As a Minneapolis-based nonprofit, we’ve had many people over the last two weeks reach out to us, horrified by what they are hearing is happening here in our city. We’ve heard people say they feel helpless and hopeless, watching what is unfolding. And the truth is, from the ground, it is likely worse here than you think.
But there is also hope. We see it in the faces of the members of our community, in the many citizens of Minneapolis, who refuse to stand idly by allow this to happen in our streets and to our neighbors.
At the Strong Mind Strong Body Foundation, we are in a position to help. We can also use yours.
How Funds Will Be Directed?
We are closely connected with multiple other organizations, including a number that are trying to stay under the radar as not to draw attention to the work they’re doing and put the vulnerable populations they serve at risk. These organizations are providing support such as rent assistance, legal support, food and more for immigrant families in the Twin Cities. From the donations we receive, we will distribute funds to those organizations. We will purchase small gift cards for coffee and gas for the volunteers who are standing on city street corners and driving for neighbors in need. We will help pay for remote notary fees for immigrant families to be able to complete for DOPA (Delegation of Parental Authority) forms for their minor children.
Committed to fiduciary responsibility, we will provide transparent accounting to where these funds are going (without putting our funding recipients at risk).
All funds donated the SMSBF are tax deductible.
Why Are We Doing This?
Masked agents with guns are ripping American citizens from their cars in broad daylight and taking them away. These same men are shooting people in the streets. U.S. citizens are being teargassed in their own streets, including children.
Families are barricading themselves into their houses at night. Households are slipping out under the cover of darkness into cars of friends who are taking them into their homes to hide them. Parents are granting legal parental rights of their U.S. citizen children to friends or neighbors in case the parents are rounded up and sent to detention centers.
This isn’t hyperbole. It’s happening in the streets of Minneapolis.
Schools have seen attendance drop by up to 40%, forcing a return to distance learning, which already left so many children academically behind after the pandemic. Operating in a near daily lockdown, children are kept in at recess.
On the streets of many South Minneapolis neighborhoods, people are constantly looking over their shoulders, holding their breath with the passing of a large SUV, alert for the whistles and horns that signal ICE is approaching.
The overwhelming majority of people being ripped off the streets are not violent criminals. Many have no record at all. Others have offenses such as traffic stops or parking tickets. ICE is taking and terrorizing our neighbors. It is taking the parents at your kid’s soccer game. The cooks at your favorite restaurant. The woman who cleans your office. The guy who shovels your snow and rakes your leaves. The kid sitting next to your teenager in a high school math class.
We are seeing this happen with our own eyes, and we are not willing to accept it.
Fortunately, we are not alone. Every day, at schools across Minneapolis, neighbors – many of whom do not have children at those schools – are standing guard in below freezing temperatures, surround the block ready to protect the rights of children who are just trying to be children. People are driving are other people’s kids to school and delivering food. Citizens are standing watch on city street corners.
People in Minnesota are a resolute and resilient bunch. It’s how we get through long, cold, dark winters. We understand that we need to stand with our neighbors. That we need to be the voice for those who cannot speak up. That those of us who are citizens, who have the immense power and privilege that status conveys, need to stand up for the rights of those around us.
We thank you for standing with us.