Good Morning, Beautiful City. Good Morning, Paramilitary.

On Operation Metro Surge.

By Sizz Tuna

February 4th, 2026

Federal law enforcement agents amidst protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Jan. 14, 2026. (ZUMA/Dave Decker)

I don’t often write about current events, even ones that matter deeply to me. I feel so stupid and useless no matter what I say. Am I so arrogant as to believe that there’s anything I can say about the state of the world that you can’t get better put somewhere else? I have a tendency to write things, share them online, only to later get self-conscious and wipe them away. Perhaps it’s best if we all toss aside any expectation that this piece of writing will be profound, will be articulate, or will even be well-structured. Know that no matter what this article is, I will wish it to be something else.

I’m a poet, whether I try to be or not. This means that I write things down when I feel strongly, and most of these scribbles are stored for later in the drawer of a desk down a long and dimly-lit hallway in my mind that you will probably never walk down. “Violence is a wheel that spins and spins” has been coming up a lot. Here’s some other sentences that once showed up after it:

I feel like I’m trapped in the summer of 2020. I don’t think I’ll ever escape it. Maybe in that moment, the earth stopped spinning, just for a handful of us. The sun rises and sets, and calendars change, but I am still there.

1. Minnesota State Patrol officers during protests in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd by MPD officer Derek Chauvin, May 30, 2020. (REUTERS/Leah Millis) 2. Federal immigration enforcement officers outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

It would seem that state-sanctioned violence only ever circles the block. We aren’t the first. And the sour truth is that we certainly won’t be the last. But even acknowledging this continuity, there’s a little something different in the air this time, isn’t there? This is no “period of unrest”. This is a fully-fledged campaign of terror orchestrated by our own federal government, inflicted upon its own people. Maybe it views less of us as “its people” than we had hoped. Maybe you’re outside that circle now. Maybe you will be soon.

(This art piece is a work-in-progress.)

I want to scream because they are hurting me. Sometimes we forget that cities are living things. With each person ripped out of it, it’s as if organs are being torn out, one by one. With each person brutalized, a bone is broken. The stress leaches out from one cell to wash over all of us. We’re a community in grief.

Is that melodramatic? Sometimes we don’t say what we feel because our lips are hijacked by the need to impart some particular message, like when we end our assessment of a bleak situation by injecting a false sense of optimism so as not to bring other people down (as if somehow the golden rule of life is not to bring other people down). I have been frustrated with those who speak in calm tones from a distance about community and resilience, while my own voice cracks and my body shakes. I don’t want to weather the storm. In a functioning society, none of us should have to.

But the reality is that we do, we do have to. We have to come together, protect each other, and do everything to resist, as hard as we can for as long as it takes. I don’t know how long the winter lasts, but I do know that we’re stuck in it now, and there’s no turning back. No one is here to protect us. No one is coming to save us. We have to do that work for ourselves.

The fear, the paranoia, the stress all come from exactly the way things are right now. The tension comes from the uncertainty of the future. For the majority of this year so far, it has felt like we as a country are walking on a hair’s-width tightrope. I need people to understand that. One misstep, and we are doomed. I feel like I’m losing my mind, knowing deep in my core that we are standing in a minefield with civil war buried right next to us, while also knowing that I would most likely be ridiculed or dismissed if I even raised such a possibility. Would you prefer I call it simply a “civil conflict”? A “spat over federal power”? An “insurrection (of self defense)”? We act as if we are somehow magically immune to civil war. But people have already died. Troops are on standby to deploy. Recently, there has been talk that may indicate an inching away from the mine, purely as a result of the bad publicity these deaths have generated for the administration. But you will never catch me taking things at face value (despite all the talk of a “drawdown”, it has felt as if enforcement has only gotten more aggressive). How can you not expect someone living in an environment of fear to be an alarmist? The minefield stretches for miles — no concerted effort will get us out of it quickly (save, perhaps, blowing up).

We call them our neighbors both as a way to combat their demonization and also to tap into a romantic Middle American concept of community. You can be skeptical and say that that nurturing community doesn’t really exist, sure. Or you can be inspired by the work being done to make it, or at least to grasp towards something nearby. You look at the sorts of people being detained, and it’s ice cream men, painters, restaurant owners, parents, even schoolchildren. People with minor crimes or none at all having the lives they’ve built over decades torn to shreds — some even dying in custody — at the drop of a hat. You look at the sorts of people marching in the streets in protest, and it’s grandmothers, preteens, middle-aged men with their toddlers, disaffected twenty-somethings, members of the clergy, teachers, cafeteria workers, unions at large, and on and on. No, we’re not anybody. We’re everybody. That’s what all the people in power can’t wrap their heads around — that so many people who share nothing in common with those targeted would stand up and launch themselves into action they’d never thought possible in order to protect them. But there actually is one thing we do have in common: we’re neighbors.

I’m one of the privileged in the sense that I could, in theory, try to ignore all of this and continue living my life as if nothing is happening. But it’s exactly because I have this choice that I, like so many others, have a responsibility to choose otherwise. I’ve been trying to figure out the ways I can contribute, whether delivering groceries or food shelf volunteering or marching or raising money. This last one is perhaps the most relevant to you, my reader — I’ve started an Etsy shop to sell my art, with all proceeds going straight to immigration rights/immigrant support organizations, mutual aid funds, Gofundmes to keep local businesses alive, etc. I will admit that it’s been set up hastily — I hope to design and list more items (particularly stickers!) to fill the shop with time. I can’t tell how frivolous an idea this all is, but I do know that I want to help in any way I can. It’s in my nature to worry about perceptions, to sit here and wonder, “Are people going to think I’m making it about me? Taking advantage of a crisis to self-promote?” But my neighbors’ concerns are so much more pressing. If I have the means and the determination to do this, and am able to support them in some small way through it, and yet turn that opportunity down because of my own invented fears of others’ opinions, what does that make me? Someone who didn’t do everything I could.

There’s a lot to be said about the broader conditions that underlie this moment, or where we may be headed as a result, but I want to leave you with a different message than any political rambling. Something to know about my city is that we never stopped organizing. We learned how to do it and then didn’t stop. This is why tens of thousands of us have been taking to the streets day after day, lips freezing and toes numbing. This is why we have networks of grocery delivery, mutual aid, street medic training, neighborhood monitoring, and rights workshops. These are all things that you will need when you are next. Because if you are an American living in a major city, especially a “blue” one? There is a chance that the second they leave here, they come for you — cut their losses and move to do the same thing somewhere else. I recommend you pay attention to what’s happening, for your own sake. Over the course of this occupation, I’ve found myself reading infographics about everything from protest safety gear in Hong Kong to the use of technology in the Arab Spring. Now it’s our turn to share. Start getting organized, and when the time comes that the laser pointer is trained on you, we will do everything in our power to show up and stand beside you.

Neighbors protect neighbors. I’ll see you around our block.

Anti-ICE protestors marching in downtown Minneapolis, Jan. 23, 2026. (Tuna Tribune/Sizz Tuna)