R.T. Rybak: With a jackboot on our necks, the North Star state rises

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In what may be the most photographed month in Minnesota history, images flash by of crowds marching, crowds protecting stores and schools, crowds at vigils, crowds of masked ICE agents.

Yet the one picture that tells the whole story of the past few weeks in Minnesota has just two faces. One Black. One white.

The white face belongs to Jake Lang, whose failed attempt to rally other white supremacists found him isolated and threatened in a hostile crowd.

The Black face belongs to Isaiah Blackwell, who saw Lang’s desperation and led him to safety.

Lang’s message was that a Black man was a lesser human being, while Blackwell saw Lang as, simply, a human being.

With a jackboot on our necks, we found each other’s hands and formed a powerful, peaceful resistance that gets stronger by the minute.

Minnesota — let’s be honest — had and has some shameful examples of racial and religious prejudice. But under immense pressure and force, we have risen to the best version of our culture of interdependence.

I buy the narrative about us being people whom harsh winter taught to help strangers push cars stuck in snow. But it’s a lot deeper than that.

We are descendants of native people who survived an extreme climate by seeing every person and thing had a purpose. Descendants of immigrants with names like Johnson in Minneapolis mills and Rukavina in Iron Range mines who found strength in unions. Of Rybaks, Dvoraks and Remes whose stores formed New Prague’s Main Street because they partnered with surrounding farms. We started the co-op moment and bring hot dish to pot lucks.

Why is that collective DNA helping us stay standing in spite of the overwhelming force and deadly violence?

Minnesota is writing a new chapter by showing those who have spent the past year divided and cowering (law firms, universities, Congress) that a government that tries to hold power by dividing us can’t beat a united people standing up and fighting back. Even when we only have whistles to their guns.

That is especially true for Minneapolis. Yes, once again, like after George Floyd’s murder, we are in the international spotlight. Back then we had a war within ourselves as we were forced to reckon with deep-seated flaws in each other — and in us, together. Now that same spotlight is giving others hope at a time when it is in short supply. On a very dark night, the North Star is rising, and it’s bringing light to the country and even the world.

These past few horrible, horrible weeks in Minneapolis have also made me feel better about my hometown and state than I have ever felt in my life. Nothing else is even close.

The president wanted to make an example of us and the joke’s on him because we have become the example to the world about how to stand up to his bullying.

I never could have dreamed our streets would have convoys of masked agents doing the horrible things they have done to the people of Minneapolis. Everything tells us there are more tough days ahead.