Tears Alone Aren’t Enough:
Dispatches from the Front Lines in Minneapolis
by Ariel Gold
January 27, 2026
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Ariel has requested the following disclaimer: The views and politics expressed in the following are entirely my own. I do not claim to speak on behalf of the entire Ahavas Sholom community and am not suggesting that other members of Ahavas Sholom share my opinions on ICE or any other political matters. ________________________________________________________________________________________________
In 1965, as excessive state violence was being unleashed against the Black citizens in Selma, Alabama, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sent out a nationwide call to faith leaders: “The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all America help to bear the burden.”
Dr. King’s call for others to join him in leading a march to Montgomery was answered by clergy from across the country, marking a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement.
Sixty-six years later, in the same spirit and with the same clarity as King’s 1965 call, clergy from the Twin Cities, including from the synagogues, asked faith activists from across the country to join them in praying with their feet against the atrocities being committed by Immigration Customs and Enforcement against the good people of their state.
Upon hearing that my presence might be helpful, I immediately packed my tallit, and on behalf of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (a human and civil rights organization founded by Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1996 as a continuation of his and Dr. King’s work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket), I jumped on an airplane. I have been in Minneapolis since last Wednesday (January 21st). Here’s what I’ve been witnessing:
Images of Luis Ramos, a terrified and bewildered five-year-old in a tiny plaid coat and blue knit bunny hat, were dominating local media coverage. Coming home from school, just steps away from his front door, ICE agents took Luis from his father’s car using him as bait to lure his pregnant mother out of their home.
By the time I arrived in Minneapolis, only two days later, Luis and his father had already been whisked away to a detention facility in Texas.
Thursday night, as we were preparing for the next day’s mobilization with nonviolence training, a person with a distressed look on their face asked to make an announcement. Along with informing us that a car full of children had been tear gassed, they had just received a message from one of the local schools, warning people not to be deceived by flyers offering “food assistance,” since this was one of the tactics being used by ICE to lure parents from their homes. There were other examples of ICE’s cruelty. Immigrants injured by ICE agents have been taken to hospitals and registered using false names so that their families couldn’t find them.
In the face of this inhumane behavior, and given Minnesota’s expected below zero temperatures, it would have been easy to remain home feeling depressed and yet powerless to help. But I recalled Rev. Jesse Jackson’s words, “both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.”
With this in mind, on the coldest day the Twin Cities area had experienced in seven years, I joined other Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddist, etc. clergy and faith leaders at the Minneapolis St. Paul International (MSP) airport to protest Delta airlines complicity in over 2,000 deportations.
The designated “free speech zone” for legal protest was bursting at the seams with more than a thousand bundled-up Minnesotans who had turned out to support those of us who were to engage in civil disobedience.
Our action consisted of over 100 faith leaders kneeling down blocking the terminal, holding signs picturing the detained and disappeared. We prayed and we sang: “everybody’s got a right to live/love/learn and “before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail.” The assembled supporters chanted “justice for Renee Good.”
With the bottom half of my face tucked into the bundles of warm clothing, I closed my eyes and began quietly humming a nigun to myself.
The police lined up behind us with long clubs and chemical agents they had threatened to use.
One by one, Christians in their stoles, myself wrapped in a tallit, stood and offered our bulky mitted wrists for handcuffing upon arrest.
The crowd’s chants turned from “justice for Renee Good” to “let them pray, let them pray,” and we began to realize the significance. Our prayers were both exposing and healing the rot, to which our country has been subjected for the past year, that is now festering like an open infected wound.
While prayer can sometimes be meaningless, hypocritical, or even damaging, there are other times, when it can have a profound impact. That night I had to pick from the many synagogues in the Twin Cities inviting us out of town Jews to Kabbalat Shabbat and dinner. I ended up at Congregation Shir Shalom with one of the rabbis, David Cooper, from my cousin’s synagogue in the Bay Area, CA, and I knew it was beshert when I read in their siddur, “Prayer Invites God’s Presence to suffuse our spirits. Prayer may not bring water to parched fields,” but it “can water an arid soul.” The souls and spirits of the people of Minneapolis certainly need watering at this time.
The Kabbalat Shabbat energy was so high and full of love that I didn’t even get cold when we burst outside in the twenty degrees below zero weather to welcome shabbat, dancing and chanting, “Shabbat Shalom, ICE go home!” On Saturday, I was preparing to leave Minneapolis when we received the news that Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, had been beaten and shot by ICE agents. I traveled instead to the site of this murder to join with others who were holding a vigil and turning the crime scene into a holy site.
I took the tallit, I have been wearing over the last year at Ahavas Shalom to mourn the passing of my father, off my shoulders and laid it on the pine branches among the crosses, candles, sage brush bundles, mala beads, and kuffiyehs. As the crowd circling the site wiped tears from their eyes, we took in nourishment from the “Somali aunties,” who momentarily felt safe enough to leave their homes, and were providing hot food from their kitchens to their fellow mourners.
Riding the city bus back to my hotel, I noticed that my fellow passengers were carrying gas masks and eye goggles for the tear gas that wafts through the city’s freezing air. One knew not when they might get tackled to the ground and sprayed directly in the face with a chemical agent. It felt more like the time I have spent among Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank than in an American city.
Picking up a quick lunch, I had to knock on the door, to be admitted to the restaurant. In order to check into my hotel, I had to use the doorbell, to be let in. And to get into Ubers, I had to show a code. Because everyone is aware that ICE agents could barge in at any moment, people are taking extra precautions, trying to keep themselves and their neighbors safe.
The next day, I joined other Jews in standing guard outside a Latinx church. Our presence might be enough to deter ICE from coming on that particular Sunday, the organizers, who called us to that church said, at our orientation. If not, at least the plastic whistles around our necks would be able to provide advance warning to the parishioners inside. I was also given a gas mask to put on in case.
Many of the Uber drivers in Minneapolis are of Somali ethnicity. One driver, a US citizen — 95% of the Somali community in Minneapolis are citizens — who has been in the country for over twenty years, told me about having to show his naturalization papers (he now keeps them with him at all times), while trying to do his job. Another, a young Somali-American woman, told me that she has just spent days too afraid to leave her house, but then today had to get back to work, because she needs to pay her rent.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis is frightening, but the response of its people has been inspiring. Between delivering groceries and supplies to those afraid to leave their homes, to roaming the streets with whistles strung around their necks, so they can alert others when ICE is spotted, to rabbis and Jewish activists, including myself this past Sunday, keeping watch outside churches, so Latinx communities can worship together, to providing emotional support – the work of care, mutual aid, and resistance, week after week, the response of the people of Minneapolis should fill us all with pride. What was so moving to encounter was the degree to which everyone – from hotel staff to restaurant workers, to uber drivers – all expressed gratitude that so many of us had traveled to support them as they defend democracy for the entire country.
I may be called back to Minneapolis this coming weekend with Rainbow PUSH, and if that is the case, I am ready and willing to go and serve. Like Selma in 1965, Minneapolis today has become this generation’s frontline in the struggle for freedom and justice. And like Selma, it will be the disciplined, caring, and prayerful response of Minneapolis’ people and their supporters that will win out in the end.