Nate Stephens

I found myself on a flight to Minneapolis feeling extremely insecure and unsure of myself and what I was doing. I was desperately looking for a simple way to finish the sentence, “I’m going to Minneapolis to…” but I couldn’t find a clean way to explain my choices, which made it hard to feel confident. There were so many different emotional drivers, thoughts, goals, insecurities, and fears blurred together. A few days earlier I had watched Alex Pretti be murdered by masked federal agents in an American city, and a government that blatantly lied and refused responsibility.

The first day I visited both Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s memorial sites, extremely powerful experiences where I found myself with my throat tight, holding back tears and hugging a stranger, feeling the weight of lives lost. I had seen the videos, and imagining the scene playing out where I was standing was powerful. In that moment I stopped questioning why I was there and opened myself to experience as much as I could and grow as both a human being and a photographer.

Over the next week I stayed in Minneapolis documenting ICE activity, protests, demonstrations, memorials, and various other events. Throughout that week I found myself choking up at the strangest moments, when seeing the community come together and support each other. I felt so many emotions every day, anger, sadness, joy, pride, fear. I was flash banged a few times and considered myself lucky.

I joined Facebook groups, secure signal chats, neighborhood watch groups, and ICE sighting alert groups. My phone was buzzing every 5-10 minutes with new ICE activity, ranging from simple sightings in neighborhoods to 15+ agents storming apartment buildings. I could rarely get there in time to see anything interesting, but the loudness of the operations going on was hard to ignore. The fact that there were 3,000 heavily armed masked men in unmarked cars moving throughout the city was omnipresent, while at the same time, hard to witness.

I still don’t have a clean takeaway, just the phrase I kept hearing from thousands in the community every day,

“Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe.”

Images of:
Alex Pretti & Renee Good Memorial sites
Brass Solidarity
ICE OUT March
Whipple Building Protests
Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition Jingle Dancers
Noise Demonstrations outside of ICE hotels
ICE OUT on Lake Nokomis
DIY Road Blockades
Drummers gather downtown
ICE Activity throughout the city