Staying Put Despite ICE
A friend texted me last week to say he could see Mark Zuckerberg’s 387-foot yacht, Launchpad, from his hotel room in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Part of me wished I were there, too, far away from the arbitrary searches and the violence that have become familiar sights on the streets of Minneapolis.
But he was writing to ask what was happening here in Minneapolis. And that question made something clear to me: there’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now. It has been inspiring to watch neighbors and strangers stand together, pushing back against a system of power that feels increasingly detached from accountability and the rule of law.
What we’re witnessing is what some political theorists describe as a “dual state”—one that preserves legal process for some, while suspending it for others. On the ground, that system is being enforced by ICE agents. They are paid with public dollars to carry out the directives of President Trump and his closest advisers, particularly Stephen Miller.
While ICE agents are the visible face of this enforcement and bear the brunt of public anger, they are not the architects of the policy. They are functionaries. The authority that allows masked agents to operate with weapons drawn and minimal transparency flows directly from the White House.
The purpose of the bike rally past Alex Pretti’s memorial, the human S.O.S. on Bde Maka Ska, the candlelight vigil at Lake Nokomis, and countless other acts of protest has been consistent: keep pressure on federal immigration enforcement to leave Minneapolis and end a cycle of fear affecting our community. In the weeks since the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, everyday acts of kindness and bravery have played out alongside protest.
This morning, we began our social media consumption by watching footage of a woman from St. Peter, Minn., refuse to exit her car even after being threatened by three masked men pointing guns. In the aftermath of Good’s and Pretti’s deaths, that stood out as a profound act of courage and a visceral illustration of the tension and fear gripping our city and state.
A judge recently denied Minnesota’s request for an injunction to halt “Operation Metro Surge,” the federal immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, meaning the presence of agents will continue for now, and the anxiety many are living with will persist. We don’t yet know how much longer this will last, but there’s hope that as more cities join the protest movement, the national chorus calling for accountability will reach the White House. Demonstrations have spread this week to New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and Austin.
However, it isn’t lost on us that images of protest and statements of solidarity are being shared on platforms like Facebook—platforms that reap enormous profits from our attempts to find and sustain online community. We help pay for Zuckerberg’s $300 million luxury yacht with our clicks, likes, and photos. The tech billionaires who stood behind Trump at his inauguration included Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tim Cook. Business Insider reports that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang collectively made $288 billion in Trump’s first year.
We Are in the Midst of a Rupture
Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, gave a striking speech at the World Economic Forum this year. In it, he described the current moment as a rupture, a break from the accepted world order. Rather than pretending otherwise, Carney urged other nations to acknowledge the change and begin forming new coalitions suited to this reality.
At the same time, amid the chaos generated by the Trump administration, the stock market has continued to climb, hovering near all-time highs. These numbers may matter more to the president than poll results or the size of protests in the streets. Market performance creates an illusion of stability or what the German legal scholar Ernst Fraenkel described as the “normative state” in his 1941 book, “The Dual State.”
Fraenkel argued that authoritarian systems endure because, for most people, life appears normal. They work, vacation, and go out to brunch. The rules that govern their daily lives remain largely intact and predictable. This normalcy coexists with a second reality, which he called the “prerogative state,” where certain groups are subjected to unlimited arbitrariness and violence, unchecked by legal guarantees.
What we are experiencing acutely in Minneapolis, and increasingly across the country, is this dual state in action. For some, especially in other states, life continues uninterrupted. In Minnesota, however, we are seeing the dual state up close. Wanton brutality is observed daily. For much of the country, life can go on, for now, as normal.
From the outside, it is easy to dismiss those resisting as agitators. In reality, they include a 72-year-old retiree and a mother of three who can no longer look away from what is happening. Most of the people participating have never protested in their lives and are now volunteering to pack food boxes or standing on street corners in freezing temperatures with whistles. The rupture Carney described is not abstract. It is already here, unevenly distributed, and impossible to ignore.
The question is how to reach those living comfortably in the normative state and help them recognize that a rupture has occurred. What feels normal may not last, and a prerogative state already exists, pulling more people into it. There is a growing concern that if this condition hardens, it will lead the country to a dark place.
In thinking through that challenge, we came across a proposal from Scott Galloway. He is an academic, an entrepreneur, and a co-host of the podcast Pivot with Kara Swisher. He is calling for what he describes as an “economic strike.” His idea targets the companies that drive the stock market and, in his view, enable the current administration. More details about the effort can be found at resistandunsubscribe.com.
Galloway proposes a one-month mass unsubscribe from services provided by Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others. It’s an imperfect but intriguing concept. If it gained real traction, it could offer a way to puncture the divide between the normative and prerogative states. The stock market’s recent strength has been heavily dependent on these firms, and meaningful disruption would not go unnoticed.
Regardless of how people choose to participate, some form of action is necessary if we are to avoid slowly accepting capricious and unlawful behavior as the new normal. Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for leaders like Vladimir Putin, whose power is reinforced by oligarchs invested in regime stability because it protects their wealth.
No one is calling for a market collapse that would erase savings or cost families their homes. But it is becoming harder to deny that some form of disruption may be needed to stir widespread resistance to creeping authoritarianism.
