Duck, Duck, Grey-Duck in an Occupied State

Why Minnesota Nice is the Ultimate Resistance

After my note went viral a couple weeks ago, I was approached by a publication here on Substack to write about my experience as a Minnesotan during Operation Metro Surge. That publication then rejected my submission…but I think it is some of the best writing I’ve ever done. I hope you agree.

Pink Duck, Purple Duck, Minnesota Duck. . .

As Minnesota children, we played Duck Duck Grey Duck instead of Duck Duck Goose. We did not chant “duck” in a flat line while we waited for the big moment. We Minnesotans were taught at a young age to honor each other’s characters: pink duck, blue duck, polka-dot duck, sparkly duck, dinosaur duck. Then, at last, the grey duck came, and two kids ran wildly around the ring.

As young children we practiced naming differences with affection while gently touching each other’s heads, honoring the diversity in the room, so that welcoming the stranger as a friend we haven’t met yet is built-in as instinct.

Minnesota has carried that instinct into larger choices, including welcoming asylum seekers as refugees in our sanctuary state. I was raised with diversity as a core value, absorbing it through stories, family choices, and a long line of people who taught me how to value diversity within community.

My grandparents’ house was decorated with gifts from across the globe. Their living room felt like an atlas made of objects: carved wood, woven cloth, small figurines, framed art that carried other languages in its lines. When I backpacked through Europe as a college student, they gave me a list of names of people to connect with along the way. I grew up seeing the world as a place full of neighbors I had not yet met.

My grandmother, a direct descendant of the Mayflower passengers, and my mother, a card-carrying member of Daughters of the American Revolution taught me how to be a guest in someone else’s home, and how to make a guest feel welcome in mine.

We call it Minnesota Nice

“You don’t mess with Minnesota Nice. We are trained from diapers how to disarm someone with a smile and a kind firm “oh, no you don’t.“ Minnesota is the heart of what it means to be American. Ironically - but not ironically - it is the North Star state with the elegance of the Lady Slipper as its state flower. The Minnesotan spirit burns with the fire of the brightest Star in the sky in the coldest of temperatures.” ~Tania Kirschli

Now, the federal government has decided to mess with Minnesota Nice.

When people not from Minnesota ask, “How are things there now?” I feel the same impulse I have always had when I want to keep the world smooth. I want to say, “We’re okay. We’re fine.” Which is true, mostly. Cuz we are good at being okay with not being okay, for a while.

Daily life still contains ordinary things. I still walk the dog. I still buy groceries. I still bake sourdough and bring the extra loaf over to the neighbor who shoveled the sidewalks for the whole block.

But now neon-hat-and-reflective-vest duck walks the perimeter of the parking lot by the lake as a legal observer where I walk my dog each morning. I was ever grateful for his presence the day eight ICE vehicles with their darkened windows and missing license plates stared me down before I could get back in my car. I understood their message “you’d better behave old lady, or else. . . and we don’t give a fuck about your dog.”

And now, unicorn-onesie-crossing-guard duck appears earlier and stays later during school dismissal. And teddy-bear-ears-duck with her red-knit-resistance cap stands witness at the bus stop during rush hour twice a day.

In addition to dropping a hot-dish off for Aunt Hilda who slipped on the ice and broke her hip last week, we Minnesotans coordinate meal-trains at church, and bring donation deliveries to the small businesses up the street, and comb through countless gofundme campaigns to decide where to donate that extra $20 this week.

As stiff-upper-lip Scandinavians, our humility is our asset now. We never wanted the credit or the attention for our good deeds, and now that instinct to stay out of the spotlight has dropped a few more levels underground as a means to stay safe because ICE is tracking, intimidating, and even arresting the do-good-grandmas for obstructing and interfering.

An Unwelcome New Normal

Normal still exists here in pockets and rituals and jokes and mundane conversations about the weather. But normal is interrupted by the new soundtrack playing on the loudspeakers of our world in the form of 24/7 helicopters, signal-chat alerts, and the ever-present whistles and sirens.

Every winter, we hope for a mild one.
But we always know, it can always get worse.

We thought it was bad when they handcuffed a citizen who couldn’t prove his status on the spot. But we knew it could get worse. And when they started pepper-spraying people in the face, we knew it could get worse. And when they dragged a pregnant woman through the icy street, we knew it could get worse. And when they detained three Indigenous tribal members and lost them in the system, we knew it could get worse. And when they tear gassed an entire neighborhood sending a 6-month old to the hospital, we knew it could get worse. And when a Hmong elder had his door broken down and was marched out in his underwear and a blanket, we knew it could still get worse.

And when they killed Renee Good. . . and Alex Pretti. . .

And when little Liam Ramos was used as bait and shipped off to Texas.

We know it can still get worse.

When we see things like this repeatedly, we learn to calibrate for threat the way we calibrate for cold. We put on another layer and show up. Over and over and over and over again.

We show up for a general strike and another protest. And a week later, we show up again, for another one, cuz when blizzards come one after another, we still gotta shovel each other out so we can get on with our lives.

A Mycelial Network of Mutual Aid

I have watched Minnesota become a mycelial network of mutual aid so dense it feels like a second nervous system.That is the Minnesota community response, fiercely domestic, and ferociously loving.

• It looks like a donut shop and sandwich shop turned warming-house with medics on-site.

• It looks like a sex store and pizza joint teaming up as donation & distribution centers.

• It looks like multi-faith leaders singing in corporate headquarters with a list of demands.

• It looks like clergy getting arrested for trespassing because their 55 person permit turned into a 5000 person army.

• It looks like the Minnesota National Guard handing out coffee and cocoa to keep the peace.

• It looks like thousands of fat-tire bikers on a ride for Alex.

• It looks like dozens of full-kit drummers filling the Stone Arch bridge in protest.

• It looks like ICE OUT and SOS messages spelled out in luminaries on frozen lakes.

• It looks like tens of thousands of people showing up to protest every single day in sub-zero temps for over a month.

• It looks like small businesses, churches, bookstores, journalists, social workers, barbers, karate dojos, dance studios, moms, grandmas, dads, and grandpas activating quiet networks of protection and care.

It tastes like tator-tot hotdish.

Hot dish is not fancy. It’s a warm square that says, “I heard you had a hard week, so I brought you something that feeds you for three days.” It is stubbornly optimistic. We keep showing up with food because we expect people to keep needing to eat, which means we expect them to keep being alive.

Minnesota has always been a place where we measure ourselves quietly topping the charts in health metrics, education, budgets balanced, “best places to live,” on all the lists. Then winter arrives, and the state becomes a hard teacher. We learn how to endure because we show up and shovel each other out.

The Healing Waters of the Mississippi

We also carry a deeper symbolic geography that I keep thinking about. Minnesota holds the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Water begins here, then moves outward through the center of the country. Water is cleansing. Water is life-giving. Water carries what we put into it. Water connects places that think they are unrelated.

I keep wondering what we are sending downstream right now: fear, yes, and grief. I also see courage. I see coordination. I see communities practicing care at scale, with impeccable efficiency. I see people insisting on dignity for their neighbors with the same steady determination they use to scrape ice off a windshield with a credit card because they gave their scraper to someone else who needed it last week.

I do not know how this chapter ends.

But I hope it ends with the rest of the country learning the value of including paisley, plaid, and purple-rain ducks in their childhood games.

I hope it ends like a Minnesota goodbye, coats on, standing at the door, forty-five minutes, six hugs and seven conversations later, with I Love Yous understood by actions that go way beyond the words.

Thanks for giving a shit.

I love you all,

TeriLeigh💜

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p.s.

I appreciate all of you who have become new paying subscribers, and have donated 25% of my earnings through January to families in MN in need through Wellstone School.

p.p.s.

if you’re curious about my other ventures here on Substack, I am running a 9-week small group cohort program about improving your relationship with and habits around money called Abundant Money Mindset, starting March 24. We are now taking applications for cohort participants.

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Thank you for being here. I appreciate you.