The air in Minneapolis and St. Paul has grown heavy with a familiar, suffocating tension. Over the last several weeks, our neighborhoods have once again become the epicenter of a national crisis. With the arrival of “Operation Metro Surge”—a deployment of federal agents tasked with aggressive immigration enforcement—our streets have been transformed. What used to be quiet residential blocks are now landscapes of checkpoints, sirens, and, most tragically, mourning.
The deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens killed during federal enforcement actions, are more than just headlines. They are tragedies that demand total transparency and accountability. The visceral outrage expressed by our neighbors and community leaders isn’t just a natural reaction; it is a righteous one.
However, as we stand on this precipice, we must confront a difficult truth: how we express that anger will determine whether we achieve justice or simply invite more tragedy. As this city has learned through years of unrest, there is a fundamental, life-altering difference between righteous anger and ruinous violence.
Understanding the Lines We Draw
To navigate this crisis, every citizen needs to understand the “protest spectrum.” In the heat of the moment, the lines between making a point and making trouble can feel blurry, but in the eyes of the law—and in the court of public opinion—the distinctions are crystal clear:
- Peaceful Protest: The Power of the Voice
Peaceful protest is the “gold standard” of a free society. It is the protected right to stand in a public space and say, “This is wrong.” It can be loud, it can be disruptive, and it can be incredibly annoying to people just trying to go about their day. But its core feature is nonviolence.
- The Goal: To persuade the public, raise visibility, and show the government that a massive number of people oppose their actions.
- The Method: Permitted marches, candlelight vigils, or the recent “Day of Truth & Freedom” economic strikes.
- The Impact: When thousands of people march peacefully, the focus stays on the message—in this case, the demand for justice for Renée and Alex. It builds a bridge to the rest of the country, inviting them to stand with us.
- Civil Disobedience: Breaking Rules to Change Them
Civil disobedience is where things get a little more complicated. This is the intentional breaking of a law or an order to highlight that the law itself is unjust. It is a tool used by icons like Martin Luther King Jr. and the suffragettes.
- The Goal: To create a “moral crisis” that forces the government to confront an issue it would rather ignore.
- The Method: Sitting down on I-94 to block traffic or refusing to leave a government building after hours.
- The Key Difference: Civil disobedience is still nonviolent. Crucially, those who practice it accept the legal consequences. They don’t run from the police; they stay and get arrested to show the world they are willing to suffer for their cause. It is an act of discipline and moral conviction, not chaos.
- Political Violence and Intimidation: The End of Persuasion
Once property is destroyed or people are physically threatened, we have crossed a line from “protest” into “coercion.” This includes throwing projectiles at officers, smashing windows at the airport, or “doxing”—posting the private home addresses of officials to encourage harassment.
- The Goal: To “win by fear” rather than by winning the argument.
- The Reality: Violence doesn’t change minds; it closes them. In a democracy, we use ballots and bullhorns to move the needle. When we switch to bricks and fire, we stop being a movement and start being a mob.
Why Violence is a “Gift” to the Opposition
We must be brutally honest about the tactical reality of our current situation. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released data claiming a 1,300% increase in assaults against federal officers in Minnesota. While we should always look at government-provided statistics with a critical eye, we cannot ignore the reported rise in vehicular attacks and the use of bricks and frozen bottles of water.
Whether we like it or not, violence is a gift to those who want to see our city suppressed. Every rock thrown and every fire set serves as a data point for an administration that has already threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. By engaging in physical combat with federal agents, protesters are not “fighting the power”—they are providing the very justification that power needs to tighten its grip.
We have seen this cycle before. Violence does not drive federal agents out of our neighborhoods; it invites more of them in, under the guise of “restoring public order.” It turns the conversation away from the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti and toward the destruction of property. It allows the government to claim they are the “protectors” and the protesters are the “aggressors.”
The Local Toll of Unrest
Beyond the political fallout, we must consider the human cost right here at home. When protests turn into violent clashes in residential neighborhoods, it is our neighbors—not the politicians in D.C.—who pay the price.
- Traumatizing the Vulnerable: When sirens wail through the night and flash-bangs go off near schools, our children are the ones who suffer. We cannot claim to be protecting the vulnerable members of our community while turning their front yards into a battlefield.
- Economic Bleeding: Our local shops and small businesses are already struggling. When windows are smashed and neighborhoods are boarded up, the local economy—the lifeblood of our city—bleeds out.
- The Loss of Focus: Every minute spent talking about a burned-out car is a minute we aren’t talking about federal accountability or the need for immigration reform. Violence is a distraction we cannot afford.
A More Powerful Path Forward
Rejecting violence is not the same as being passive. In fact, the most effective ways to fight “Operation Metro Surge” are the ones that require the most discipline and strategy.
We should look to the “Day of Truth & Freedom” as a blueprint. When a community collectively says “No” through economic strikes—refusing to work, shop, or go to school—it exerts a kind of pressure that fire and glass never could. It shows a level of organized power that is far more terrifying to an unjust system than a disorganized riot.
Simultaneously, our legal and political systems are moving. Attorney General Keith Ellison’s federal lawsuit against the DHS is the proper, most effective way to challenge the constitutionality of these federal tactics. Our congressional delegation is already demanding oversight and transparency. These are the tools of a functioning democracy, and they work best when they are backed by a public that is focused, disciplined, and peaceful.
“…there is a fundamental, life-altering difference between righteous anger and ruinous violence.” 💯
This certainly a tricky question and the article makes some valid points. But it is also cherry picking recent history a bit when making them. The George Floyd protests did turn into riots on Lake Street and some buildings burned down.(Remarkably, I don’t think anyone except Floyd himself was killed in Minneapolis,) But the result was not just “hardening of hearts”. We have had local police reform, imperfect perhaps, but real, and across the country there was sudden interest in DEI and police reform. The spontaneous eruption of rage at police injustice revealed underlying social instability that moved policy all over the country and even much of the world.
So it appears that spontaneous violence does sometimes invoke either conscience or fear enough to change policy for the better. But it does not follow that leaders should call for violence, for reasons cited by Tinjun. Leaders need wisdom and luck enough to sort through each situation and make decisions considering all the factors the best they can. It is not an easy time to be a leader and the best guide is likely to be the people themselves. Here in Minneapolis right now I am mainly overwhelmed by the courage, persistence and nonviolence of our resistance. In spirit, as least, leadership should be guided by it.
Woods Halley
Good article. Thanks.
Maybe this is the time and place to finally weigh in publicly with something I’ve believed down to the root of my being, for decades. I was born 1955, so the Vietnam War / Civil Rights protest era (at least the northern cities’ part of the latter) coincided precisely with the years one learns the most from the adults around you by just eavesdropping… Until ’66, I lived in Chicago proper; after that, in a Chicago suburb. Both areas were working-class. What I distinctly recall is that, yes, any specific protest that turned to riot hardened hearts and was itself counter-productive (if the objective was some form of social or legal change). On the other hand, entirely peaceful protests, even the largest, were largely shrugged off and/or ignored by adult “real people” (i.e. – not what the press wrote or politicians said, but what regular folks would say to each other when they got together…) What CHANGED MINDS about policy was protests that were large and non-violent BUT SEEMED like they might turn to riot. Those, as well as completely peaceful ones that occurred proximate (in any or all of time, location, or topic) to ones that had gone violent.
*** I do not think there is any such thing as an entirely peaceful protest (one that does not at least invoke fear of great violence) that sparks change. *** I don’t LIKE that… but I believe deeply that it is true.
I want to emphasize that I am NOT advocating for violence in protest – precisely the opposite. Please note that I am not even saying that SOME violence has to occur. The FEAR of violence is both necessary and sufficient to drive change in attitudes, and, as you stated, ACTUAL violence CAN be totally counter-productive. I am not advocating for any specific protest tactics – I’m just making an observation of how persuadable human minds, in times of great conflict, actually work. I don’t think PLANNING for “some violence” or “occasional violence” would actually work to produce a productive state of mind of ‘fear of violence’ – I think that for the existence of some recent ACTUAL violence to provide a productive level of fear of violence, that violence must have occurred “organically”. I think that’s why defenders of a status quo always want to invoke “agitators” – they know (even if only subconsciously) that intended violence has a different psychological effect, in the uninvolved onlooker, than “organic” violence. I also think even “organic” violence, to be “useful” in this context, probably has to have been quite limited in scope and severity. Otherwise, it too hardens hearts and invites crackdown rather than generating a (productive) fear of “worse”.
Your post and some of the responses show just how far we’ve come from honest civil disobedience to “performative disruption” coupled with an unwillingness to accept consequences and what some might suggest is a form of liberal entitlement.
Agree.
Well said!!! I couldn’t agree more!!!!
What sanctimonious drivel. We have federal power run amok with 3,000 masked ICE agents beating up people, making violent arrests, smashing car windows, shooting and killing Americans, and more. And you sit back and lecture protesters on how to behave???
Thank for reading.
Maybe I missed it, but nothing has been written about how the violence of the government has changed things. What turned the tide and caused the nation to pass the Civil Rights Bill, was not violent protest, but witnessing the violence of the government and those in support of racist policies (the Edmond Petit Bridge, the bombing of the church in which three girls lost their lives, the murder of three freedom riders, the dogs, the fire hoses, etc). I too lived those years and remember. Unfortunately, it takes a sacrificial lamb (today Minneapolis, but in the past the South) to turn the tide. A picture sill tells a thousand words, and when I saw that picture of Liam Ramous being put into that ICE vehicle just as America saw the dogs and the hoses in the South, I knew we had turned the tide. The destruction of East Lake did nothing for the cause. It was the video of the cop with his knee on the neck of George Floyd that changed the way the MPD is working for a better, more respectful police force.
I agree that peaceful protest is the most effective and thank you for writing this article. I’m especially concerned about traumatizing the vulnerable, especially our children.
No.
I have a question David. Does any of this calculus change if residents are fighting a fascist regime and their gestapo thugs on the ground?