectly captured the power, peril and importance of what happened here.

“A lifelong Minnesotan shared with me two lessons she’d learned watching the recent federal assault on her hometown,” said Bassin. “The first was her jarring realization that ‘there is no net below us.’ She had spent her life assuming that somewhere beneath the visible architecture of laws and institutions there existed a backstop – guardrails that would prevent a fall into the unthinkable. Watching masked federal agents abduct her neighbors and shoot them with impunity forced her to reckon with the reality that no such net exists.”

But the other lesson she drew from Minnesota, said Bassin, was that in the absence of solid safeguards, “watching ordinary citizens show up for one another – offering shelter, standing watch, car-pooling an endangered family’s kids to school – gave her a different kind of confidence. Not that formal checks will save us, but that solidarity remains a renewable resource – that we are and can be our own net.”

– Thomas L. Friedman
Excerpted from "Why Minnesota Matters More
Than Iran for America’s Future
The New York Times
March 15, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
The People of Minneapolis Will Simply Not Let the ICE Thugs Prevail – Dan Simmons (The New Republic, February 5, 2026).
We’re All Minnesotans Now – William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift (The Bulwark, February 18, 2026).
What We Can Learn From Minneapolis’ Model of Resistance – Gabriel Furshong (Common Dreams, February 13, 2026).
The Rise of the Rebel Loon Logos – The Nerd of The Rings (February 13, 2026).
Anti-ICE Organizing Is Creating Counter-Institutions Based on Care – Rashida James-Saadiya (Truthout, February 4, 2026).
The Minneapolis Resistance Will Do Your Laundry – Deborah Copperud (Current Affairs, February 19, 2026).
“Backing Down Isn’t an Option”: Minnesota ICE Shootings Mobilize Americans to Join ICE Observer Groups – Lex McMenamin (The Guardian, January 31, 2026).
Letter From Minnesota: Details From an Occupation – Angela Pelster (Literary Hub, January 29, 2026).
Meet the Minneapolis Parents Patrolling Their Schools Amid ICE Operations – Elizabeth Shockman (MPR News, January 16, 2026).
The Women Holding Minneapolis Together – Anna Moeslein Glamor, January 7, 2026).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts on the resistance to the Trump regime’s fascist occupation of Minnesota:
• Omar Fateh: Quote of the Day – December 4, 2025
• Photo of the Day – December 5, 2025
• Susie Hayward on What’s Happening in Minneapolis
• Doing What We Can to Stop Unjust Arrests of Immigrants
• Great Event, Great Sign, Great Nails
• Christmas Eve Musings
• May We Do Likewise
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like” – January 7, 2026
• “It Was Murder”: 12 Powerful Responses to the Death of Renée Nicole Good
• Omar Fateh: “Folks Are Waking Up”
• A Good Faith Appeal and a Grim Response
• Why Minnesota?
• Chris Hedges on ICE: “I Have Seen These Masked Goons Before”
• Steven Donziger: “Let’s Get Real . . . ICE Is a Domestic Terrorist Organization”
• Historian Kyle Dekker: “It’s Not Nazi Ideology We Are Fighting. It’s American”
• Knowing Our Rights
• Mike Figueredo on Why Trump Might Be Pushing the U.S. to the Brink of Collapse
• A “Red Alert Moment for American Democracy”
• Dispatches from Occupied Minnesota
• Marianne Williamson on How to Psychologically Endure This Moment
• What Moral Clarity Looks Like in Minnesota This MLK Day
• Nemik’s Eulogy for Renée Nicole Good
• “It Was Never About Keeping America Safe”
• “ICE Out!”: The Minnesota General Strike – 1/23/26
• “This Was a Flat Out Execution”
• “Organized Sustained Systemic Resistance and Self-Defense Are Our Only Options”
• Honoring Alex Pretti
• George Conway: The Trump Administration Is a “Criminal Organization”
• In the Face of Fascist Lies, MN Governor Tim Walz Sets the Record Straight
• Adam Serwer on How “Every Social Theory Undergirding Trumpism Has Been Broken on the Steel of Minnesotan Resolve”
• “Trump Is Scared Shitless”
• “They Were Alive. Then They Were Not”
• Bruce Springsteen and the Streets of Minneapolis in the Winter of ’26
• Craig Mokhiber on the “Imperial Boomerang”: How U.S. War Tactics Abroad Are Now Used at Home
• January Vignettes (2026)
• Honoring Renée Good and the “Astonishing Surge of Courage” of Minneapolis
• A Luminous Celebration of Light, Love and Community
• More Dispatches from Occupied Minnesota
• Memes of the Times – February 2026
• Only the Beginning
• The North Remembers
• “It’s All Lies and Propaganda”
• What This Moment Feels Like in Minnesota
• Quote of the Day – February 23, 2026
• For Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, Silence Is Never an Option
• February Vignettes (2026)
• Greg Ketter: A Valiant Minnesotan


Image: Michael J. Bayly – Minneapolis, February 1, 2026.