Minneapolis 1, Trump 0

A city said no—and Trump blinked.

You did this.

You, the people of Minneapolis did this. In the face of state terror and brutality, you held the line. Confronted with thousands of masked and armed agents of an administration that is demonstrably hostile to our constitutional liberties, as we have understood them for generations—you would not back down. In the winter streets of your city and its neighboring communities, armed with whistles, phones, and willpower, you lived out the values of a free people and vindicated once again the heritage of our democracy. You walked the walk of American freedom.

And you—here—did this. Online, in conversations with family, friends and neighbors, in peaceful protests large and small across our beloved country, in private prayers and passionate arguments—you, too, would not back down. You would not swallow the administration’s lies, nor give up on what our forebears bequeathed us. This moment belongs to all of you, as well.

From the first day of the second Trump administration, the plan has been to overwhelm you. To frighten you into meekness and servility. To convince you that you have no civic agency, that you are powerless.

This psychological assault on the public mind is a cornerstone of Donald Trump’s strategy to remake the American democracy in his image. And you all have just proven it to be a lie, a weak man’s assertion of an alien political ethos that is fundamentally at odds with the natural dignity, love of liberty, and plain decency of most Americans.

For months you have been told to accept the unacceptable: masked federal agents treating cities like conquered territory; families grabbed off sidewalks; workers taken on the way to jobs; people vanished for days without lawyers, without word to loved ones. You were told to look away, to keep quiet, to let “immigration enforcement” become a magical incantation that cancels the Bill of Rights.

They told you the First Amendment’s guarantee of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” didn’t really apply when it comes to accomplishing Trump’s deportation goals;

That the Second Amendment’s guarantee of “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” wasn’t meant for Alex Pretti or others who disagree with this administration;

That the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” must give way when ICE agents want to storm into a home with a sham warrant;

That the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that no person in our country shall be “deprived of life liberty, or property, without due process of law” depends on how much process the federal government under Donald Trump feels like providing.

None of that is true. But none of our liberties are actually guaranteed without a vigilant and active citizenry. Those fine words in our Bill of Rights come to life only in the actions of the people—voting, organizing, debating, protesting. Sometimes, it is only the physical fact of ordinary men and women standing up for those rights that preserves them. Alex Pretti and Renee Good were killed for doing just that. The price of freedom is paid in every generation.

Renee and Alex, and all the others who are out in the streets peaceably assembling, and all of you who are standing up and raising your voices in so many ways and so many places, have accomplished something else. You have shamed the powerful.

The Congress failed. The Supreme Court failed. The tech billionaires, the lords of finance and the titans of commerce failed. Much of the media failed. You know who didn’t fail? Ordinary Americans. They don’t have the power and money and platforms and influence that the leadership elites of our country possess. They have what matters most in this crossroads of our history. True American hearts. Real patriotism. And the courage of their convictions.

Minnesotans are not by their nature rabble-rousers. They are decent, Midwestern people, slow to anger. But they know right from wrong. They know truth from propaganda. And unlike so many in the leadership of our country, they insisted in this moment upon the most basic thing in a democracy: Reality. And to a regime built on bullying, lies, and baseless claims of authority—reality bites.

This isn’t the end, of course. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino may have been sent packing, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem may have been sidelined. But Donald Trump often retreats tactically so he can attack again strategically. The midterms are still a battleground, and the struggle to preserve our democracy as we have known it will continue.

But Minneapolis feels like a beginning: The rediscovery of civic agency, of the plain fact that a free people can still answer power with truth and force it to retreat. Not by violence. By solidarity.

Hold on to that. Practice it. Make it a habit.

They will come again. They will try a new pretext, a new target, a new lie.

Now you know the answer.

—Terry