National
Lessons from N.C. defeat
Did lack of money or wrong message lead to sweeping anti-gay marriage amendment?
Incoming HRC President Chad Griffin is one of two principal partners in Armour Griffin Media Group, which was paid to produce TV ads in North Carolina’s amendment fight. (Photo courtesy of AFER)
In the week leading up to the May 8 vote in North Carolina on a proposed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions, officials with the campaign opposing the amendment said they believed they had a shot at defeating it.
“We were on conference calls where they were saying we are in striking distance,” said lesbian journalist and commentator Pam Spaulding of North Carolina, who publishes the LGBT political blog Pam’s House Blend.
“The campaign was saying 11 points and closing — that we were knocking in half the gap every week that they started the final [campaign] assault,” Spaulding told the Blade.
According to Spaulding, at an election night gathering in Raleigh, campaign leaders and volunteers who worked to defeat the amendment were stunned when the State Board of Elections announced the amendment passed by a 61-39 percent margin.
“Were their numbers that far off or did they know the numbers and were not disclosing them,” Spaulding asked in discussing the information released by the opposition campaign to bloggers. “How could they be 21 points off?”
Officials with the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families, which operated the campaign opposing Amendment One, said the numbers they cited were from the polling firm Public Policy Polling, which showed support for the amendment down to 55 percent in the week before the election.
“There were a lot of polls, and they were all across the map,” said Stuart Campbell, executive director of the statewide LGBT advocacy group Equality North Carolina and a member of the opposition campaign’s seven-member Steering Committee.
“We actually had internal polling back in January that showed close to 70 percent — around 67 to 68 percent — in favor,” he said. “So we actually do believe we moved it anywhere between seven and 10 points.”
In addition to Equality North Carolina, the organizations represented on the Steering Committee, whom officials said made all key decisions for the campaign, included the Human Rights Campaign; the ACLU of North Carolina; Faith In America; Replacements, Ltd., a gay-owned company that sells upscale dinnerware; Self-Help, an LGBT supportive credit union based in North Carolina; and Southerners on New Ground (SONG), a North Carolina group that promotes progressive causes.
In late December or early January the Steering Committee retained the Los Angeles-based Armour Griffin Media Group to produce the campaign TV ads. Officials said the campaign retained the company months before they learned that Chad Griffin, one of the two principal partners in the firm, was to be selected as the new HRC president. Campaign finance records show the campaign paid the company $66,000 for its media work as of May 11, the close of the most recent campaign finance reporting period.
Campbell and campaign co-chair Alex Miller said the campaign built important alliances with progressive groups, LGBT supportive churches and religious leaders, and leaders of the African-American community that would benefit the LGBT community for years to come.
One of the most important developments, Campbell and Miller said, was the decision by the NAACP of North Carolina to come out against the amendment. Under the leadership of Rev. William Barber II, the state’s NAACP president, the historic black civil rights organization activated its chapters in counties across the state to speak out against the amendment.
Barber told the Blade that he believes a majority of black North Carolinians voted against the amendment despite claims by some media outlets that polls showed a majority of blacks favored the ballot measure.
Ray Warren, a former North Carolina circuit court judge who’s familiar with the state’s voting trends and demographics, said a review of the vote in most parts of the state showed that all of the state’s large cities and urban areas voted against the amendment. In what he called a dramatic contrast, all of the rural counties and nearly all of the suburbs outside city boundaries voted for the amendment.
Ninety-two of the state’s 100 counties voted for the amendment. Each of the eight counties voting against it included cities or urban-oriented towns with universities within their boundaries.
According to Warren, in a development rarely seen in the state, black and white voters appeared to vote alike, with majority white and majority black precincts voting for the amendment in rural and suburban areas. In cities and urban centers, majority black and majority white precincts voted against the amendment, Warren said.
Debate over campaign message
Brent Childers, executive director of Faith in America, said the campaign could have been more effective in challenging and refuting religious arguments used to support Amendment One. (Photo courtesy of Childers)
Some LGBT supportive observers wanted to know whether the message projected by the campaign opposing the amendment in TV ads and other media amounted to the best means possible to persuade voters to reject the amendment.
Marriage equality supporter Brent Childers, executive director of the North Carolina-based group Faith in America, which challenges what Childers calls the “misuse” of religion to deny rights to LGBT people, said the campaign could have been more effective in challenging and refuting religious arguments used to support Amendment One.
Still others, including North Carolina lesbian activist Mandy Carter, joined Spaulding in expressing concern that the opposition campaign mostly “de-gayed” its messages in TV ads by stressing the harms the amendment would have on straight unmarried couples.
Campaign officials dispute these claims, saying the campaign aggressively embraced its support for marriage equality for gays and projected that message through many campaign venues, including online videos as well as TV ads.
The campaign recruited a lesbian mother to appear in one of the three TV ads aired shortly before the election. Campaign officials told the media in a press release that the woman and her same-sex partner rely on the partner’s employee health insurance to provide coverage for their daughter.
But in the TV ad the woman isn’t identified as a lesbian. While driving a car with her child sitting next to her she says Amendment One would likely result in the loss of her daughter’s health insurance.
“[It’s] because we’re not married,” she says in the ad, referring to her partner. The partner’s gender isn’t mentioned.
“If you’re watching it on television there’s no way to know,” Spaulding said, referring to the woman’s sexual orientation.
Campaign officials said they believe the ad was effective in showing how the amendment would have serious consequences for unmarried couples, gay or straight, and it likely persuaded some voters to oppose the amendment.
In a series of interviews, pollsters, campaign officials, political analysts affiliated with North Carolina universities, representatives of LGBT advocacy groups, and LGBT supportive straight allies provided the Blade with a wide range of opinions addressing these questions.
Most agreed, however, that private polls commissioned for the campaign as well as polls conducted by other pollsters showed that a solid majority of North Carolinians oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds. They noted that the same polls showed that a campaign and vote framed only around the question of whether gays should be allowed to marry would result in a certain defeat for the pro-marriage equality side.
Leaders of the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families said they chose an “evidence-based” approach of using the best possible research from privately commissioned polls to develop the message they ultimately used.
That message focused on how Amendment One goes far beyond banning same-sex marriage and, among other things, would ban civil unions for gay and straight couples. It could also lead to a wide range of harmful effects on all unmarried couples, gay and straight, and their children, the group stressed in its “messaging” campaign.
Advocates of this approach noted that an existing law in North Carolina already prohibited same-sex marriage and that an amendment to the state constitution doing the same thing was unnecessary.
Supporters of the amendment disputed that assertion, saying a constitutional amendment was needed to prevent a court from overturning the state’s existing law banning same-sex marriage. They noted that gay rights advocates had already filed at least one lawsuit challenging the existing gay marriage statute.
Political observers noted that after blocking a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage for years under Democratic Party leadership, the state legislature approved a proposal to place the issue before the voters in 2011 after Republicans gained control of the legislature for the first time in decades in the 2010 election.
Over the strong objections of many Democrats and some Republicans, supporters of the amendment worded it in a way that expanded its scope beyond just marriage.
Amendment One states, “Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.”
The amendment adds, “This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.”
Legal experts in the state have said the amendment’s definition of marriage as the “only domestic legal union” would place in jeopardy rights and benefits currently being offered to gay or straight unmarried couples, such as domestic partner benefits offered by private companies or local governmental entities like cities and towns, including health insurance benefits and hospital visitation rights.
The Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families cited legal experts who said safeguards against domestic violence might also be jeopardized by the amendment, with the possibility that a court could no longer issue a legal “stay away” order for a partner accused of physically abusing the other partner if the couple were not married.
“We saw that all these terrible things could happen,” said Stuart Campbell, executive director of the state LGBT advocacy group Equality North Carolina and a member of the Steering Committee of the campaign opposing the amendment.
Supporters of the amendment, led by the state group Vote for North Carolina Marriage and the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, said claims that the amendment would impact health insurance benefits, domestic violence protections or child custody rights were unfounded.
Campbell said the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families’ Steering Committee initially hired the LGBT supportive polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research headed by pollster Anna Greenberg. In an effort to get a second opinion, the Steering committee a short time later retained Lake Research Partners, another LGBT supportive campaign research firm headed by pollster Celinda Lake. Both firms have long-established records of helping to win elections for mostly Democratic candidates and progressive causes.
Lake was the pollster in the 2006 campaign opposing a proposed same-sex marriage ban in Arizona that was defeated by voters, the only such ballot measure to lose in more than 30 states across the country that voted on such a measure. Observers said the measure lost in Arizona because most voters disagreed with the additional restrictions it would place on unmarried couples, similar to the “harms” cited by opponents of Amendment One in North Carolina.
Two years later, Arizona voters approved a same-sex marriage ban that didn’t include the additional restrictions on unmarried couples.
Lake told the Blade that the North Carolina campaign stressed the harms Amendment One would cause to gay and straight unmarried couples, including the children of such couples, but it was not modeled directly after the Arizona campaign since the two states have different voter demographics and political traditions.
Lake said her early polling in North Carolina conducted to test different messages clearly found that a message of the potential harm Amendment One would cause for unmarried couples, gay and straight, children of these couples, and women threatened by domestic violence resonated with many voters. Among other things, a significant number of voters who planned to vote for Amendment One changed their position and stated in her poll that they would vote against it after learning about the amendment’s impact beyond banning same-sex marriage, Lake said.
Lake described as historic the North Carolina campaign’s use of a TV ad asserting that Amendment One would harm children, saying it represented the first time a campaign opposing a ballot measure seeking to ban same-sex marriage has argued that such a proposal would harm children.
She noted that in all previous campaigns, supporters of anti-gay ballot measures argued that same-sex marriage would be harmful to children. In North Carolina, the campaign against the amendment turned the tables on the anti-marriage equality forces, opening the way for this “game-changing” strategy in future battles against ballot measures seeking to ban same-sex marriage, Lake said.
When asked why Amendment One passed by a 61 percent to 39 percent margin despite the use of the “unintended consequences” and harm to children strategy, Lake and others working with her on the campaign cited the campaign’s lack of sufficient funds to pay for more TV ads and their inability to begin airing the ads sooner.
Jeremy Kennedy, the campaign manager hired by the coalition Steering Committee to carry out the committee’s game plan, said more than 60 percent of the $2.8 million raised by the campaign came in during the last few weeks leading up to the May 8 election.
The three TV ads the campaign used didn’t begin airing until the state’s early voting had already started about 15 days prior to Election Day.
“I was surprised that the opposition campaign didn’t get on the air sooner,” said Wake Forest University political science professor John Dinan, who said he followed the campaigns for and against the amendment.
“To move voters you need to put on TV ads much sooner,” he said.
Kennedy said that in the last few weeks of the campaign, donors began to respond when some outside polls, including those conducted by the firm Public Policy Polling, showed the projected vote for the amendment dropping to about 55 percent.
“If we all had our way and we had early money we would have done several months of TV,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy, 34, is a native of Texas who moved to D.C. in 2007 to work on the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. After Clinton dropped out of the presidential race following the primary season in 2008, Kennedy took a job with the Human Rights Campaign’s field department in Washington.
In 2010 he moved to Maine to work on the gubernatorial primary campaign of Democrat Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell, who won the primary but lost the general election to Republican Gov. Paul Lepage. Following that campaign, Kennedy went to work as a state field director for the Maine Democratic Party.
He next went to Rhode Island to work on the legislative effort in the state to pass a same-sex marriage law. The legislature changed course and approved a civil unions bill rather than a marriage law. Shortly after returning to Maine, which he considers his home state, Kennedy was recruited to North Carolina last December, where the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families hired him as campaign manager to work for the defeat of Amendment One.
One source familiar with the campaign said the Steering Committee awarded Kennedy a $5,000 bonus near the end of the campaign. Another source expressed concern that money for the bonus would have been better used to pay for additional media ads.
Campbell declined to confirm the amount of the bonus, saying it was a personnel matter that would not be appropriate to discuss publicly. However, he added, “It was not such a large amount that it would make a difference in the media campaign.
“I have nothing but good things to say about Jeremy,” Campbell said. “I think he did an excellent job. He ran the campaign that we hired him to run.”
HRC spokesperson Fred Sainz agreed with Campbell’s assessment of Kennedy.
“In everyone’s estimation – including ours – Jeremy Kennedy is a superstar!” Sainz said in an email to the Blade. “This campaign brought together a diverse coalition that left behind an infrastructure in North Carolina upon which we can build upon for progressive politics and gay rights.”
Sainz said that while the loss was a big disappointment, ballot measures banning same-sex marriage passed in the other Southern states by an average of 75 percent in past years. He said the 61 percent to 39 percent margin of approval of a gay marriage ban in North Carolina shows “amazing progress among Southerners and Americans in general on the issue of marriage equality.”
Approval by voters in Virginia of a state constitutional ban on gay marriage in 2006 by a margin of 57 percent marked the only Southern state with support for such an amendment at a lower percentage than North Carolina. Florida passed such an amendment with a margin of 62 percent in 2008. South Carolina approved a marriage ban amendment by a 78 percent margin of approval in 2006.
Campbell and campaign co-chair Miller said reports by some critics that the campaign ended with a significant surplus and that the campaign chose not to distribute yard signs to urge voters to defeat the amendment were not true.
The campaign distributed as many as 15,000 yard signs opposing Amendment One in mostly urban areas throughout the state, campaign officials said.
Miller said that the campaign’s finance report filed on May 21 showing a $92,317 surplus was based on incomplete data. Bills for media-related expenses and other expenditures had yet to be paid at the time of the report’s filing deadline. He said final expenses would be shown in a final, end-of-the-year report to be filed with the election board.
“We were pretty much down to the last penny,” he said of the campaign’s spending.
‘Mood is grim’
A 17-page memo that Greenberg sent to the campaign Steering Committee on Dec. 6, 2011, a copy of which the Blade obtained, says her polling found that a significant number of voters were inclined to change their vote from “yes” to “no” on the amendment after they learned of the potential harmful impact it would have, including its prohibition against civil unions and overall harmful effects on children.
Greenberg noted in her memo that many voters who opposed same-sex marriage did not object to civil unions for gay or straight couples.
But unlike Lake, Greenberg stated the overall prospects for defeating Amendment One were not encouraging even when the “unintended effects” were spelled out to prospective voters.
“The mood is grim — and conservative — in North Carolina,” she said in the memo. “North Carolina shocked the country by delivering its electoral votes to Barack Obama in 2008. The world has since turned,” she wrote in the memo. “Half of this (special) electorate describes their feelings toward Obama in negative terms,” she added in discussing her poll findings.
A source familiar with the campaign, who spoke on condition of not being identified, said Greenberg made it clear she didn’t think a victory was possible for the opposition side. Instead, she recommended the campaign adopt a strategy that would educate voters and help their opinions in favor of marriage equality for a future campaign, the source said.
“We would not complicate this issue with a discussion of the impact this would have on straight, unmarried couples, despite the Arizona experience,” she wrote in her memo. “Voters’ moral judgment is not expended entirely on the LGBTQ community as voters here have problems with unmarried straight couples living together as well. An additional focus on straight couples does not make enough difference to justify muddying up your message,” she said in the memo.
She said her memo was based on a survey of 600 likely special election voters in North Carolina taken Nov. 16-21, 2011. She said her poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent, found that 66 percent of the voters surveyed supported Amendment One, with 30 percent opposing it.
“More information and messaging reduced down the margin so by the end of the survey the support side leads by 24 points (59 percent favor, 36 percent oppose),” she said of the poll.
Greenberg’s adjusted poll numbers, reflecting the “messaging” that opponents used in the campaign, came close to the 61 percent to 39 percent outcome of the election nearly six months later.
Similar to Lake, Greenberg noted in her memo that opponents of Amendment One would need to invest in an extensive media campaign to educate voters of the harms the amendment would likely cause LGBT people and others.
Kennedy told the Blade that despite the fact that the campaign came close to meeting its $3 million fundraising goal, far more money was needed to educate voters that polls showed would switch from support to opposition of the amendment if they knew it went beyond just banning same-sex marriage.
Rev. Barber of the NAACP said the media were partially responsible for the lack of voter education.
“The folks who brought this forward framed it on whether you support gay marriage on religious grounds,” he said. “And the media fell for this. They should have made it clear that this was a constitutional amendment that would take away rights.”
He added, “The NAACP saw a dangerous pattern. We saw the rights of a minority being put up for a popular vote. The media never asked the right questions.”
Childers of Faith In America said he attempted but did not succeed in persuading the campaign to directly respond to attacks against same-sex marriage by religious groups and leaders. He said Faith In America, which was co-founded by gay businessman Mitchell Gold, believes the opposition vote would have been considerably higher if the campaign addressed the religion issue “head on” in TV and other media ads.
Childers noted that the campaign opposing the amendment, among other things, should have responded to religious leaders’ claims that same-sex marriage is against God’s will. The Rev. Billy Graham was among the religious leaders in the state to come out for the amendment.
When told that sources familiar with the campaign said campaign officials were reluctant to question or challenge voters’ religious beliefs, Childers said, “That’s one of the fallacies that frankly our own community have fallen prey to. Any person that has spent much time at all in a religious environment knows that religious teachings are questioned all the time,” he said.
“If you look at the voice of history it is crystal clear when it comes to misuse of religious teachings to justify prejudice and discrimination against minorities,” Childers said. “We have concluded as a society on a number of occasions that that is simply a moral failing as a society.”
National
Human Rights Watch sharply criticizes US in annual report
Trump-Vance administration ‘working to undermine … very idea of human rights’
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Philippe Bolopion on Wednesday sharply criticized the Trump-Vance administration over its foreign policy that includes opposition to LGBTQ rights.
“The U.S. used to actually be a government that was advancing the rights of LGBT people around the world and making sure that it was finding its way into resolutions, into U.N. documents,” he said in response to a question the Washington Blade asked during a press conference at Human Rights Watch’s D.C. offices. “Now we see the opposite movement.”
Human Rights Watch on Wednesday released its annual human rights report that is highly critical of the U.S., among other countries.
“Under relentless pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based international order is being crushed, threatening to take with it the architecture human rights defenders have come to rely on to advance norms and protect freedoms,” said Bolopion in its introductory paragraph. “To defy this trend, governments that still value human rights, alongside social movements, civil society, and international institutions, need to form a strategic alliance to push back.”
The report, among other things, specifically notes the U.S. Supreme Court’s Skrmetti decision that uphold a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
The Trump-Vance administration has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group, a group of U.N. member states that have pledged to support LGBTQ and intersex rights, and the U.N. Human Rights Council. Bolopion in response to the Blade’s question during Wednesday’s press conference noted the U.S. has also voted against LGBTQ-inclusive U.N. resolutions.
Maria Sjödin, executive director of Outright International, a global LGBTQ and intersex advocacy group, in an op-ed the Blade published on Jan. 28 wrote the movement around the world since the Trump-Vance administration took office has lost more than $125 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded myriad LGBTQ and intersex organizations around the world, officially shut down on July 1, 2025. The Trump-Vance administration last month announced it will expand the global gag rule, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services, to include organizations that promote “gender ideology.”
“LGBTQ rights are not just a casualty of the Trump foreign policy,” said Human Rights Watch Washington Director Sarah Yager during the press conference. “It is the intent of the Trump foreign policy.”
The report specifically notes Ugandan authorities since the enactment of the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023, which punishes “‘carnal knowledge’ between people of the same gender” with up to life in prison, “have perpetrated widespread discrimination and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, their families, and their supporters.” It also highlights Russian authorities “continued to widely use the ‘gay propaganda’ ban” and prosecuted at least two people in 2025 for their alleged role in “‘involving’ people in the ‘international LGBT movement’” that the country’s Supreme Court has deemed an extremist organization.
The report indicates the Hungarian government “continued its attacks on and scapegoating of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people” in 2025, specifically noting its efforts to ban Budapest Pride that more than 100,000 people defied. The report also notes new provisions of Indonesia’s penal code that took effect on Jan. 2 “violate the rights of women, religious minorities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and undermine the rights to freedom of speech and association.”
“This includes the criminalization of all sex outside of marriage, effectively rendering adult consensual same-sex conduct a crime in Indonesia for the first time in the country’s history,” it states.
Bolopion at Wednesday’s press conference said women, people with disabilities, religious minorities, and other marginalized groups lose rights “when democracy is retreating.”
“It’s actually a really good example of how the global retreat from the U.S. as an actor that used to be very imperfectly — you know, with a lot of double standards — but used to be part of this global effort to advance rights and norms for everyone,” he said. “Now, not only has it retreated, which many people expected, but in fact, is now working against it, is working to undermine the system, is working to undermine, at times, the very idea of human rights.”
“That’s definitely something we are acutely aware of, and that we are pushing back,” he added.
Maryland
4th Circuit dismisses lawsuit against Montgomery County schools’ pronoun policy
Substitute teacher Kimberly Polk challenged regulation in 2024
A federal appeals court has ruled Montgomery County Public Schools did not violate a substitute teacher’s constitutional rights when it required her to use students’ preferred pronouns in the classroom.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision it released on Jan. 28 ruled against Kimberly Polk.
The policy states that “all students have the right to be referred to by their identified name and/or pronoun.”
“School staff members should address students by the name and pronoun corresponding to the gender identity that is consistently asserted at school,” it reads. “Students are not required to change their permanent student records as described in the next section (e.g., obtain a court-ordered name and/or new birth certificate) as a prerequisite to being addressed by the name and pronoun that corresponds to their identified name. To the extent possible, and consistent with these guidelines, school personnel will make efforts to maintain the confidentiality of the student’s transgender status.”
The Washington Post reported Polk, who became a substitute teacher in Montgomery County in 2021, in November 2022 requested a “religious accommodation, claiming that the policy went against her ‘sincerely held religious beliefs,’ which are ‘based on her understanding of her Christian religion and the Holy Bible.’”
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in January 2025 dismissed Polk’s lawsuit that she filed in federal court in Beltsville. Polk appealed the decision to the 4th Circuit.
Minnesota
LGBTQ Minnesotans speak out amid ICE crackdowns
‘Our nervous systems are not set up to live under constant threat’
Uncloseted Media published this article on Jan. 31.
By HOPE PISONI, SAM DONNDELINGER, SPENCER MACNAUGHTON, and TAYA STRAUSS | Since the start of December, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., have been under the thumb of an extremely heavy presence of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
During the crackdown, which the agency refers to as “Operation Metro Surge,” at least 3,000 people — mostly undocumented immigrants — have been arrested so far. Tensions came to a boil in January when federal immigration enforcement agents shot and killed poet Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti on separate occasions. In response, Minneapolis-area residents have started to push back. On Jan. 23, Minnesotans organized the first citywide general strike in the U.S. in nearly 80 years, with tens of thousands protesting and over 700 businesses closing in solidarity. And additional protests are taking place nationwide in at least 36 states over Jan. 30 and 31.
Many queer people have been on the frontline of these protests. We spoke with six people on the ground in the Twin Cities to learn more.
Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:
SPENCER MACNAUGHTON: Hi everyone, I’m Spencer Macnaughton, and today I am here with six queer folks from the Minneapolis area. Everyone, thank you so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.
ALL: Thanks for having us.
SM: Yeah, great to be with you. And obviously we reached out to you all based on the headlines. And a lot of what’s playing out at the national level is happening right there in Minneapolis where you guys live. And I just wanted to start to really get a pulse check. How are you guys feeling right now? I have not been in Minneapolis. For folks who only see what’s unfolding on social media or on TV, take us inside what life has been like for you all the past few weeks.
RACHEL DOMINGUEZ: It’s incredibly stressful. Our nervous systems are not set up to live under constant threat. That’s the biggest thing that I think people are not understanding about what’s going on. And I’ve lived in Minneapolis for 41 years. We had a little dress rehearsal for this about five years ago, but it was nothing — there was no precedent. There’s no precedent for this. It’s like water about to come to a boil. Everyone here is stressed out. We’re angry. We’re scared for our safety, for our neighbors’ safety, for our livelihoods. We have no idea when this is gonna stop. Oh, and it’s two fucking degrees out.
JUNE REICHERT: It’s hard to go on like normal when this is happening. Part of my, and I’m sure everybody in your profession, is to not even acknowledge it. Pretend that everything’s okay while you’re at work, while you are going to school, while you are going shopping and everything. And little do you know, down the street, a Somali family is being harassed for no good reason. It brings this feeling of sorrow, especially when it does affect your professional life. When somebody who you’ve been working with for a long time, all of a sudden, as part of my job, I can’t get a hold of them. I work with a lot of people from the Hispanic community and they’re just gone. And you just sit wondering. It’s horrible. It’s a horrible feeling.
SM: And June, tell me more about that. That actually happened?
JH: So for what it’s worth, I sell insurance. I have had clients who have been picked up and I can’t get a hold of them. I mean, I can verify what happened to them, but these people I’m able to get a hold of every single day when I need to, to take care of this, that or the other issue. And now I can’t get a hold of them for a week straight. What am I supposed to think? You know?
SKOT RIEFFER: My day job, I work for a catering company. We have no work at my catering company for the next two months because every single event has canceled because of the ICE occupation. And these events are things from corporate events to weddings. And we’re all now without a job, essentially. My catering company is maybe 30 percent white people and so all of us are checking in with everyone else all the time. One of our folks, also a member of the Hispanic community, has lost four family members. They just got kidnapped. And they’re just gone.
ALICIA KOPP: I am the child of a migrant. I’m from a mixed heritage. My father is from Guatemala. He’s been a citizen since ‘83. Right now, we’re not letting him leave the house. We’re running all errands. The stress that you had spoken to earlier, Rachel, that is definitely wearing thin on all of us.
SM: I mean, what type of mental health effects is that having on him by not being able to leave the house and also probably understanding the reasons why he’s not leaving the house?
AK: When I handed him things like, I showed him what was in a whistle kit with the red cards. This is an emergency contact card. On the inside, the top part says, “help me,” and it’s got whoever’s holding it, their information. The bottom has their loved one and their lawyer and contact information. And they carry this in one of these red cards that on one side has your constitutional rights and on the other side says what you would tell to an immigration agent if they tried to stop you. Or you would just put it up to the window in your car or slip it through, so that you don’t have to talk to them. Now, what good it does? Yeah, I don’t exactly know. Because they’re not exactly following the rules, they kind of tell a lot of people, “That doesn’t matter, we don’t care.” But with this contact card, you have it on you, you literally hand it to somebody if you feel like you’re about to get picked up and say, “I need help. Contact this person for me.” Trying to explain to my dad why, even though he’s a citizen now, I wanted him to have this on him if he’s leaving the house? That was hard. And he was a little belligerent at first. I’m just like, “Look, you’ve kept me alive for 50 fricking years. It’s my turn to do the same for you. And right now, they don’t care that you’re a citizen. They just see you and they go, ‘Yep, we don’t want him here.’ And they’re gonna take you away. You’ll be away from your medicine. You’ll be away from us. It will take us how long to figure out where you are.” Even if it’s like hours, that probably isn’t great for somebody that probably shouldn’t be rassled to the ground by young dumb men or women or whoever they are. But you know, it’s hard. It’s really hard for him and it’s hard for all of us because you don’t wanna have to talk to your parents like that.
TERRESA HARDAWAY: I just wanted to comment on how I’m feeling in this moment, and I would say that while I am tired, I’m not exhausted. And it’s because Black people have always been under occupation. And I’m so happy that people are coming to the realization that state violence and national violence is something that affects all of us. But I gotta say my exhaustion probably comes from the long story posts and the Instagram posts of people realizing for the first time that they are also a part of this system. And they realize that they are also subject to be attacked and to be violently murdered in the street, just like Black people, I think that’s where my exhaustion might come in. But I will say, because we are used to this, I know that this is not gonna be the final moment. I don’t want to hold onto this hopelessness that I feel like a lot of folks who are just coming into that realization are starting to feel on their own. And so we have to just keep fighting. And as tired as we are, now is the time for us to actually push the system that we want to stop harming our neighbors.
SM: And how do you push a system in this moment? What is the strategy in terms of pushing? Because, you know, it does feel like a moment where change could happen because there’s so much attention on it.
TH: There are many, many ways that folks can tap into mutual aid networks, can tap into organizations who have been advocating for immigrant rights and equity in those spaces. If there are holes within our neighborhoods that need to be filled, people need food, people need supplies, and they aren’t comfortable leaving their house, there are organizations who have already been doing that work that people can tap and support. People can become legal observers. There is a lot of things that folks could do. This anxiety that I know that we’re all feeling and this exhaustion? I would say focus that into some of the work that’s already happening.
RD: My kid has only gone to Southside Family School for his entire life. That’s where Renee Good, that’s where her kid went. Still goes there actually. So, our kids, first off, they couldn’t be in school. Because the New York Post ran some bullshit article about how our school was some like communist indoctrination training center that recruited her to join an ICE watch. And then all of a sudden death threats, bomb threats, people coming into the teachers’ houses and knocking on the doors and running away. Bomb threat, they had to bring the dogs in. So my kid didn’t even get to go to school for two weeks and now they’re back in school in a secret location. Like this is the fucking Taliban that we’re hiding from.
SM: Wow.
RD: I can’t even say where my kid goes to school. We’re not even supposed to text it.
SM: I’m sorry you have to do that. And I, yeah, and we’ve all seen those harrowing headlines and images of children as young as 2, as young as 5, being taken by ICE over the last few weeks. I wanted to ask more broadly, for the kids you guys know in your life, what is the impact this is having on children?
AK: A lot of stuff for kids are being canceled. I know that the Minnesota Orchestra has canceled their Young People’s Concert Series for the time being because it’s just not safe to go down there. The students that auditioned last spring to be part of the All State Ensembles, all of their concerts have been canceled because it is just not safe.
SR: My partner and I have started doing neighborhood patrols because there’s a daycare two houses down from ours that caters to our small little, poor community around here and everything like that. And so there’s a lot of different folks who go to this daycare. And so every morning from 7:30 ‘til 10, I’m out there, and then from 3 until 5, which is the pickup times. And so we’re out there as observers.
And there’s been some real scary things, and one thing that is really burned in my head was this dad came up and was chatting with me and thanking me for being there and whatnot. He said to me that his kid, his daughter came up to him and asked him, “Dad, what do I do when the men come and take my friends?” And he didn’t have an answer and he was like, “I feel like my job as a dad is to be able to answer these questions and I do not have an answer” and he was sitting there, and we’re outside, it’s –10 and he’s crying. And I’m crying. And our tears are freezing to our damn faces and all I can do is just nod and hug this guy and just be like “yeah, I don’t have an answer either, man.”
SM: You mentioned the ICE patrolling. Tell me about what that is, what you do and why you’re doing it.
SR: We’re just looking for suspicious vehicles. So if out-of-state plates, a slew of identical looking SUVs drive by, we’re marking it, we’re reporting it to the other people in our Signal groups and everything like that. And then in the situation, just the other day, there were three black SUVs that drove by, all of them with ICE agents in full equipment, everything. So we reported all of that. We’re monitoring, we’re taking pictures, we are marking plates, we’re running plates if needed, and just letting every — like there’s a Hmong Market just down the road, and so we let them know. There’s a small, kind of a strip mall that’s almost all owned by people of color, and we call one of them and then they distribute the word and they’ll lock their doors if we see anyone. Just things like that.
SM: When you say you report it, who do you trust right now to report to?
SR: Our neighbors.
SM: Your neighbors.
SR: We have a Signal group, I’m part of several Signal groups. I will get called. Someone will tell me and be like, “hey, we need a big white guy here right now.” And I will show up. And then when I get there, I see things, I take pictures, I send it to that group and I send it to my group of my immediate block of neighbors. And so then they all know, and then they’ll either go check on the neighbors next door who didn’t respond in the group or will drive to the daycare or whatever is needed to do.
SM: Maybe this is a dumb question, but why do you think they’re saying “we need a big white guy”?
SR: I mean, I’m just as likely to get shot and killed and kidnapped and everything as anybody else at this point. But if they’re trying to push the agenda that these types of people are bad people and whatnot, and if in every camera frame that they have, if there’s someone who looks just like you? That bullshit narrative, it’s harder for them to sell it. If I’m standing there, it’s harder for them to sell it. And I hate it. It sucks on so many levels, obviously.
SM: Can people talk about what they’re doing to push back?
TH: Yeah. I think for me and my teams at Blackbird Revolt and Black Garnet Books, we have these spaces. And so this is something that we didn’t have in 2020. And so being able to activate these spaces, hosting a poster making and community space for folks to come together who do feel similarly and just want to be in space with each other has been really amazing. We are also holding a drive where folks can purchase a book, that’s either in English, Spanish or Somali, that we’re able to deliver to families that don’t feel comfortable leaving their homes.
RD: The people here, we don’t have any faith in the politicians, that they’re going to do anything meaningful or that they have any power at all. We don’t have any faith that the police are going to protect us or that the National Guard is gonna protect us or that Tim Walz or Jacob Frey or any of them are gonna be able to protect us.
SM: Why don’t you feel like you have faith in Jacob Frey? I mean, when I see him on TV and he’s saying “get the hell out,” it seems like he’s giving his best effort, but is that a sentiment that is not felt on this call?
SR: It’s super fucking easy to say “get the fuck out.” We’re all saying that, but all of us are also in the street. All of us are also helping, donating food, donating time. Where the fuck has he been?
TH: I’m seeing the real people who are standing up for these communities out at the protest. I ain’t never once seen that man and that man just stay talking shit and never moves and never has any action behind it. Fuck that man. Fuck all of this whole, “get the fuck out.” Stop, anybody can say a cuss word, but you actually have the power to pass policy and you’re not doing it. So it’s not about not having faith. We have a history of seeing them say shit and then not backing that up with action. So it’s not about faith. We have a historical record of y’all not doing shit for the people.
SM: So let me ask then quickly, what do you want him to do? What could he do that would be meaningful right now if he could actually do, that’s within his power?
JH: If you don’t want to start a constitutional crisis by arresting an ICE officer while he’s doing the awful things that he’s doing, fine, I guess. I would argue differently.
RD: No, that’s not fine. That’s what they should do. That’s what they could do.
JH: Correct.
RD: They could get some fucking balls and call the commanders into their office and say, “Look, are you loyal to the constitution or are you a Nazi that’s gonna fold?”
JH: If these people want to preserve whatever level of normalcy that we know has not existed as Rachel, Terry and Alicia have all described, then citations, parking violations, trespassing violations, these people are using their administrative warrants, that are not admissible to use to enter people’s homes, to enter people’s homes. And they aren’t getting trespassing citations for that. They aren’t getting charged for that, I don’t even think the mayor has talked about the fact that they’re doing that. And these are all things that are actions that can be done instead of tweeting really hard. I want action. I don’t want words. I don’t want you to look like a big tough guy and to get all the people on Twitter or Bluesky or whatever to go, “Oh, he owned him.” I want them gone. I don’t want them here anymore.
SR: He could at the very least talk to us. All he’s doing right now is talking to the media. Talk to us, show up. Maybe he’s doin’ shit behind closed doors. Okay fine, but tell us. Talk to us. Come out, listen. Talk. Be present.
SOREN ASTER: One thing we did at the clay pit as well is I changed it to appointment only. I did as much research as I could on how to keep ICE from coming into the public space of my business, and I found that by making it by appointment only, the whole space becomes private and they cannot come in. So my door stays locked. I let people in as I see fit, but just as another form of precaution, keeping those doors locked. It’s an absolute nightmare.
SM: It literally sounds like it’s created a situation where every move you make is nerve-wracking because of what’s happening.
SA: Absolutely.
SM: I’ve heard many people saying that what’s unfolding in Minneapolis is a queer story. And I find that interesting. And I’m curious, do you guys agree with that?
JH: I want to push back a lot on the idea that this is a very queer thing that’s happening. As a transgender person, I’ve been a community activist for quite a while, especially in 2022 when the federal government, from my perspective, was failing to protect my trans siblings in states like Florida and Texas. There’s a lot of my activism that I do that is directly fueled by my queer identity. My neighbors, my friends, my colleagues, my clients even, are being attacked by a force that is an invasion to our city and our state. And it is on me as a human with human emotions and a personal connection to this place to protect my community, and that’s got nothing to do with me being gay. The motivation is, in this instance, for one of a very rare time in my experience, very disconnected from my queer identity. It’s got more to do with protecting Minnesotans. It’s got more to deal with protecting communities, immigrant communities and communities of color who people who look like me, as we’ve discussed here, famously just don’t even bat an eye at, and it’s wrong.
SA: I don’t think it’s an inherently queer thing, but I think that queer people and Black and Brown people are used to having to rely on our community, rather than our government and other people to get the things that we need and to get the support and to make things happen. We’re used to having to riot, and we’re used to having to scream and try and get people to listen to us and our stories. And so I think when this started. The first people that really knew what to do and how to do it and how to organize are those people. And so I think that it’s one part of the story.
SM: One thing we had mentioned earlier is what happened in Minnesota in 2020. Many have compared what’s happening now to the George Floyd protests of 2020. Um, how do you guys compare it? How is it different? How’s it similar?
AK: The big difference? We knew who the police were, we kind of know who these people are, but we don’t know who those people are. We know that they are some of the same people that were let out of the Jan. 6 stuff because of the pardon. And we know they’re likely a lot of the cops that left the profession because they couldn’t beat up on people so freely in Minneapolis anymore with some of the initiatives that have been trying to change the culture of our police forces.
Editor’s Note: While some government officials, including U.S. Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) have called for the DOJ to release information on any participants of the Jan. 6 insurrection employed by ICE, no details have been published. Additionally, several police chiefs and sheriffs have reported that ICE has tried to poach their officers for recruitment, but Uncloseted Media was unable to confirm any cases of this in Minneapolis.
TH: I think for me, I compare it to the longevity of support that’s gonna be happening. I think that after a year, after the protests, after the uprisings, it went back to business as normal, business as usual. I’m also a runner. And so when I’m gonna run a short distance, if I know I’m just trying to get a fast-ass time running a mile, I’m gonna run at that at full velocity. And I feel like people who are just getting activated, that’s what they’re doing. They’re running at it at full velocity and then they get exhausted. Y’all need to run this as if it’s gonna be a 50 mile race. I think for me, how I was activated during the uprisings, I’m really leaning on community. I am texting my group of white allies and being like, “Y’all, I need y’all to pick this up. I need you to help me here, dah dah dah.”
JH: It is unfortunate to me that many people, similar to in 2020 and 2021, will see the immediate aftermath of something and see Derek Chauvin got arrested or whatever it is, and they’re done. And that’s it. And we made the change. And now we can go back. It’s a joke in my community: We can go back to brunch. No we can’t. We’re not done. And they think once ICE is out of Minneapolis and the white people stop dying, then they can just go back to sipping their tea. And I’m worried about that. So it’s a push and pull, and I really want to remain optimistic, and I know there is a future worth fighting for. But I’m also worried that some people will see the short-term victories and give up.
SM: Trump has said that Minnesotan protesters are “left-wing agitators.” I want to know, maybe as a last question, I want to know, how important is protest and what else is getting you through right now?
AK: Well, protest is very important to me, but also understanding the multitude of ways that you can participate in protest. You don’t have to be out necessarily facing off with people that are on an opposing side. You are doing protest by maybe doing a Zoom concert because your concert got canceled and you’re still going to play. Or by delivering food for neighbors and other health and home needs, like laundry detergent is a huge one right now that people need as well as just things like shampoo and soap.
SA: All of the reactions that have happened are really logical when you think about it from an outside perspective. If you take out left and right and the political ideologies of it all, people are coming in and abducting people that are here, mostly not committing crimes. A lot of people, perfectly legal. In any other situation, I think the logical answer would be to fight back and to step up to your community and do what you can to prevent those kidnappings and to prevent that violence from happening.
TH: Protests were so important that it is the first amendment. And so when we get asked things like, “Why are we protesting?” The country was founded on that. I don’t want people to just only relate it to Black people or just to trans people. It was something that was laid at the foundation of this country. We do get to say what we want our government to do and protest is our way of being able to speak out about that. And if you weren’t comfortable with that, you shouldn’t have ran for president.
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