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 argued 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”? Or a “spat between the federal government and whoever else”? 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).

With privilege comes responsibility, and that’s why I have to do all I can to show up for my neighbors in this moment. I’ve been trying to figure out the ways I can contribute, whether marching or delivering groceries or food shelf volunteering or raising money. Of these, the one most relevant to you, my reader, is that I 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.

I could give my uneducated political analysis of all of this, which would probably amount to ten pages of me ranting about white supremacy and trying to make connections of a more global nature and yadda yadda yadda. I could also sit here and list atrocities and try to educate the disinterested or unattentive into opening their eyes and their hearts. These works are both important in their own ways. But at this exact moment and in this exact place to this exact audience, they are not my highest priority. There is something else I want to leave you with.

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. Your duty right now is to care, because our struggle is all the same regardless of geography. And as for us? 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)