Opinion | Filming ICE isn’t radical — it’s necessary

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This weekend, my daughter sent me a video that was going around social media. In it, a man is being beaten on Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis by five Border Patrol agents. He’s being repeatedly kneed in the face by one officer, held down on the street by four others. He is bleeding badly.

“That’s you, right?” she asks me.

It is me. She recognized my voice in the crowd, and knows that I work at a nonprofit on Chicago Avenue. I have a very similar video on my phone, though I have not shared it publicly.

On the morning of Jan. 9, I was at work, in a virtual meeting discussing donor stewardship, when I heard whistles. I went outside with a co-worker and this is when, some would say, we became protesters, rioters or agitators. We stepped out the front door of our office, walked to the sidewalk and suddenly, we were a part of a crowd.

There is a perception that those of us who are shouting on the sidewalk when ICE is present are extreme activists or radical leftists. That we are agitators — unreasonable people. That may be true in some cases — there are always going to be extremists. However, I want to remind readers that it is not extreme, it is not radical, to watch someone being abused and fail to remain quiet.

A small crowd gathered: Several people from the nonprofit I work for, a couple from the bus stop, one man who had been riding his bike down the street.

No one had protest signs. No one had anything I saw that was threatening. We were going about our days, and ICE disrupted us, though we are labeled the disrupters.

Of course, people shouted at the officers. They shouted what most people would: “Why are you doing this?” “Stop kicking him!” “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Some stepped toward the incident and were pushed back by ICE agents.

One officer repeatedly kneed the man in the face, and seemed to stop only when he realized he was being filmed. This is key: He stopped only when he knew he was being filmed.

I did not leave my house that morning plotting to interfere with ICE. But how can I watch something like this happening and not shout? How can I watch something like this happening and not get angry?

And it should be.

We should be angry to witness our neighbors being beaten on the street. We should be angry that there was no calm request for paperwork — there was violence and a man screaming in pain with no chance to comply. We should be angry when we later learned this man had to be hospitalized and was a legal U.S. resident.

We should be angry that agents claiming to be protecting us from violent criminals are themselves acting violently and illegally.

JD Vance asserted last week that Renee Good was part of a “broader, left-wing network.” And though I know nothing about her political beliefs, I do suspect that she, like me, was part of a larger network, though it has nothing to do with any political affiliation: it is called a community. And Minneapolis has a beautiful one. Community is the most important power we have right now.