Bought a copy of the Minneapolis daily paper yesterday for the first time in a couple of decades. I think I could have read every word, excluding the sports box scores and the ads regarding mortgage foreclosures, in around an hour and a half. Is it always so skimpy? The sports box scores did not include one for the Timberwolve’s game the night before. The locals had rallied from a big deficit to beat the Spurs by one point, but the only thing you could learn about the game in the hometown team’s paper is that it had been “late.” I don’t know when the game ended. It started at 7 p.m.
My main motivation for dropping a few extra dollars at the store had been curiosity about how Minneapolis’s only daily paper was covering the ICE operations in our city. Answer for that was “also skimpily,” as evidenced by the front page, which had above the fold on page 1 the headline “Problems at food supplier persistent” but nothing up top about what everyone is talking about, since it’s temporarily (I trust) put an end to ordinary life in the Twin Cities. For example, where I work, a school for PreK through 5th-graders in Columbia Heights, a third of our students were absent yesterday, the first day back after a switch to e-learning last Friday. Eerily quiet in the building. The sound that a full lunchroom of little kids makes was down to something the librarian would tolerate. Meanwhile, the StarTribune’s editorial page ran opinion pieces under the following headlines: “Funding freeze harms working people, but why are we surprised,” “The gun violence prevention need from the Legislature this year,” “Minnesota River needs leadership, not more delay,” and “Emergency eye care is disappearing when it’s most needed.” True, the “readers write” section had letters about no other topic than the one that was largely ignored everywhere else. I guess it’s only the professional journalists who think ICE is barely a story?
I should say, though, that other organs of local journalism are distinguishing themselves, at least intermittently. KARE-11 posted this interview with two south Minneapolis residents whose constitutional rights were plainly violated by ICE; it’s valuable, also, for the picture provided of what’s going on at the Fed’s detention center at the Whipple Building (to say nothing of the unassuming heroism of the interviewees):
On this topic of the quiet deeds of ordinary people, the “press” however trails far behind randos with cell phones. Here’s a homemade piece of journalism documenting an encounter that occurred in Minneapolis during one of ICE’s door-to-door actions:
If you listen carefully, you will hear her mutter, after she wins and the goons are trudging off, “What the fuck!”–the expletive standing out from the accented English with which she courageously stood down the bullies. “This is my home. I belong in Minneapolis. I am a citizen. I do not need ID in my house.”
In a different part of the city, this was the scene when ICE paid a visit to one of my favorite establishments, Wrecktangle Pizza at the intersection of Lyndale and Lake:
Within seconds of the warning whistles being sounded, people pour into the street to express their disgust and the ICE dudes have to slink away, though not until after setting off a chemical irritant (someone kicked the device back at them). I might be in love with the woman in the bright skimpy top who didn’t have time to put on a jacket. These are good stories, StarTribune! The owners of Wreck Pizza, by the way, were likely targeted on account of their decency. Also, by chance I know that they have an attractive Happy Hour–$4 house wines and $6 margaritas, 3 to 6 p.m., seven days a week.
Eric the Blue 
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