Community Action Kit
Minneapolis-St. Paul has awed the world with their relentless determination and love in the face of military-grade assault by ICE and CBP. Media advice abounds about what other cities should learn from Minnesota, but in our small rural town, we wondered what lessons there were for us, in a place so much smaller and less urban. What can small towns and rural areas learn from Minneapolis’s successful resistance?
Our answer is this guide. We offer it as a workbook and work-in-progress. It opens with an assessment of challenges, vulnerabilities, and abundance, and presents a vision of connectedness and resilience. We advocate an approach of mutual aid and the neighborhood group, and provide a catalog of resources to help communities prepare. Where appropriate, we’ve provided links for more information online, with a full list of resources at the end.
In this challenging time, solidarity is an essential strategy, but rural America is not all the same. We’re a Midwestern swing-state town of about 5000 mostly white people, relatively well-educated and affluent compared to nearby cities. We’re surrounded by farm country with a substantial percentage of traditional conservatives as well as MAGA followers.
Your town, rural area, or neighborhood is likely different than ours, and we’ll all write new chapters as we put these ideas into practice. This guide is not a substitute for legal or immigration policy advice, but rather a starting point for us to work together in our many places, toward more connected and resilient communities, like a constellation of stars scattered across the beauty of rural America.