Brown: Our weary state must find shared reality amid chaos and fear

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In the study of mental health, shared reality reduces uncertainty and creates a sense of belonging. It is the foundation of community, and sanity.

So what happens when our state divides over creed with the passion of a thousand saints? What happens when a federal agent kills a mother in her car and we can’t even agree on what the video shows?

That’s the chilling moment an entire state finds itself being forced to navigate, a breathtaking submersion into uncertainty, confusion and anger even as the number of ICE agents within our borders swells to unprecedented and astonishing levels. The video recording of Renee Good’s death at the hand of a federal agent wasn’t a choreographed snuff film but a sudden, violent encounter on a Minneapolis street that instantly led to snap judgments of the guilt or innocence of the deceased.

This is why the current moment in Minnesota feels so disturbing and maddening. This is all moving so quickly. From metro to meadow, we watch as the U.S. government fans out across Minnesota, hunting for people and eliciting mass protests. And yet, many cannot find a common reality to name our fear. We must, however, and we will. I know this because we’ve confronted the discomfort of immigration before.

In 1916, an enormous labor strike on the Mesabi Iron Range created two realities, each firmly believed in by two sides for years to follow. As many as 10,000 mostly immigrant miners picketed against U.S. Steel, the largest corporation in the world.

Rampant fear was the issue then as well. A young girl cowered under her bed when the miners paraded down one town’s main street. Her father was a mining executive and had warned her the men would cause harm to the family. The parade was peaceful, but she believed her father’s words until her dying day, many decades later. Such is the power of fear.

In truth, the company spent more on security guards and rifles than miners had requested in wage increases. The power was worth more than the money.

Soon came violence, death and competing narratives.

The mining company recruited ex-convicts, bouncers, gamblers and washed-up prize fighters to put down the strike. The county, urged by the governor, swore in these men as special deputies, paid by the company but wearing the same badge as public law enforcement officers. They were charged with preventing violence but often caused it. The company didn’t mind. Most papers blamed the strikers, not the cops.

In one incident, company guards shot Croatian miner John Alar during a melee. The union said Alar stood on the front porch of his Virginia, Minn., home; the company alleged he was on adjacent mine land. Alar’s funeral procession included a sign that read, “Murdered by Oliver Gunmen.” The shooter was never identified, but the men who carried the sign were cited for libel.

Just as our current situation may seem hopeless to some, it felt that way to miners at the time. But these competing narratives would become part of a shared story with the passage of time. What the workers demanded, they got. Immigrants became Americans. No private army could stop the public good.

Perhaps we cannot make a direct comparison between those past events and today’s collision of Minnesota immigrants, bystanders, protesters and federal agents. However, we might recognize this moment as yet another story that is being sharply shaped by divided interpretations.

Only the pursuit of a common reality can relieve the mounting and intense pressure we feel and eventually return a sense of community. Along the way, we may renew our rights, as generations must from time to time: freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom to associate as we please. In a shared reality, these things would be a given.

Somewhere in the ether of our current confusion, we must find a common language, a deeper understanding, that will allow us to patch our discordant realities. As a nation, we can enforce immigration law safely and respectfully, while bringing our immigrant neighbors into the warm embrace of America. We can pay workers while innovating in business. We can make life better in greater Minnesota while doing the same in Minneapolis.