Northern Progressives
Updates
2025-08-03
Greetings
In this newsletter you will find information about:
- Our next member meeting on August 6 at 6:30pm in Cook
- Our weekly Friday signing events at noon in Cook & Tower
- Training opportunities
- Call for stories
In the news:
- ICE escalates its attacks on human rights
- US placed on international rights watchlist
- A look at politics in the NW Angle — "This Tiny MAGA Town Borders Canada"
- & more
Inspiration:
- Hope
- What direct action does
- A look behind the scenes of your newsletter — people reading & sharing links (using old-school tools to resist disinformation & AI)
Action Items & Events
Next Meeting!
- When:
- Wednesday, August 6, 6:30pm
- Where:
- Cook Community Center
510 Gopher Dr.
Cook, MN - Topic:
- Surviving What Comes Next: Planning for Resilience
Bring ideas and strategies for moving forward in the current political climate. What can we do to preserve ourselves and our communities?
All are welcome to attend.
Signing & Resisting Events
Each Friday at noon at the following locations:
- Cook: Hwy 53 and River Street
- Tower: Mainstreet by the locomotive
Signs should include issues common to everyone like good jobs, enough money for food and healthcare, and a good education.
Indivisible Red & Rural Caucus August Call
from Indivisible's Red and Rural Caucus
- When:
- August 27, 7:00–8:00pm CDT
- Where:
- Online
"When we come back together at the end of August, we will be doing a deep dive into understanding how disinformation plays a role in your red and rural organizing! This won't be a call to miss!"
Building Partnerships and Coalitions, featuring Cristina Jimenez
from Indivisible
- When:
- Monday, August 18, 6:00–7:30pm
- Where:
- Online
"Become equipped with strategies and best practices for forming, managing, and sustaining effective coalitions to amplify social, community support, and advocacy efforts."
Call for Stories
from the Minnesota Reformer
"Moving forward, it'll be my full-time job to cover the impact of the federal government in Minnesota. I'll be writing about immigration, cuts to federal spending and health care, tariffs and more.
"Got any story ideas? Send them my way. mmcvan@minnesotareformer.com."
News & Training
Fighting Authoritarianism Resource Toolkit
from New Left Accelerator
"We are living through extraordinary times. Social justice and nonprofit work is increasingly taking place in a high-threat environment that is designed to sow fear and confusion, to increase risk to our organizations, people, structures, and to undermine the bold, powerful work organizations have been doing in the field.
"In this environment, it can be hard to know where to find trusted resources. NLA has created this toolkit to share vetted resources, tools, and trusted movement capacity-building partners that will help our communities remain vigilant, stay informed, and prepared for the hard work ahead. We will be updating the toolkit monthly, so save the link to your bookmarks and share with your team!"
One Million Rising
from No Kings partnership
"Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations, rollbacks of civil rights, weaponized courts, and full-scale attacks on our democracy. We don't have to wait until it's too late. We can stop this. But it'll take all of us—not just single days of mass action, but sustained organizing in our communities.
"That's why this summer, we're launching One Million Rising—a national effort to train one million people in the strategic logic and practice of non-cooperation, as well as the basics of community organizing and campaign design. This is how we build people power that can't be ignored. You're invited to join us—and lead."
"We'll Smash the F* Window Out and Drag Him Out"
from ProPublica
"In Los Angeles, a terrified immigrant sits inside a truck as a masked man swings a baton, shattering his window."
"Use-of-force experts and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement insiders say the tactic was rarely used during previous administrations. They say there is no known policy change greenlighting agents' smashing of windows. Rather, it's a part of a broader shattering of norms."
"'There are arrest quotas, and they are increasingly aggressive. There's been an emphasis placed on speed and numbers that did not exist before,' says Deborah Fleischaker, who served as ICE chief of staff under President Joe Biden."
The Fight Against ICE's Cruelty and the Rise of State Violence
from ICEbreaker News
"ICE may deport migrants to countries other than their own with just six hours notice, memo says.
"A senior White House aide has reportedly set a daily ICE arrest quota of 3,000, guiding DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to oversee high-volume immigration raids nationwide.
"New data shows ICE is focusing more on non-criminal undocumented immigrants, contradicting its messaging about targeting 'criminal' migrants and raising questions about enforcement priorities
"After temporarily pausing workplace raids, ICE has rescinded the exemption, resuming enforcement in farms, hotels, and restaurants despite industry concerns."
US placed on rights watchlist over health of its civil society under Trump
from The Guardian
"International non-profit Civicus says ‘sustained attacks on civic freedoms' put US on par with El Salvador and Kenya.
"Civicus pointed to three major issues including the deployment of military to quell protests, growing restrictions placed on journalists and civil society, as well as the aggressive targeting of anti-war advocates surrounding Palestine."
ACLU in the Streets: Action Highlights
from ACLU
Immigration | ICE Detention
"Across the country, People Power Volunteers are fighting to stop 287(g) agreements: the harmful policies that deputize local law enforcement as ICE agents. In Minnesota, over 50 volunteers joined the ACLU of MN's first state-wide volunteer engagement call to learn about 287(g). The ACLU of MN also hosted a statewide community training on preventing 287(g) agreements, and 14 People Power activists joined MN community leaders to form an action team in Kandiyohi County, the most recent county to enter a 287(g) agreement."
This Tiny MAGA Town Borders Canada. They're Ready to Say Good Riddance
from Politico
"NORTHWEST ANGLE, Minnesota — Paul Colson compared the Angle to a scene painted by Norman Rockwell: It's quiet, safe and the fishing's great. But life in this United States exclave — a 150-person pocket of Minnesota that is entirely surrounded by water and Canada — isn't always picture perfect, the third-generation resident acknowledged one morning last month.
"The only way to reach this fishers' paradise without driving through Canadian customs is via prop plane, boat or — during ice fishing season — by snowmobiling more than an hour across the Lake of the Woods, the second-largest lake in the land of 10,000 of them. The Angle is only part of the country due to an 18th-century surveying error, which has made it the northernmost point in the contiguous U.S. For elementary-aged kids, there's a one-room schoolhouse (if you don't count the recently added gym and kitchenette), but starting in sixth grade students in the Angle have to go through four international border checkpoints and be bused more than 120 miles round trip to Warroad, Minnesota, for class each school day.
- Residents who overwhelmingly voted MAGA are increasingly frustrated as Trump's tariffs on Canadian imports drive up costs of essentials.
- Repeated threats to annex Canada and dismantle trade agreements have unsettled locals reliant on cross-border commerce, leading a few core supporters to question their allegiance.
- But most residents support Trump's crusade against Canada, whom they feel has often made things difficult for them.
- Even as MAGA signs remain, a growing minority of residents say they will back candidates promising to stabilize US-Canada relations and ease economic pressures."
The battle to shape the public's perception of Trump's big bill is just beginning
from the Minnesota Reformer
"'Donald Trump promised to lower costs on day one, but six months into his disastrous second term, he's robbing working Minnesotans to fund tax handouts for his billionaire backers,' Martin said in a statement accompanying the new tracker. As chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Martin never lost a statewide race in 15 years.
"One problem for Democrats in the near term, however: Republicans shrewdly — politically, if not fiscally — delayed the safety net cuts until after the midterm elections, which means many Americans will see the benefits of the bill while the costs won't be felt for some time."
Inspirations
Democratic leaders, parliamentary government, and hope
Substack writers Matt Kerbel and Chris Bowers respond to questions from their readers
from Wolves and Sheep
Question #1: "I recently read something about an 'alternate state' of government that posits that the majority of us will continue to live fairly normal lives and get complacent/compliant while the Trump administration does their dirty deeds (disappearing people, taking away our rights and civil liberties, cutting programs to profit billionaires). Given that this already seems to be happening, what can we do about it?"
Answer #1: "(Chris) I agree that this would indeed be a disturbing outcome! That said, I disagree that this is happening right now. Two of the largest protests in the history of the United States, the 'Hand's Off!' protests of April 5, and the 'No King's' protests of June 14, have taken place during the first six months of the Trump administration. While some large media companies occasionally make high profile concessions to Trump, dissent against the administration is thriving and growing on social media and in hundreds of independent outlets made possible by Substack. Democrats are crushing it in special elections, which are continuing to happen without any difficulty. Democratic dissent in the United States seems alive, well and thriving to me. I don't feel like the country has become complacent and compliant at all."
Question #5: "Hope is something that's important to me and I continue trying to figure out what it is. How do people hope? What do they hope for. For me, it's not about outcomes, but in doing the work. So, my question to you is—what's hope for you? What does it mean to you to hope?"
Answer #5: "(Chris) To me, hope is two things. First, hope is having something to look forward to every day. Not just something to look forward to on the weekend, on vacation, around the holidays, or an accomplishment several years in the future, but every single day. Whether it is a walk I can take, a book I can read, something which I can accomplish at work, or an activity I can engage in with my family, I find that having something to look forward to every single day has provided me with more hope than anything else in my life. Making the every day something to look forward to is what makes me feel, in the phrasing of the life motto that my wife and I have adopted for ourselves, 'excited to live!'"
"(Matt) Thank you for asking this very thoughtful question. To me, hope is about possibility. It is about the resilience of the spirit. It is about envisioning a future where I would want to live, grounded in what I believe to be attainable, and—like you—working to make that future happen. And as the old saying goes, it is a journey rather than a destination. It is remembering that nothing remains constant, that pendulums swing, and that is history is filled with moments of peril like ours and resolutions to those moments. As long as I can remember that light always follows darkness, I have hope."
What Direct Action Does
from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove & William J. Barber, II of Our Moral Moment
"In the spring of 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality organized a Freedom Ride from Washington, DC to New Orleans to challenge the illegal practice of racial segregation on interstate travel. It was a nonviolent direct action. White and black passengers boarded the bus and insisted on sitting together, no matter what the authorities said. They would nonviolently face whatever consequences came for their actions because they knew that what they were doing was right. John Lewis, who was 21 years old at the time, said the goal of the ride wasn't just to end segregation; it was to 'take the civil rights movement into the heart of the Deep South.'
"If you visit the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, today, there is a wall of hundreds of mug shots, mostly taken in Mississippi that summer of 1961, before Freedom Riders were sent to the notorious Parchman Prison. After Lewis and his riding partner, Jim Zwerg, were attacked by a mob at the bus depot in Montgomery, Alabama, and another bus was fire bombed in Aniston, Alabama, others came to continue the ride. When Lewis was released from the hospital, he insisted on joining them. They took their direct action to the heart of the Deep South and served 40-day sentences, transforming the Mississippi State Penitentiary into a school for American democracy. Their mug shots cover that wall as a monument to the power of direct action to inspire a moral movement."
"The moral witness of direct actions like the Freedom Rides interrupted everyone in a system that was more fragile than it seemed. It didn't change the minds of Southern governors or Mississippi jailers, but it did force the masses who'd gone along with the quiet violence of the system to decide whether they really believed it was justified.
"This is what direct action does. It exposes the moral bankruptcy of authoritarian regimes. It compels everyday citizens to choose a side in a moral struggle."
Behind the Scenes at the NP Newsletter
This newsletter is a compilation of events (usually sent to us from the breakfast club), current news & analysis, training opportunities and inspirational stories.
We partner with Kathy at Northern Action to send these out to you. In July Kathy asked one of our biggest contributors of "links" to allow us to publish her suggestions into a reading list, a "playlist," a travelogue through their experience with the flood of things coming across all of our desks. They have agreed to offer their list as a prototype under the name "Jester." They then challenged Kathy McT to do the same. At the end of July we started in on Beth's contributions as well.You can find these lists at the link below. It was haunting seeing how many things happened and how much changed in just one month.
We welcome you to join this as a sort of multi-threaded chorus of readers (or like banging pans together). We insist that independent journalism/small & local action matter.
Please Share your Sources of Information and Inspiration:
What news sources, reading lists, podcasts, subscriptions and other resources do you rely on for good information? Please respond to hello@northernaction.org with the sources you recommend and a brief reason why they're important to you. We plan to publish a list from sources you submit. We'll keep submissions anonymous.
Northern Progressives Schedule & Structure
NP Group meetings are held:
First & third Wednesdays in Tower or Cook
- 1st & 3rd Wednesdays in Tower or Cook
Breakfast Club:
- Pattenn's Café in Orr at 10 am on 2nd and 4th Wednesdays.
Everyone is welcome to come and discuss current happenings, help shape the direction of NP, and get to know each other.
Northern Progressives Communication Committee
- General email (submit ideas here):
- hello@northernprogressives.org