THE MINNEAPOLIS MODEL

How a City Resisted a Federal Occupation and What the Pro-Democracy Movement Must Learn from It

What Happened

In December 2025, the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Metro Surge, deploying approximately 3,000 ICE officers and 1,000 Customs and Border Protection agents throughout the Twin Cities metropolitan area, a force five times the size of the Minneapolis police force and the largest deployment of federal immigration agents to a single American city in history.

On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen who was watching and recording ICE operations from her vehicle. The medical examiner ruled the shooting a homicide. Federal authorities refused to allow Minnesota officials to investigate or see the evidence.

Sixteen days later, on January 23, an estimated 50,000 people marched through downtown Minneapolis in temperatures reaching minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit in a coordinated “Day of Truth and Freedom” that functioned as a general strike - no work, no school, no shopping. Hundreds of businesses, cultural institutions, restaurants, and retail establishments across the Twin Cities closed in solidarity.

That morning, roughly 100 clergy from multiple faith traditions were arrested in a nonviolent action at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, protesting ICE deportation flights. The following day, federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who cared for veterans.

The resistance continued for more than six weeks. Within that period, it forced the President of the United States to call Governor Walz and offer to “de-escalate a little bit.” In that call, Trump reportedly asked Walz “what is wrong with you people?” and expressed surprise at the level of resistance, noting that “the operation was successful in Venezuela.”

That last detail deserves to sit with us. The president understood the deployment of federal agents against a U.S. city in the same terms as a military operation against a foreign nation. Minneapolis responded accordingly, not as citizens petitioning their government, but as a community resisting an occupation. And it worked.

Why It Worked: The Infrastructure Underneath

Minneapolis did not improvise its resistance in January. It activated infrastructure that had been built over years.

The primary coordinating organization was ISAIAH, a Minnesota interfaith community organizing network led by co-executive director JaNaé Bates. ISAIAH had spent decades building relationships across faith communities, labor unions, and neighborhood organizations. But ISAIAH was the river, not the only spring. The coalition that made the resistance possible included SEIU Local 26, representing over 8,000 janitors, security officers, and window cleaners; UNITE HERE Local 17, representing more than 6,000 hospitality workers; MARCH, a clergy-led multifaith network that mobilized 700 clergy from across the country with less than seven days’ notice; the Immigrant Defense Network; Peace Catalyst International; Singing Resistance, a group that walked streets singing to prevent ICE from taking people and to let neighbors know they were not alone; neighborhood mutual aid networks; and dozens of individual congregations providing sanctuary, legal observation, and material support.

City Council president Elliott Payne traced this infrastructure directly to the movement that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. After the main cycle of uprising had ebbed, organizers pivoted from protest to building what they called “expanded safety services”- mutual aid networks, community accompaniment programs, know-your-rights training, and neighborhood-level coordination mechanisms - all operating under the principle “We Keep Us Safe.” Multiple commentators described the result as the “Mister Rogers Resistance”: a culture of grassroots interdependence in which the basic unit of resistance was the neighbor looking out for the neighbor.

When Operation Metro Surge arrived, this infrastructure was already in place. It did not need to be built in conditions of crisis. It needed to be activated. And it was - within days.

The Springs and the River

Minneapolis is a living demonstration of what coordinated resistance looks like when multiple distinct communities maintain their own identities and strengths while feeding a common river of action.

Those distinct communities may be thought of as springs. The labor springs brought organizational discipline, membership lists, economic leverage, and the capacity to shut down workplaces. SEIU Local 26 reported that 95 percent of members indicated their intention to participate in the January 23 action. The unions also brought a direct stake: more than 20 SEIU members and 16 UNITE HERE members had been detained or deported by ICE.

The faith springs brought moral authority, physical courage, and the kind of cultural power that changes the narrative. One hundred clergy knelt on the airport pavement in subzero cold, and were arrested while singing hymns - this image communicated something to the country that no policy brief could. As one pastor put it, the act of civil disobedience was “undergirded by a spirituality similar to that reflected in ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail.’” The faith community also brought institutional infrastructure including congregations that could serve as staging grounds, sanctuaries, and mutual aid hubs.

The immigrant community springs brought the moral urgency of people whose lives and families were directly at stake, along with the social networks that enabled rapid communication and collective protection within targeted communities.

The neighborhood springs brought the hyperlocal infrastructure including block-by-block mutual aid, accompaniment of vulnerable people to and from work and school, ICE watch patrols, and signs marking where people had been taken that made resistance a daily practice rather than a single event.

The cultural springs brought creative and emotional sustenance. Singing Resistance walked the streets. Artists made signs. Storytellers documented what was happening. The cultural work was not decorative - it was strategic. It maintained morale, built solidarity, and communicated the meaning of the resistance to audiences far beyond Minneapolis.

None of these springs merged. Labor did not become a faith organization. Faith communities did not become unions. Immigrant defense networks did not become neighborhood associations. Each maintained its distinct identity, its distinct strengths, its distinct constituency. But all of them fed the same river, coordinated through ISAIAH and its coalition partners, and the combined force was powerful enough to impose real costs on the federal government - costs significant enough that the president personally intervened to de-escalate.

The Pillar Work

Minneapolis also demonstrated how resistance contests the pillars that authoritarianism depends on.

The business pillar. ISAIAH and its coalition partners applied direct economic pressure to corporations with ICE contracts or complicity. Faith leaders organized a seven-hour sit-in at Target’s corporate headquarters. Across the country, clergy made similar demands at local Target stores. The coalition pressured Delta Airlines over its role in deportation flights. The general strike itself was an act of economic disruption, with hundreds of businesses closed, not because they were targeted but because they stood in solidarity. The message to the business community was clear: you cannot maintain neutrality when federal agents are killing people in your city. Neutrality is a choice, and it has costs.

The local government pillar. State and city officials did not simply issue statements. Governor Walz demanded access to evidence and accountability for the shootings. The Minneapolis City Council coordinated with community organizations. Local law enforcement treated arrested clergy with courtesy and respect—a deliberate contrast with federal agents’ conduct that faith leaders publicly emphasized. This matters because it demonstrated that local institutions could assert their own legitimacy against federal overreach, creating what amounts to a competing center of authority.

The general population pillar. Fifty thousand people in minus 20 degrees is not a protest. It is a demonstration of mass noncompliance so visible and so costly that it cannot be ignored. The general strike dimension - no work, no school, no shopping - went beyond symbolic dissent. It imposed tangible economic consequences and demonstrated that a significant portion of the population was prepared to disrupt the normal functioning of the city rather than accept the federal occupation.

The security forces pillar. This is the most subtle and most consequential element. Local police chose not to assist ICE operations. They cooperated with protest organizers rather than with federal agents. The contrast between how local police handled clergy arrests, providing warm buses and courteous treatment, and how ICE agents operated in the community was not incidental. It was a visible demonstration of institutional defection: the local security apparatus declined to be absorbed into the federal enforcement machinery. This is pillar work in its purest form.

What the President Revealed

Trump’s reported comment that the operation “was successful in Venezuela” is not a gaffe. It is a window into how the administration understands its own actions. It sees the deployment of thousands of federal agents to an American city as analogous to a military operation against a foreign population. It measures success by the standards of coercion, not governance. And the regime appeared genuinely surprised when a domestic population resisted with the coordination and discipline that Minneapolis displayed.

This is the domestic militarism that the peace movement has been built to understand and contest. When the federal government deploys a force five times the size of a city’s police department, kills two unarmed civilians, refuses to allow local investigation of the killings, and the president compares the operation to military action against a foreign country, we are no longer in the realm of immigration enforcement. We are in the realm of military occupation by another name.

Minneapolis named it as such and responded accordingly. That clarity - the refusal to pretend that what was happening was normal law enforcement - was itself a strategic act. It changed the frame from “immigration policy disagreement” to “federal occupation of an American city,” and that reframe changed what kinds of resistance were legible and legitimate to the broader public.

Key Lessons

Infrastructure must exist before the crisis. Minneapolis did not build its resistance in January 2026. It activated infrastructure built through years of organizing after George Floyd’s murder, during the pandemic, and through decades of faith-based community organizing by ISAIAH and its partners. Cities that do not have this infrastructure now must begin building it immediately. The question “what do we do when it comes to our city?” has a simple and uncomfortable answer: if you haven’t already built the relationships, the networks, and the mutual aid systems, you are not ready. The best time to build is before the storm, not during it.

Multiple springs feeding one river is stronger than any single organization. No single organization could have produced the Minneapolis resistance. It required the distinct capabilities of labor, faith, immigrant defense, neighborhood networks, and cultural organizers working in coordination without merging. Each spring contributed something irreplaceable. The river’s power came from the combination.

Economic disruption is more powerful than symbolic protest. The general strike - the coordinated withdrawal of labor, commerce, and participation in the normal functioning of the city - imposed costs that symbolic protest cannot. Fifty thousand people marching is powerful. Fifty thousand people marching while hundreds of businesses close, schools shut down, and the economic life of a major metropolitan area grinds to a halt is a different category of action. It demonstrates that the population has the capacity and the will to make occupation more expensive than withdrawal.

Moral authority matters strategically, not just morally. One hundred clergy arrested at an airport in subzero cold is not just an act of conscience. It is a strategic communication that changes the political calculus. When faith leaders put their bodies on the line, it signals to the broader public that the stakes are moral, not just political, and it makes repression more costly for the regime, because the optics of arresting praying clergy are devastating in ways that the optics of arresting anonymous protesters are not.

Local institutional defection is decisive. When local police chose to cooperate with protest organizers rather than with federal agents, they demonstrated that pillars can defect at the local level even when they are under pressure from the federal government. This is the most important strategic precedent Minneapolis has set: local institutions can assert their own legitimacy and refuse to be absorbed into the authoritarian enforcement apparatus. Every city should be preparing its local institutions, including police, city government, school districts, and public health systems, to make this choice before they are forced to make it in the midst of crisis.

Naming reality accurately changes what is possible. Minneapolis called the federal deployment an occupation. It called the general strike a strike. It called the ICE killings as what they were, killings. This precision mattered. When you call something by its accurate name, you change the frame within which resistance operates. If it’s an “immigration enforcement action,” then the appropriate response is legal advocacy. If it’s an occupation of an American city by a force five times the size of its police department that has killed two unarmed civilians, the appropriate response is mass resistance. Minneapolis chose the accurate name and organized accordingly.

Recommendations

For cities that have not yet been targeted: Study Minneapolis. Build the infrastructure now. Establish cross-sector coalitions that include labor, faith, immigrant defense, legal observers, mutual aid networks, and neighborhood organizations. Do not wait for the crisis to discover whether your organizations can work together. Build the relationships, practice the coordination, and develop the scenario plans before federal agents arrive. Organizers in Cleveland are already doing this. Every city should be.

For the peace and anti-militarism field: Minneapolis is proof of concept for the argument that domestic militarism is now the primary threat. The deployment of 4,000 federal agents to a single American city, the killing of unarmed civilians, the president’s comparison of the operation to military action against Venezuela - all of this is the militarism the peace movement must be equipped to contest. The field’s expertise in nonviolent resistance to armed force, in civil-military dynamics, in the history of military occupation, and in the strategic use of moral authority is exactly what Minneapolis deployed. Scale it.

For funders: Minneapolis did not succeed because of emergency funding deployed in January. It succeeded because of years of investment in organizing infrastructure including ISAIAH’s decades of faith-based community organizing, the post-Floyd mutual aid networks, the labor unions’ membership development, and the immigrant defense networks’ know-your-rights programs. This is the infrastructure that held up under pressure. Fund its equivalent in every city. Fund the connective tissue between organizations. Fund the scenario planning. Fund the training. Fund it now, not after the next city is targeted.

For the broader pro-democracy movement: Minneapolis demonstrates that the springs-to-river model works. Ideologically diverse communities - labor, faith, immigrant rights, neighborhood abolitionists, peace advocates - coordinated action without demanding ideological unity. They did not merge. They did not argue about whose framework was correct. They identified a shared threat, contributed their distinct capabilities, and produced a combined force powerful enough to make the president of the United States pick up the phone and offer to de-escalate. That is what coordinated pro-democracy resistance looks like. That is the model. Build it everywhere.

For everyone: Minneapolis proved that resistance works. Not protest as expression but resistance as strategy. Coordinated, disciplined, economically disruptive, morally grounded, institutionally supported mass resistance that imposes real costs on the authoritarian project. The regime expected compliance. It expected that a show of overwhelming force would cow a civilian population into submission, as the president himself said it had in Venezuela. It was wrong. And it was wrong because a city had built the infrastructure, the relationships, and the collective will to say: we will not comply, and you cannot make us.

That infrastructure was not built in a day. It was built over years, by organizers who understood that the storm was coming and prepared for it. The lesson is not that Minneapolis is exceptional. The lesson is that what Minneapolis built can be built anywhere, but only if we start now.