Alex Pretti, and Why We Must Show Up

I live in Minneapolis, as most of you know. Yesterday, I first casually picked up my phone late in the morning, having enjoyed a slow rise and a leisurely breakfast. I was still in a sleep shirt basking in the beautiful aftermath of the extraordinary show of solidarity and human decency among family, friends, and the 50,000 neighbors who gathered in downtown Minneapolis Friday afternoon to stand against ICE’s violent presence in our city.

I had held my grandson’s small hand in mine as he carried his homemade cardboard sign—“No Hate, No Fear, Immigrants Are Welcome Here” — written in his bright, earnest scrawl. The weight and the joy of that moment did not cancel one another out: they lived together in his grip, in the quiet pride in his eyes, in the way his small hand clasped that popsicle stick even as the wind tugged at the edges of his sign.

But that image—his hand in mine—quickly became tangled with what I saw as my phone screen lit up yesterday: a slew of messages on our family tex…