Overview: This submission explores how people of European descent woke up and rose up to act in solidarity with the Immigrant communities in Minneapolis.. This experience was an initial rekindling for many white people of the understanding of unity consciousness, our ancient wisdom, that has been terribly fragmented and replaced with colonizer culture that keeps us in separation consciousness. This piece was written in Feb, 2026. Now in Sept, 2026, solidarity and unity consciousness continues to nourish our local diverse community.

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We, on the ground in the Minneapolis-St Paul area of Minnesota, have been experiencing a powerful manifestation of the “Great Turning” that Joanna Macy spoke of so passionately.  I, who have been longing for this deep experience in community all my life, did not truly expect to witness the profound realms of connection and knowing of our Oneness with all of life that we have encountered daily.

I write this essay as a woman of European descent. In the intense and coordinated attacks on Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) brought on by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it became quickly clear that all people of color were vulnerable to attack and, for the most part, needed to safeguard their identities and move away from direct confrontations in the streets, if possible. White people used their privilege to step into the more visible tasks of escorting people to and from work or school to provide a shield of protection and witnessing.  By holding the frontline, White-bodied neighbors responded bravely, ongoingly and creatively to protest ICE and keep people as safe as possible.  It felt like I, and other people of European descent, were being evolved into new ways of being through these experiences of solidarity and kinship to more fully understand what had been invisible under the cloak of Whiteness, and to unlearn conditioned ways rooted in separation and White supremacy.

I could address the huge amount of cruelty, the fear, the widespread trauma, the physical injuries, the ripping apart of families, the devastation of lives, the closure of immigrant businesses throughout the city, and on, but I want this piece to ignite your own visions of who humans can be when we follow the path of love and solidarity.

Below are some of the threads of mutual care as everyone responded from their hearts and the skills they could offer to the moment. There was no sequenced plan organized hierarchically. Actually there is no one who grasps the entirety of this web. For those taking on dangerous pieces, there is a lot of coding underway to protect their identities. For every thread that I have named here, imagine three or four similar supportive acts that aren’t listed. Like mycelium, the web keeps on recreating itself to adapt and move through new environments as the conditions change.

Examples of solidarity and mutual aid: 

• Carpenters repair doors for those whose houses have been broken into, or who had their doors kicked in and busted with a battering ram.
• Tow truck drivers recover vehicles left behind after an ICE abduction, in which they leave cars stopped or idling in the middle of the road. Every effort is made to learn who the vehicle belongs to and return it to the family.
• People track each plane that leaves with detainees, counting and noting destinations. Crowds gather at airports to protest and sing.Five million+ Skymiles were donated to help folks get home safely from detention facilities around the country. Those needing help can reach out for flight assistance.
• UNIDOS, a Latino collective, who, drawing on their personal experience with law enforcement, saw what was coming before ICE actually arrived here. They orchestrated trainings for people who would be in the streets as immigrants were being detained. Through Monarca,50,000 + people have been trained as neighborhood observers. They film ICE arrests and activities, getting as much information as possible about the arrestee for family and attorneys.
• A Signal Group assists those sheltering at home with laundry. They pick up dirty clothes and return them clean. 
• Various other Signal groups exist to provide emotional support for people in traumatic situations such as commuters, observers, immigrants, medics and more. Acupuncturists and massage therapists offer free sessions. Support groups and audios  sustain activists’ self-care.
• People track ICE vans, blow whistles, and activate rapid response networks so that there are many of us witnessing, filming, and protesting arrests.
• Vets and medics visit sheltered families at no charge, watching for ICE vans as they go.
• Art supplies are collected for families with kids who cannot leave for school. 
• Breast-feeding mothers with abundant milk get it to babies whose mothers are detained.
• A system for phones in which an immigrant pushes a button as ICE approaches and the word gets out with birthdate, country of origin, and contacts, to a select group of allies.
• An Indigenous Collective holds an honoring ceremony for Renee Good that welcomes all mourners in a park near where she was murdered.
• Groups of Christian chaplains and Jewish rabbis are ready to help people in distress, and be present at nearly every action, often kneeling in prayer as they are arrested. 
• Churches of various cultures turn themselves into huge food-packing enterprises with 150 or so drivers daily taking food boxes out to people who are sheltering in place. The drivers agree to eat their list of delivery names and addresses if ICE follows and stops them.
• Resistance Singers travel in groups of 1000+ through neighborhoods  where people are sheltering, singing cheerful songs so that they know they are remembered. Sometimes 1500 people sing welcoming songs outside ICE hotels like “You are one of us, you know. You are one of us  who knows that pain and love live in every heart. Don’t let fear pull us apart.”
• There are neighborhood monitors around elementary andhigh schools with high immigrant populations during drop off and pick up hours to watch for ICE.  People drive kids to and from school if parents are afraid to leave home.
• Multiple rallies are held each week at the sites of the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, at the airport when flights are taking detainees to another state, and at the Whipple Building where detainees are taken before being released into below zero weather without a coat,hat, money, or cell phone. 
• Small vigils take place at night on neighborhood blocks, and people gather around a fire with hot chocolate.
• Immigration attorneys are available when a person is released from detainment. Local sheriffs speak out against ICE tactics.
• Monthly activist meetings are held that include inspirational offerings and emotional tending.

And the solidarity continues to this day: My brother still delivers boxes of food once each week to people sheltering or making up for lost income. UNIDOS continues to design and offer trainings. The memorials for Renee Good and Alex Pretti are tenderly cared for and visited often. 

Joanna Macy would appreciate how we are living into the Three Stories of Now that she taught about. Business as Usual speaks to the ways we continue on with the status quo, in numbness or denial to the crisis unfolding around us. The Great Unraveling speaks to the collapse of social and ecological systems due to the devastating impacts of human activity that are rooted in separation, domination, and extraction. The story of the Great Turning is one in which we participate in transforming our society by creating life-affirming cultures and systems, knowing that everything is sacred and interconnected. 

While many of us have recognized the Great Unraveling in our nation for a long time, thousands of White participants who stood up to ICE in Minneapolis had been comfortably living within Business As Usual, protected by their privilege. Then, having immigrant neighbors, workers, vendors being treated with such explicit cruelty pulled them right into the Great Unraveling. For many White people, the web born out of these solidarity endeavors birthed us into becoming active participants of the “Great Turning” to create a more inclusive and loving society, knowing that our liberation is bound to each other. It lives in us now as we go forth, all part of this interconnected web of life and thus, no one is free until we all are free.

It’s challenging to find words to tell you what this experience has been like for me. As a person of European descent, cut off from my own ancestral knowledge and Indigenous wisdom – by the burning of our women healers as witches or the tortures of the Inquisition or centuries of colonization, immigration and assimiliation – I am remembering how to touch into the heart of true belonging. The tragedy of Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s deaths, both White people, dissolved the unconscious “othering” that many people of European descent have had that believed, perhaps unconsciously, that White people are safe in the U.S.; and that only people of color have to worry about a system of cruel and heartless law enforcement. It is frightening to have the White façade of safety fall –  ah, but the liberation of belonging FINALLY to the larger human family is magnificent! 

The result of this transformation is the emergence of a beautiful, delicate and strong awareness that many of us – Immigrants, BIPOC communities and White people — are all participating in the reweaving of a potent, new level of trust and beloved community. It can require risky action, and often includes something as simple as a warm smile and a hug, grounded in knowing that we are all in this struggle together. With the ancestral intelligence of our diverse cultural heritages at our backs, we can figure out innovative ways to go forward with more unity and solidarity. 

Joanna Macy knew that people often cannot move directly from Business as Usual to the Great Turning; they must go through the Great Unraveling first. We are in the midst of a collective unraveling of the webs and systems of life. May we allow our grief and outrage of these harms and losses to stimulate our love into actions of solidarity.  The Great Unraveling and the Great Turning are rooted in the same source: our Interbeing with all of life. 

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