Major News: Markwayne Mullin, Sixties Scoop Survivor, Oakflat, March Madness, Bison Butchering and more

 

Mutual Aid and more in Minneapolis!

 

VIDEO Mutual Aid Means We Will Save Us by W. Kamau Bell

Episode 8 of I SPENT 3 DAYS IN MINNEAPOLIS!

Read on Substack

 

LINK: https://open.substack.com/pub/wkamaubell/p/mutual-aid-means-we-will-save-us?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Mutual Aid Means We Will Save Us

Episode 8 of I SPENT 3 DAYS IN MINNEAPOLIS!

W. Kamau Bell

Mar 10, 2026

I have some good news for you! SOME REALLY GOOD NEWS! In an era when bad news is all the rage, I encourage you to soak up this truly, good news up. Slip into it like a hot tub on your first night on vacation; you know you have to go home eventually, but you ain’t thinking about it now.

As I have written about here before, one of the stories that made me want to go to Minneapolis after the extrajudicial killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti came from Modern Times Cafe owner, Dylan Alverson. In a video, Dylan sat at his desk, looking seriously annoyed. He begrudgingly looked at the camera and said a very simple thing:.

“My name is Dylan from Modern Times Cafe in Minneapolis. Starting today, January 26th and until the occupation of Minneapolis is over, we are a free restaurant, Post Modern Times.”

BOOM GOES THE ANTI-CAPITALIST DYNAMITE!

Dylan Alverson and me.

When I made it to Minneapolis only a few days later, I was so happy that Dylan agreed to meet with me. Dylan told me that making his restaurant free had gone so well that he was working on making it free even after the occupation (hopefully) ends. He had even officially renamed his restaurant Post Modern Times Cafe. If all went according to his (and his accountant’s) plan, the restaurant would turn into a nonprofit. Dyan wanted his restaurant to be pay-what-you-can or (more accurately) pay-what-you-want. That way one person could eat pancakes for free, and the next person could say, “THESE $20 WORTH OF PANCAKES ARE SO DELICIOUS THAT I’M PAYING $200!”

If you think about it, isn’t this how capitalism should work? Elon Musk should definitely be paying way more for eggs than a family of five living in a two bedroom apartment.

Over the weekend, my family friend Emily Goldthwaite, who also lives in Minneapolis, sent me an article from The Minnesota Star Tribune. Pay-what-you-wanna is now PERMANENT at Post Modern Times Cafe.

Let us slay.

The article also mentions how my little trip to the Twin Cities has helped the greater cause. When I interviewed Dylan, he insisted that I talk to his friend Ammar Aref, a Palestinian immigrant, across the street. Ammar and his family own Amigos One Stop, a convenience store (or tienda) that primarily serves the Latino community. In the wake of the illegal federal occupation, Ammar noticed that many of his customers were no longer coming to the store, for fear of being kidnapped by I.C.E. In response, Ammar and his family began delivering groceries to his customers for free. No delivery fees charged, and sometimes no charge for the groceries either. Ammar is not rich. He and his family were committed to doing this even though it affects their bottom line. Once word of his efforts got out, people began to donate. Apparently, the videos I made helped too. In the article, Ammar says that after they were posted, “people started calling and sending donations from everywhere”. And I KNOW that some of those donations came from you! Thank you for doing that. The good news is that we are the good news. We can be the good news.

@wkamaubell

W. Kamau Bell on Instagram: "UPDATE on @aosmpls! Many of you as…

The work that Post Modern Times Cafe and Amigos One Stop are doing is under the broad umbrella of mutual aid. The Cornell Law School defines mutual aid, in part, as “a voluntary exchange of services and resources between members of society for mutual benefit.” Even though they used the word they were defining in the definition of the thing they were defining, that seems like a pretty good definition to me. Global Giving says:

“Mutual aid is about cooperating to serve community members. Mutual aid creates networks of care and generosity to meet the immediate needs of our neighbors. It also addresses the root causes of challenges we face and demands transformative change.”

That’s a better one, but kind of a mouthful.

When I was in the Twin Cities, I asked Ashley Fairbanks how she would define it. Ashley is an expert in mutual aid. She even built a website to help the people meet the needs of Minnesotans after Kristi Noem released her federal goblins in the area. What Ashley does for a living is complicated. We had a good laugh about how we both have a lot of slashes in our job descriptions. Ashley introduced herself as “a creative director, an author, a designer, etc.” That “etc” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. She also lists storyteller, narrative consultant, and artist. Luckily for Minnesotans “website designer” is in there too. Her site is called StandWithMinnesota.com. It includes a variety of ways to support the people who are the most heavily impacted by our rogue government. You can donate cash to help someone pay their rent because their breadwinner has been kidnapped by I.C.E. You can donate frequent flyer miles so that someone who was kidnapped by I.C.E., taken to Texas, and then released in the streets of Texas can get back home. You can just volunteer your time. You can also just learn about everything going on in Minnesota so you can be better able to talk about it.

We sat down at The McKnight Foundation to talk. McKnight, who partenred with me on this series, introduced me to Ashley. When I asked Ashley for her definition of mutual aid there were no frills.

Ashley: “Just helping each other.”

Although we didn’t talk about it specifically, I’m guessing that Ashley’s beliefs about mutual aid are connected to the fact that not only was Ashley born in Minnesota, she is native to the land that Minnesota exists on. Ashley is Anishinaabe. Her Indigenous name is Aasiniiwiikwe Indizhinikaaz.

When I think of all the things that I have learned from Indigenous folks there are two things that stick out.

1) The United States of America has broken every treaty we have ever made with Indigenous people.

2) Indigenous people didn’t even have the concept of homelessness until colonizers came in and fucked everything up.

It makes perfect sense that an Indigenous person would be a part of reintroducing the idea of mutual aid to the rest of us. Indigenous folks looked out for everyone in their community, until capitalism ruined everything. This is also true of tribes in Africa and other Indigenous folks around the world. Today, Indigenous people have the second highest rate of homelessness, despite only being around 2% of the U.S. population.

“Prior to 1492, Native communities had a 100% success rate in housing and demonstrated success in caring for our people.” – Colleen Echohawk, Executive Director, Chief Seattle Club

Ashley has combined caring for her Minnesota community with an easy to use and simple to navigate website. And let’s be clear. No matter what you have read in the news, there are still hundreds of federal troops on the ground in Minnesota. They may have “fired” Kristi Noem, but her damage is done (and still being done). Even after the last of the federales are gone, many people will still be afraid to leave their homes and afraid to go to work. They might not even have a workplace to return to. Mutual aid is not a band-aid. Mutual aid is the future, or for many of us, a return to the past. Mutual aid is the realization that we cannot trust our government to do its job. That’s not meant to be just an indictment of Trump. In our nearly 250 years, America has never had a proper social safety net. A Democratic president won’t be the solution. We are the solution. There is something we can all do to create more community. We can embrace mutual aid. While I heartily encourage you to Google the phrase “mutual aid” and the name of your city, I also encourage you to think the way Ashley encourages us to think:.

“[Mutual aid] is like the neighborly behaviors. Making your neighbor, who you know is out doing I.C.E. watch, a pot of soup. Whatever the need is, just meeting it without having an expectation of an exchange of money for services.”

WHO’S WITH ASHLEY? WHO’S WITH US?

Once again, I’m gonna open up the comments. Be productive and constructive. Put your mutual aid ideas in the comments.

Ashley Fairbanks Is Also A Children’s Book Author

Both books focus on children hearing the Indigenous story from an Indigenous voice. Buy them at the buttons below.

This Land

Boarding Schools & the Indigenous Story

Ashley's children books, This Land and Boarding Schools and the Indigenous Story

Mutual Aid with Stand With Minnesota!

You know what to do! We are the good news!

Support Stand with Minnesota

 

Necropolitics made plain

So many of us felt speechless with disgust at this State of the Union speech … at a loss for words to answer: How can this upside down world even be real?  Cruelty held up as duty.  Suffering drowned by applause.  The showmanship of blood lust.  But there is a term for the horrors we’re watching … that brand of political power when atrocity becomes policy… when they decide who is protected and who is expendable.  It’s called “necropolitics.”

In this short video, I explain what necropolitics means, what political theorist Achille Mbembe calls “death worlds,” and why this framework helps us make sense of what we are witnessing right now: entire spaces dedicated to death, built to strip away the meaning not just of democracy but of humanity.  Reservations.  Concentration camps.  ICE detention camps.  Gaza.  Mocking us in a realtime unironic self-parody, there’s Trump inflicting his textbook Death World.

Please watch: In 7 minutes, learn what “necropolitics” means, what “death worlds” are, and how this framework helps explain the cruelty, erasure, and normalization of suffering we’re in right now.

Within the two-hours of gaslighting, Trump handed out medals… almost more than the Olympic Committee, he joked.  Not one medal for a Black person.  He gave his address during Black History Month, one week after hosting Black MAGA supporters at the White House, days after the passing of Rev. Jesse Jackson, who went unacknowledged.  Not a word.  His only reference to race was bragging about ending DEI.  Meanwhile, Epstein survivors sat in the crowd, invited by Democrats, and he had not one emotion or word for them while his DOJ actively scrubs the files that could expose the powerful men who bought and sold those girls.  The lying is unimaginable.

He claimed to have ended eight wars… perverting the very meaning of peace.  He called Venezuela "our new partner and friend" after illegal missile attacks and effectively kidnapping their leader and boasting about the 80 million barrels of oil “we” have “received.”  He took credit for low crime in DC, a city that polls 78% against him.  He called this the "golden age of America" while gutting food stamps, defunding USAID, and now revenge cutting Medicaid in Minnesota … decisions that will kill many people. Not metaphorically.  Actually kill people.  Worldwide.  This is the definition of Necropolitics made plain: the slow, bureaucratic withdrawal of life from those the state has deemed disposable.

And then there are the ICE death cards.  Agents in Colorado have been leaving Ace of Spades cards ... custom-printed with "ICE/Denver Field Office" ... in the vehicles of people they have detained.  The Ace of Spades.  A death symbol.  Left as a message. This is not ambiguous.  This is the state announcing, openly, that not only do certain bodies not matter, but they are marked and we are coming for you.  It is the same logic that has always governed what happens to Native people, to Black people, to immigrants, to the poor.  The dehumanization comes first.  Then the death becomes possible. Then it becomes normalized.  Then atrocity becomes policy.

Watch the video. Share it. Name what we are seeing together.

Wopila tanka — thank you for your solidarity.
Tokata Iron Eyes
Spokesperson & Organizer
Lakota People’s Law Project
Sacred Defense Fund

 

The Theft of Native Land Is a Blueprint for Border Patrol and ICE

 

Billie Eilish Said "No One Is Illegal on Stolen Land"— In Reality, The Theft of Native Land Is a Blueprint for Border Patrol and ICE by Kahlil Greene

The slogan sparked outrage across the political spectrum, but the connection between Native dispossession and immigration enforcement is structural, not symbolic.

Read on Substack

In the long month of January 2026, federal officers operating under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown tear-gassed an infant, tackled public school teachers, dragged a disabled woman out of her car, detained a preschooler, and killed two American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis. This the violence that sparked national outrage and Billie Eilish’s comments. “It’s just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now,” the singer continued, “I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting.”

“Fuck ICE,” she concluded.

The backlash to Eilish’s acceptance speech at the 68th annual Grammy Award was immediate. Republican and right-wing leaders were outraged by the singer’s comments, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz. “One simple question: are we right now on stolen land?” Cruz asked a Netflix executive during a Senate hearing days later.

“When you see an entertainer say, ‘Nobody is illegal while we’re on stolen land,’” Cruz went on. “And then you see entertainers leap to their feet, clapping so excitedly at the notion that America is fundamentally illegitimate, it starts to convey that the entertainment world is deeply corrupt.”

So to recap, in the past two weeks, the slogan “no one is illegal on stolen land” received a standing ovation at the Grammys, scrutiny at a Senate hearing, and widespread debate on social media. But what does that slogan actually mean? 

READ:  https://open.substack.com/pub/historycanthide/p/billie-eilish-said-no-one-is-illegal?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web 

 

The Racial Purge

 

The Failed Spectacle of Operation ‘Racial Purge’ by Sean Sherman

Or how Minneapolis became a modern day Sundown Town in 2026

Read on Substack

What we have witnessed over the past 60 days in Minneapolis was never about immigration enforcement for the safety of Americans.

This was a deliberate, calculated assault on communities of color masquerading as public safety. And as I write this from the headquarters of our Indigenous non profit NATIFS (North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems) I can tell you that every person in our organization and thousands across the Twin Cities understands this the same way. This was a racial purge brought on by our own federal government.

READ:  https://open.substack.com/pub/siouxchef/p/the-failed-spectacle-of-operation?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web 

 

January 30, 2026 | ICT NEWSCAST

"We are not going to put up with this..."

Native Bidaské: A Conversation about Care, Loss, and Community in the Face of Minnesota Tragedy

Sandy WhiteHawk needs our prayers, please...

MORE NEWS: 

 READ THIS:  https://ictnews.org/news/north-central-bureau/dakota-woman-recounts-more-than-48-hours-in-immigration-detainment/

Monday, February 2, 2026

This Is Our America: Mourning, Memory and Healing on Minneapolis’ Eat Street Reporters Notebook: MINNEAPOLIS — Nicollet Avenue in South Minneapolis was lit with trees trimmed in clear lights on Sunday afternoon.  Read More : https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/this-is-our-america-mourning-memory-and-healing-on-minneapolis-eat-street

 

WE ARE WARRIORS | F*ck Your Fascism by Sean Sherman

WE ARE WARRIORS

 

F*ck Your Fascism by Sean Sherman

Life After Good Was Murdered in Minnesota

Read on Substack

The Trump administration understands escalation and thrives on it. It’s part of the plan.

• Send more agents

• Provoke confrontation

• Allow violence

• Justify more control

Violence creates urgency. Urgency creates permission. Permission creates normalization.  

And here is the part people need to hear clearly.

We are now hearing reports from hotel workers that ICE has blocked rooms across Minneapolis–Saint Paul through May.

Let that sink in.

 

Our Commmunity and Awareness

 WE ARE FIRST NATIONS! Please be aware: watch this video:

I’ll cut to the chase, as they say. I’m now on the ground in Minneapolis, representing our team on the frontlines and doing what I can to help build a defense amid the ongoing occupation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.). I can gratefully report that the section of the city where many Native people live is no longer experiencing quite the same level of infiltration by I.C.E. personnel as it had been over the past days. That said, we remain on high alert. The federal government recently sent more officers here, and its attacks on this brave community are clearly far from over.

As part of my activities on the ground, I’m networking with local Native leaders and press outlets. Today, I sat down for an interview with host Robert Pilot on Native Roots Radio to discuss the situation. I encourage you to take a few minutes and watch our highlights video of the conversation right here. And, if you have the time, you can watch the entire, nearly one-hour broadcast on the Native Roots Radio Facebook page.

Watch: I discussed the ongoing I.C.E. attack on Minneapolis on Native Roots Radio.

It should go without saying that we’re now at a critical moment for the survival of our democracy as we know it. The echoes of historic fascism — from the brazen attacks by militarized I.C.E. agents on people it considers undesirable to Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem’s new podium slogan (”One of ours, all of yours”) echoing the Nazi fervor for mass retaliation — are striking and deeply disturbing.

You may recall that we’ve been sounding the alarm about all of this for quite some time. The Project 2025 agenda clearly laid out the administration’s aims, and its subsequent attacks on birthright citizenship were another giant red flag, ultimately giving rise to our Original Homegrowns series of videos laying out the danger to Native — and all — people of this land.

Now, we’re here. But we, as Natives, know that even this can be overcome — if we stand together. As things progress, it will remain extra important to continue speaking truth to power, building alliances and a united front, and taking action where and when appropriate to protect one another, halt the tide of fascism, and restore sanity. Please stay locked in with us. Watch and share our video. We’ll have much more to say, and we plan to provide opportunities for you to make a difference going forward. Are you ready?

Wopila tanka — thank you, always, for supporting our ability to assist.
Chase Iron Eyes
Executive Director
Lakota People’s Law Project
Sacred Defense Fund

 

 

Trump’s Desire to Shoot Protesters Is Our New Reality

I was born in Minnesota and lived in the Cities in the 1980s.... What is happening now, we must be very careful not to fall into the trap they are setting... BE CAREFUL if you do protest... Trace

The woman shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday was Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had recently moved to Minnesota.

Renee Good was MURDERED Yesterday by Sean Sherman

Trump’s Desire to Shoot Protesters Is Our New Reality

Read on Substack

 

VIDEO:  https://www.firstalert4.com/2026/01/08/woman-killed-by-ice-agent-minneapolis-was-mother-3-poet-new-city/