Roll On Mississippi

                                                                  Roll on Mississippi!

Renee Cole Good and Alex Pretti

Volumes are being written and posted on all kinds of media about the Trump-induced crisis in the Twin Cities. As a left populist I generally support the courageous people in the streets demanding that Ice leave their communities. I also commend the stances of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison supporting the constitutional rights of citizens to peaceful protest (1st Amendment), the right against ‘unwarranted’ search and seizure (4^th Amendment), the right to due process (5^th Amendment) and even the rights to, with license, bear arms in the case of the murder of Alex Pretti (2^nd Amendment).

Border Czar Tom Homan was sent to Minnesota to change the optics and tone of the crackdown after public outrage over the killings of Renee Cole Good and Alex Pretti reached Republican constituencies and their elected representatives. But in his press briefing Thursday Homan referred to the ‘rotations’ of personnel in and out of the Minnesota ‘theater.’ That sparked alarm from keen observers who noted that the language of rotations in and out of theaters is military terminology normally used to describe wartime operations against a foreign enemy.[1]

Historian Timothy Snyder talks about how authoritarian regimes seek to narrow physical and psychological borders between those who belong (us) and those who don’t (them-foreigners). The MAGA movement has conducted a decade long campaign to separate Brown immigrants from the Americans via its mean-spirited rhetoric toward them. The rule of law is meant to govern relations between those of ‘us’ who belong. The rules of war are meant to be employed against ‘them,’ the enemies in our midst. And because they are everywhere amongst us, and because many of us accept their presence, we also become the enemy.

This allows the regime to engage in lawless activity (abridging constitutional rights) to enforce immigration law everywhere in the country. Thus, everyplace that condones the presence of undocumented immigrants is treated as enemy territory that can dealt with by an occupying army. In this way the border is tightened until no place is outside of it. This time around Trump has used the trifecta of agencies under the Department of Homeland Security to narrow the border so that no place is outside of it geographically.[2]

 It is instructive that the Minnesota campaign was initially headed up by Border Parol Commander Greogory Bovino; and equally noteworthy that the more highly ranked ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan was assigned to put a better face on things. The Border Patrol’s legal jurisdiction is anywhere inside the US that’s within 100 miles of the border. The Twin Cities are well over 200 miles from the border. The Patrol’s reach has been extended ‘illegally’ as it engages wantonly in an ‘illegal’ campaign of what can only be described as state-sponsored terrorism.  Governor Walz recognized this danger early. He characterized the activities of ICE against pro-Palestinian Muslims as akin to a ‘modern-day Gestapo’ last May.[3] We know Trump is thin-skinned. Maybe he’s getting his revenge with this siege of Minnesota.

 

Consumed by the Gumbo from Louisiana to Minnesota

Those of you who follow me know that I write about the Red Nation- Blue Nation Divide in America, and you know that my message is not optimistic. I believe we are two nations based upon widely divergent notions of what it means to be American.[4] The neo-fascist blitzkrieg of Trump’s second term has only served to deepened the Red-Blue Divide.

How poignant it is that this crisis is unfolding along the upper reaches of the mighty Mississippi River, that great artery that is the spine of the continent and has been central to the drama of settler colonial Manifest Destiny. St Louis at mid-river was the principal jumping off point for hordes of pioneers surging westward to make new lives for themselves.

Near the river’s mouth lies New Orleans, perhaps the most unique of American cities. The American historical project everywhere else is driven Anglo-Saxons, their Protestantism and their approach to slavery. New Orleans was founded in 1718 by the French. It became part of a three-cornered trading circuit between Saint-Dominque (present day Haiti) and Havana Cuba. Under Spanish rule for the last third of the 18^th century New Orleans saw greater liberty of slaves and softer boundaries between Europeans and Africans. That produced a rich cultural ‘gumbo’ with a Latin flavor and a profound African presence at its core.

Somewhere in its lower middle reaches lies Memphis, the place where Martin Luther King was assassinated as he prepared to lead a march of striking sanitation workers. That was as he was leading the national mobilization for the Poor People’s Campaign, the precursor to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, Bernie Sanders’ two presidential runs and the whole left populist project for multiracial democracy today.

Finally, near the origins of the great river we come to the Twin Cities. Very White terrain, but with a proud history of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) founded in 1915 with roots in the Populist Party of the 1890s. Minnesota, home of Senator and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, the ultra-liberal firebrand who pushed the national Democratic Party to include a strong civil rights plank in its 1948 platform. Governor Tim Walz and US Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith are all DFL members as well as being members of the National Democratic Party.[5] To top it off, very close to the origins of the river as it flows out of Lake Itasca near the Canadian border the great American social justice troubadour Bob Dylan was born in Hibbing.

So Minnesota has a proud history of social consciousness and support of social justice causes, and since 2016 the state has also supported the racial justice movement enveloping the country. The state has gone through a prolonged period of trauma that began with the unnecessary police killing of a Black man, Philando Castile, in 2016 in a St. Paul suburb. Black Lives Matter protests following Castille’s shooting included large numbers of young White people. And the governor at the time, Mark Dayton exclaimed that the shooting would not have happened if Castille were White.[6]

We all know how the entire nation, on lockdown with the COVID -19 pandemic, was traumatized by the police murder of George Floyd in 2020. Legions of White youth went to the streets in protest swelling the ranks of the Black Lives Matter Movement in the Twin Cities and across the country.

Long thought of as a very White place as big metropolitan areas go, the Twin Cities have been browning steadily as this century unfolds. A city of over 400,000 residents, Minneapolis is around 40% POC. The slightly smaller St. Paul (308,000 pop.) is about 45% POC.

The region is home to the largest Somali immigrant population in the country. In 2018 the Somalian Ilhan Omar joined the US House of Representatives as the Democrats regained control of that chamber.  The African American Muslim Keith Ellison, already a Congressman, was elected Minnesota Attorney General that same year. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is Jewish, and the mayor of St. Paul, Kaohly Her, is a Laotian American. What is still predominantly White electorate is taking leadership from POC, a key element in building a multiracial American nationalism.[7]

This Upper Mississippi ‘gumbo’ is coming to serve as a fitting complement to that legendary stew from the other end of the great river. Perhaps there is a flow up the river as well. Fittingly these two metropolitan areas brace the river, this watershed for a continent, taking in elements from the Atlantic to the Pacific and enriching the spine of the entire country. Multiracial elements seep into the organic life of the country.

At some point the sociological overtakes the biological and multiracialism becomes a fact of national life. One nation --- the Red one, wants to deny reality and is willing to destroy the constitution, the rule of law and people in a desperate effort to go back to a White supremacist past. My nation --- the Blue nation embraces national reality. We aspire to more deeply ingrain the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution around popular sovereignty, individual liberty and the equality of individuals before the law.

Roll on mighty river! Keep delivering us those juices that come to you from the peoples who inhabit this great continent. And in doing so, turn the ‘blues’ born upon your lower reaches to  Blue nationalism pushing back across the countryside, before you reach the great blue sea!  

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[1] ‘Frightening’: Tom Homan Uses War Jargon to Describe ICE Operations in Minnesota | Common Dreams

[2] Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol. See https://snyder.substack.com/p/lies-and-lawlessness?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1fiys&triedRedirect=true

 [3] Tim Walz calls ICE 'Gestapo.' Agency calls comparison 'sickening.'

[4] Two Nations, Not One, Wednesday, February 1, 2017.  Read more extensively at on my two nations thesis at https://damanipolitics.blogspot.com

[5] For the uniqueness of New Orleans and its connection to Havanna and Haiti see Ned Sublette, The World That Made New Orleans. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2008.

[6]The DFL controls four of Minnesota's eight United States House of Representatives seats, both of its United States Senate seats, the Minnesota Senate, and all other statewide offices, including the Governor of Minnesota, making it the dominant party in the state. Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party - Wikiwand

 [7] Dayton: Castile shooting wouldn't have happened if he were white | MPR News

[8] For more on what we call the multiracial nationalism site Johnson Vernon. D. and Kelsie Benslimane. 2, “Practical Representation and the Multiracial Social Movement.” Journal of Educational Controversy 12 (1): 2017, pp. 13-23, http://www.cedar.wwu.edu/jec/vol12/iss1/5

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