What My Hometown Taught Me About Hope During a Time of Fear

Continuing the World Cup theme from last week, let’s elevate some activism in the US.

I was talking to Christina about our global migration work when we started talking about events in her hometown. It was clear that we needed to share this lesson in hope with activists around the world. So here is this week’s guest post.

Scroll down for some urgent work you can support that Anat is doing on migrant detention.

When ICE occupied my hometown of Minneapolis-St. Paul for several months, national politics suddenly felt deeply personal. Particularly because I happened to be back home at the time President Trump brought his administration’s fight directly to our front door.

As ICE descended, the narrative coming from the Trump Administration was that cities like mine are lawless and chaotic. There was a sense that this show of brute force was meant to prove that point. ICE applied enormous pressure on the people of Minnesota. Especially after the killing of Alex Pretti, it felt like ICE wanted to provoke a reaction.

Everyone in Minneapolis-St. Paul seemed to understand what was at stake. It felt like if anyone in Minnesota reacted to ICE with violence, Trump would send in an army.

So people held the line through restraint, awareness and a collective discipline. They held this line over months.

Instead of amplifying fear, the cities began telling a different story.

Minneapolis and St. Paul showed, in real time, that cities are not defined by chaos. They are defined by how people show up for one another.

Minneapolis Mayor Frey credits the people of Minneapolis

ICE agents began circulating near schools: attempting to intercept parents and caregivers picking up children. People responded instinctively. Parents, neighbours, community members showed up and stood on corners.

Huge numbers of ordinary people were getting involved. Simply making sure children got home safely had become a political act.

Many carried whistles. If an ICE vehicle appeared, someone would blow one, and then another, and then another: until the sound carried across blocks. These were ordinary people ensuring children, families and educators to come and go safely.

People constantly found new forms of non-violent resistance.

Most of it was organised through hyperlocal WhatsApp groups within neighborhoods. Who needed food? Who needed help to pay rent because they were too afraid to go to work? Whose kids needed help getting to school? Neighbors stepped up. There was not one central leading organisation or individual. Just people deciding to look out for each other.

Part of this response is rooted in what Minnesota is: a place where people show up, with one of the highest levels of civic engagement and voter turnout in the country.

But it’s also shaped by tragedy. Only five years ago, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, spurring a national movement and global outrage. At the local level during this time, communities built networks of solidarity, care and communication that didn’t disappear. These hyperlocal networks were built out of this tragedy and they stayed. And were ready to be reactivated when needed.

In hope-based communication we say that you have to be the narrative: bringing your message to life through everyday action.

What emerged here was an embodied narrative, grounded in shared values: kindness, service, community, resilience, care for children–and even joy in the face of fear.

Protestors sang to ICE, trying to appeal to a sense of humanity:

Faith leaders took to the streets together. (note that freezing cold temperatures don’t stop Minnesotans)

They turned their march into a marching brass band.

And in doing so, the people of Minneapolis and St. Paul created an authentic narrative of care and community that is perhaps the strongest counter we have Trump’s anti-migrant narrative so far.

The shift from division to community-values was captured by St. Paul’s newly elected mayor, Kaohly Her in the days after Alex Pretti was killed. Acknowledging how exhausted people were, she said in an interview on Minnesota Public Radio:

“We will do one more day of giving to each other - and then another.”

She eliminated the “us” versus “them / ICE” narrative and instead focused on building “a stronger us”.

And across the cities, people did just that. They brought food to one another. They gathered in community. Some of these moments were shared on social media and made media headlines, but the majority were quietly occurring over months within neighbourhoods. These moments carried people through.

There was real harm: fear in schools, disruption to daily life. But that’s not the only story.

What I witnessed was a city under pressure choosing not to fracture. A community being tested choosing to hold together in solidarity with their immigrant neighbours.

Christina MacGillivray is a narrative change strategist, creative director and consultant with United Nations Human Rights. She co-authored the UN Human Rights Toolbox on Narrative Change on Migration and Methodology for Building Human Rights-Based Migration Narratives. Read about her work building hope-based migration narratives here, and her other work here. We are also working on new tools for measuring the impact of hope-based narrative work, get in touch if you are interested.

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More World Cup stuff:

• “Democracy is also stepping onto the field every day” - Monica Roa on the similarities between football and activism. (scroll down for English).

• Australia showed how to bring human rights themes to the World Cup without shaming, celebrating the diversity of their team as a value (go give the post some love!). They then went and won their first match, helping to counter an alarming narrative that talking about issues distracts players and harms performance.

• In the spirit of hope-based, let’s elevate leaders like Claudia Scheinbaum to offer an alternative to the populists.

Non-soccer stuff:

• Really important strategy post re building a progressive ecosystem online and how we can work with creators and clipping accounts to get attention for our narratives from Richard Roaf. This is state of the art work and the immediate future of social change comms IMHO.

• “To be kind”. Hope-based migration story to amplify from the UK: Schools of Sanctuary. Makes we want to do more message co-creation with children.

• Budapest Pride is back!

Yet more World Cup stuff. Anat & Minuto 90 are doing really important work to free people from concentration camps in the US, often a few miles away from the stadium. Please help spread the “Let Them Go” campaign. The page has lots of shareable content you can use or you can like and share this post.

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How to use Minneapolis as a talking point in your pro-democracy narratives elsewhere in the world.

“The story of everyday people resisted authoritarianism is relevant for all of us. It is reminder that democracy is about connection and togetherness. There are certain things in life that we can only do together with other people. When we are ready to work together, we make democracy strong. Democracy is the invisible thread that connects us all.”

Christina:

• Pequeñas Alas, Gran Impacto (Small Wings, Big Impact) : Through the eyes of children and the flight of monarch butterflies, this participatory arts exhibit reveals how small acts of kindness transform the journey of migration into a shared story of resilience and hope. Co-created in Mexico City at Papalote Museo del Niño (Children’s Museum) with UN Human Rights’ #StandUp4Migrants campaign, artist Camila de la Fuente and Casa Refugiados.

• Campfire Project : The Campfire Project brought Pequeñas Alas, Gran Impacto to Midtown West, a school in New York City. Tony award-winning Broadway composer Shaina Taub composed an original song for the children to sing around the themes of the butterfly, migration and kindness.

Christina:

• Narrative Impact Evaluation Frameworks : I’m currently diving deep into how we consider and measure impact in narrative work. If you have any thoughts or ideas please reach out!

• This is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin : A compelling multi-generational story set in Pakistan that sheds light on issues related to class.

• Black River by Nilanjana Roy : Through the story of the murder of a young girl in a village outside Delhi, Roy brings to life the messy realities of justice — and lack of justice — in cases of violence against women and girls. Having lived in India for more than 12 years, I found the book particularly powerful in its portrayal of how these tragedies unfold at the local village level.

Thomas:

• Babylonia by Costanza Casati: I think we are a bit saturated with books from Ancient Greece and Rome. So it was refreshing to come across a book set further east, in Assyria, and with a female protagonist. A fun read.

• Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe: I am working on messaging about Trans and Intersex athletes so this lovely personal story helped me understand a perspective and experience different to my own. Sad that it is stocked in my library under the “banned books” collection.