Hello friend,
This month has been long, cold, and brutal. In Minnesota, agents of the federal government—fully empowered by the Trump-Vance administration—have executed two innocent people and shot and injured another. Officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Border Patrol have ruthlessly waged war against the people of Minneapolis, raiding restaurants, schools, and private residences in their quest to rip people from their homes and communities.
On January 24, as he was standing up for a fellow citizen, Alex Pretti was shot 10 times after being swarmed and pushed to the ground by Border Patrol and/or ICE officers. Alex was an ICU nurse working with sick veterans to ease their pain and aid their recovery.
Earlier in the month, Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, was shot three times in the head after trying to drive away from ICE officers who were attempting to remove her from her car.
Five-year-old Liam Ramos, from Columbia Heights, Minnesota, was detained with his father and is now at an abysmal detention center in Texas, where he is reportedly sick and depressed. Somali residents, who have been part of the fabric of Minnesota for decades, have been relentlessly targeted by Donald Trump, as well as ICE and Border Patrol.
These events are devastating—watching carefully analyzed video footage leaves no doubt that both Pretti and Good were murdered, and photos of Liam in the detention center are heart wrenching—but what has given us hope has been the response from the Minneapolis community.
They have consistently protested in sub-zero temperatures, formed neighborhood networks to alert neighbors to ICE and Border Patrol raids, delivered groceries to families fearing detention and deportation, and stood as a model of resistance for the rest of the country.
Trump and Vance aren’t just destroying families and communities here in the US. On January 23, they announced their greatly expanded Global Gag Rule, which now applies to all non-military US foreign aid. While we are still learning specifics about how the expansion will be implemented, we know from previous iterations of the Gag Rule that the policy will devastate access to lifesaving health care, including reproductive health care, for millions of people around the world.
As our #Fight4HER campaign hits the ground in four locations across the country this month and next, we will be protesting and speaking out against the expanded Global Gag Rule, against the $10 million worth of contraceptives being held hostage in warehouses in Belgium, and against Congress and the Trump-Vance administration’s ruthless attempt to make abortion and contraception access nonexistent around the world, including here in the United States.
We will also be speaking out against the atrocities committed by ICE, because attacks on our neighbors—parents, teachers, nurses, children, and friends, regardless of immigration or citizenship status—are an attack on us all.
We know times are tough, and things feel heavy. Thanks for standing with us despite it all to defend reproductive freedom, human rights, and our very democracy.
