How much can a city take?

As Homeland Security’s siege on Minneapolis enters its third week, locals are volunteering for patrol shifts, protesting in the streets, and keeping one another up to date in group texts.

I live in Minneapolis. I grew up not far from here, in a suburb of St. Paul; after stints on both coasts, my wife and I settled here to raise our daughters in a freezing state that had always welcomed us warmly. As the ongoing occupation by over 3,000 ICE agents stretches into its third week — with no clear end in sight — I’ve received a steady string of messages from increasingly concerned friends across the country. They all start the same way: Uh… is this really as bad as it looks from the outside?

My answer to that question is easy: no, it’s worse. Not since the pandemic has my daily life been ruptured in such a frightening and surreal fashion. Then, at least, there was a semblance of the country being united. Morons who rallied against masks and vaccines aside, most Americans could at least agree that the world would be a better place if Covid-19 didn’t exist.