Strategy & Action ^
ACLU People Power
Organize during August recess
- When:
- July 14, 7:00pm CT
- Where:
- Online
For months, members of Congress have been making decisions in Washington that affect our rights, our communities, and our futures. Now they're coming home. During August Recess, lawmakers return to their districts to meet with constituents, attend community events, and hear directly from the people they represent. Join ACLU People Power on 7/14 at 8 PM ET to learn how to engage your elected officials, hold them accountable, and advocate for the civil liberties and democratic values our communities deserve.
Justice for Lorenzo
Day of Action & Accountability Movement Call
- When:
- July 15, 7:00pm CT
- Where:
- Online
Join us for the Justice for Lorenzo: Day of Action and Accountability Movement Call on July 15th at 8 pm ET/ 5 pm PT, where we will gather in solidarity to hear from Lorenzo’s loved ones, get updates about the case, and learn how you can take action over the coming weeks to demand justice and accountability for Lorenzo and his family.
On the call we will provide tips and tactics to support you in taking actions that include a powerful visual symbol to lift up during the World Cup final (Lorenzo’s son was named Ronaldo after the soccer star) and vigils to be held across the country on or around July 25 in solidarity with community vigils taking place right now in Houston and across Texas.
The violence that took Lorenzo's life cannot be hidden behind secrecy, lies, or impunity. Justice for Lorenzo means justice for everyone living under the threat of unchecked immigration enforcement violence in our country.
Immigrant Justice Summer
a training series from Indivisible
- When:
- July [9], 23, & August 6 (& more), 7:00 CT
- Where:
- Online
The Trump administration is buying up warehouses across the country to expand its detention and deportation regime while planning for more militarized surges in major US cities. The threat is escalating. This resource breaks down what we're demanding, how communities are fighting back, and how you can get trained to respond when ICE comes to your community.
Beyond the BWCA: Sulfide Mining Looming Threat to Minnesota
with Water Over Nickel, Friends of the Mississippi River, and Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA)
We keep each other safe
- When:
- July 28, 12:00pm
- Where:
- Online
"Talon Metals/Rio Tinto plans to mine a 'massive sulphide mineralization' with high levels of sulfide and toxic metals. Drilling in the huge 31,000 acre area where Talon controls private land and state leases (about 85% of the size of Minneapolis) controlled by Talon Metals in central Minnesota’s Aitkin County, Talon has already found sulfide ore both in the Sandy River and Tamarack River watershed, which flow through the Big Sandy Lake Flowage to the Mississippi River and along the West Branch Kettle River, which flows downstream to the St. Croix River."
Upcoming
- August 5: DNR Public Meeting McGregor High School
- August 12: DNR Public Meeting Blaine Sports Arena
Building Trust with Community Works
from the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI)
- When:
- July 22, 5:30 CT
- Where:
- Online
Find out how to get involved in RUBI’s on-the-ground work to build trust, address concrete local needs, and increase collaboration across the ideological divide in rural and working class communities.
What Physics Tells Us About Defeating Fascism
The rules apply everywhere
"When you excite an atom, it transfers energy to the atoms around it. It doesn’t use Roberts Rules of Order, coordinate with the receiving atoms, or need a central command structure telling it which direction to move. Energy transfers through matter according to laws that predate every government that has ever existed and will outlast every government that will ever exist. An atom moves around more, that creates what we call heat, sufficient heat applied to any system then produces changes that system; movement and time are the only variables.
"Every person who files a complaint, makes a call, sends a letter, shows up at an office, crashes a fundraiser, or loudly shows up somewhere they were not expected is an atom now excited and generating energy. They transfer energy to the people immediately around them, those people transfer it further, their actions can even become amplified, this movement and energy generates heat. Heat softens and melts and allows reformation."
The Blueprint for Beating Trump
"Democrats need to fight harder and prioritize outcomes to defeat Republicans"
"Marc Elias sits down with Brian Tyler Cohen to discuss his new book, "The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World," which makes the case that Democrats need to fight harder and prioritize outcomes over institutional deference to defeat Republicans. They break down the Supreme Court's latest term and the case for court reform, but also dig into the bigger argument: that clinging to norms like the filibuster risks squandering a rare chance to win back disillusioned voters. Brian lays out what he believes Democrats need to be ready to act on from day one, including voting rights reform and election integrity. They also break down how independent media is reshaping political strategy heading into the midterms."
Beyond Red and Blue
Nine groups show the conflicting values underlying today’s polarized politics
"American politics is deeply divided along partisan lines – and for many Americans, the choice between the two parties feels stark, even existential.
"But beneath that familiar red-blue partisan divide is a much more nuanced picture: Many Americans hold a complex mix of values and beliefs that don’t always fit neatly into either major party.
"Pew Research Center’s new political typology shows how this complexity plays out, sorting the public into nine distinct groups based on their political and cultural values, not their party. The result is a picture of American politics with far more than two colors in it."
The Rhythm of Reform
In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense...
"Today our Constitution and the institutions of self-government face extraordinary pressure. In the first two months of 2026 alone, we saw an invasion of Venezuela without congressional authorization, a threat to use military force to seize Greenland from a NATO ally, and a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve Board, which Powell decried as an attempt to coerce the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates. We saw the sickening sight of federal agents killing two civilians in Minnesota in separate incidents, including, Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Veterans Administration who was witnessing and protesting abuse, followed by a fusillade of lies from top officials who labeled him a “domestic terrorist” and “an assassin.” These events unfolded alongside the launch of a full-scale war in the Middle East, undertaken without congressional debate or authorization and with scant public explanation at all.
"As Canadian prime minister Mark Carney put it in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, “[w]e are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
"At the Brennan Center for Justice, which I lead, we work to counter abuses of power every day. We are deeply engaged in the broad campaign to counter the executive power grab, including filing or coordinating dozens of briefs in the flotilla of cases addressing executive authority. We are preparing to ensure that the 2026 election will be free, fair, and secure. In that effort, we work with election officials and law enforcement officers from both parties. We do so in the face of something unprecedented in our nation’s history: a coordinated campaign by the federal government to undermine elections.
"All of this is vital work. But that cannot be all that we do. We must begin, now, to imagine a better future—a future after the wreckage. What will matter most at this moment is not just what we are against, but what we are for.
"It is emphatically the time to begin mapping out the next reform agenda."
Hands Off Our Vote 2026
Hands Off Our Vote is Indivisible’s national program to ensure all eligible voters get to cast their ballot, and that those ballots get counted
"We know that Trump and his Big Lie cronies are plotting to do everything they can to undermine our elections in 2026. Whether it’s trying to end mail-in voting, targeting registration programs, blocking vote-counting, even trying to ban states from encouraging people to vote – it’s going to be no-holds-barred from them this year as they try desperately to block the free and fair elections.
"But we’re going to cut through the noise, and we’re going to be ready for whatever dirty tricks they try. And we’re going to do it with community power and preparation, not panic."
5calls
Pick an action & make a call
Be a Walking Voter Registration Booth
Talk to neighbors, friends, family, co-workers — Make sure everyone has a plan to vote.
We have business-size cards you can print & distribute.
Download & print on your own, send a digital version to your contacts, or arrange for us to get you
already-printed cards.
Once you have a card in hand you can help people you encounter use a handy QR code to get straight
to an online voter registration portal.
Organizing to Protect Democracy
Recorded training from the ACLU
In a moment when our right to vote is facing relentless attacks, understanding how elections work has never been more important.
Now, we have the electoral knowledge and skills to be active in protecting our democracy.
Journalism Matters ^
Witness (& the power of the humble hyperlink in the midst of AI search-summary slop)
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo
‘He did not deserve to die’: family of man fatally shot by ICE agent speaks out
"ICE officers in an unmarked car shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father of three, on his way to work.
We demand justice for Lorenzo and accountability for all of Trump’s thugs."
— Indivisible
"Salgado, 52, was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official on Tuesday morning, while on his way to work at a construction site. Salgado’s family said he was a “hardworking family man”, had lived in the US for more than 30 years"
Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
Hundreds of thousands protected by the program have accessed protections and security in the United States for many years, and contribute significantly to the workforce and the economy
"Temporary Protected Status (TPS) offers work authorization and deportation protections for individuals in the U.S. who cannot safely return to their home countries. TPS is a critical program that provides many immigrants an opportunity to remain in the U.S. and work while conditions in their home countries remain unsafe for them to return. Since its establishment, TPS has been beneficial to the United States, providing important protections to families throughout communities and driving important contributions to the U.S. economy and workforce.
"The Trump administration is terminating protections for hundreds of thousands of people who cannot safely return to their home countries
"Since taking office, the Trump administration has moved to formally terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 13 countries, impacting more than one million people who have been living in the U.S. with protection and work authorization while conditions in their home countries are unsafe for return."
The Court vs. Democracy
An interview with Julie C. Suk, author of the forthcoming book The Shadow Court, on the Supreme Court’s recent decisions and the kind of reforms that would be needed to democratize the judiciary.
"In our summer issue, Dissent co-editor Patrick Iber spoke with political scientist David Bateman and legal scholar Julie C. Suk about the dysfunction and degradation of American constitutional government. After the end of the most recent Supreme Court term, I spoke again with Suk, author of the forthcoming book The Shadow Court: Rescuing Democracy from the Supreme Court, about the Roberts Court’s major decisions this year—on voting rights, executive power, birthright citizenship, and more—and the kind of reforms that would be needed to democratize the judiciary."
Trump administration stopping 4 Minnesota wind power developments
The Trump administration’s de facto freeze on wind energy puts 1,200 construction jobs, 4,400 “indirect and induced” jobs and more than $168 million in economic impact at risk for Minnesota, according to a new report from a St. Paul-based progressive think tank.
"The U.S. Department of Defense has stopped completing the mandated — and once-routine — national security review process for proposed wind farms. As a result, Minnesota could lose four wind energy projects that could generate enough power for several hundred thousand homes, North Star Policy Action says.
"The apparent Pentagon work stoppage is stalling more than 250 wind projects nationwide. If the Minnesota projects don’t move forward, the state stands to lose around $1.6 billion in direct investment."
MNsure enrollment dropped 12% in 2026
after jump in insurance costs
"The dip in insurance coverage offered on MNsure — the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace — mirrors a nationwide trend in 2026. The drop in coverage was expected after most Republican senators blocked Democratic efforts to extend extra federal subsidies that offset the cost of health care premiums — what people pay upfront to be insured — for millions of Americans since 2021.
"Subsidies under the Affordable Care Act offset the cost of health insurance premiums for families who make below 400% of the federal poverty level — in 2026, for example, $132,000 was the cutoff for a household of four. The subsidies were designed to help people who aren’t eligible for Medicaid or Medicare but also don’t have enough money to pay for unaffordable employer insurance or private insurance."
Food stamp changes will cost states billions
Raising fears about SNAP’s future
"Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act made major changes to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, including new eligibility and work requirements. Already, more than 4 million Americans have lost SNAP benefits, putting more pressure on food banks and food pantries across the country.
"But beginning in fall 2027, states for the first time must begin to fund some SNAP benefits themselves. Analyses of newly released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show states could be on the hook for more than $9 billion. Some states, county officials and advocates fear this will remove more Americans from the safety net program and even push some states to consider dropping out of SNAP altogether."
Trump fires all Election Assistance Commission members
The firings leave the federal election agency with no commissioners & unable to act as Trump seeks to reshape voting rules
"The firings leave the four-member commission with no commissioners, meaning it cannot take official action until new members are installed. They also come days after the Supreme Court granted the president power to fire leaders of independent agencies, weakening a legal framework that for decades had insulated bipartisan federal commissions from direct White House control."
Red state? Blue state?
Here are the races that will likely determine party control at the Minnesota Legislature
"The largest district in surface area could be the most competitive. District 3 spans 14,809 square miles, slicing across the Duluth suburbs and Iron Range and bubbling over with debates over data centers, guns and mining.
"The Senate race is a rematch of the 2022 contest when DFLer Grant Hauschild eked by Republican Andrea Zupancich with just less than 51% of the vote."
Inspiration ^
Remembering Congressman John Lewis
Good Trouble Lives On
"A civil rights icon and member of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Lewis of Georgia was a freedom fighter for more than 60 years. Called one of the most courageous activists the Civil Rights Movement ever produced, he dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties and building what he called the 'beloved community' in America."
Minnesota begins distributing $40 million in rental assistance
"A $40 million boost to a state homelessness prevention program will soon reach thousands of Minnesotans.
"The divided Legislature approved the extra housing assistance in the 2026 legislative session, funneling the money to the Family Homeless Prevention and Assistance Program, which provides supportive services and financial assistance, such as rent deposits, rent payments or utility payments.
"Gov. Tim Walz proposed the rental assistance funding in the wake of Operation Metro Surge, when thousands of immigration agents flooded Minnesota, causing many immigrants to hide at home — in some cases, forgoing work — for fear of arrest, deportation and violence. Hundreds of immigrants were detained despite holding valid work permits, causing some immigrants to lose their jobs, and families their breadwinners.
"The $40 million is expected to provide housing stability to 11,000 Minnesotans, according to a press release from Walz’s office."
Why Even Try?
Agency has to be learned, and it is learned only one way, by acting. Trying is how the brain finds out that it is capable of acting at all
"People who produce measurable political effects usually cannot detect them."
This article provides many examples of organizers who made a huge difference
in the long run. However, in the short run they may not have had any indication
that what they were doing mattered at all ...
Litany for World Refugee Day June 22, 2026
Read in Duluth (by Charlotte Frantz)
We chose to be here this evening. We chose to remember and hold in our hearts our brothers and sisters, neighbors and colleagues, friends and friends of friends, all those who are held in detention—not because they are criminals, but because of the color of their skin, or the language they speak, or the place they were born, or the papers they carried.
In your mercy, hear our prayer.
We chose to be here this evening. We chose to remember and hold in our hearts those families whose loved ones are in detention. We can imagine the empty chair at the kitchen table, the clothesl hanging in the closet, the gofundme plea on social media, and the unending question, “Will they ever come home?”
In your mercy, hear our prayer.
We chose to be here this evening. We chose to remember and hold in our hearts neighborhoods where no one feels completely safe, where traffic stops can lead to indefinite detainment, where children need to be walked to the playground and where a knock on the door is no longer welcome.
In your mercy, hear our prayer.
We chose to be here this evening. We chose to remember and hold in our hearts those who are caught up working for a government system that requires cold and callous treatment of human beings, where there is struggle of conscience, and where there is moral injury.
In your mercy, hear our prayer.
We chose to be here this evening because we will not turn away from the injustice being perpetrated by our government. We will not become deaf to the cries at Delany Hall or the stories leaking out of Dilley Detention Center. We will not let our heart become numb to the pain inflicted upon immigrants, refugees, foreign nationals, new Americans, and their advocates.
In your mercy, hear our prayer.
We chose to be here this evening. We remember and hold in our hearts those who have died in detention centers, and those who have passed on as a result of the treatment they endured or the medical care withheld from them during their detainment. We recognize their presence as inspiration and motivation for those of us whose voices can still speak out.
(Names of persons who have died in detention are read and we pause after each name. The audience will affirm each name by calling out “Presente”)
We chose to be here this evening. And when we leave, we will take with us courage for the days ahead and hope for each tomorrow; care for those who suffer and strength to bear all sorrow.
DEFLOCK: Cities and States Are Fighting Back and Winning
Here's The Law That Makes Flock Cameras A Felony
"There is a fair chance that a small camera on a pole near your home photographs every license plate that passes it. Flock Safety operates more than 100,000 automated license plate reader cameras across 49 states, and its network scans roughly 20 billion plates per month.¹ In most of the cities where those cameras operate, no elected body ever voted to install them. A police chief or a city manager signed a contract, often a no-cost trial that required no budget approval, and residents learned the cameras existed after they were already recording.
"The record of what happens next is now extensive. Local police ran more than 4,000 immigration-related searches through Flock's network on behalf of federal agencies, according to reporting by 404 Media.² Mountain View, California terminated its contract after an investigation found roughly 600,000 searches of its data in a single year by more than 250 agencies the city had never approved.³ A class action filed in February 2026 alleges that out-of-state and federal agencies searched the San Francisco Police Department's Flock database more than 1.6 million times in seven months.⁴ Flock has installed cameras without required permits in at least five states, and two state transportation agencies barred it from new installations.⁵ It has made false statements to city councils about what its systems do,¹ and in February 2026 it rewrote its standard contract terms to make cancellation harder even when a council votes against approval.⁶
"The public response so far has been cancellation. More than 50 cities have ended their contracts since late 2024.⁷ In the same period, roughly 800 cities signed new ones.⁷ Cancellation works one council at a time, and it happens only after the cameras are installed and the data has already left the jurisdiction. Every state law passed so far, including Washington's Driver Privacy Act, regulates how the data can be used after the cameras exist.⁷ No law anywhere attaches a consequence to the person who decides to install them without asking the public. The model legislation at the end of this article makes that decision a crime. It does six things..."
Quiltmakers, Keepers of American History
Combatting moves to erase history with stitching, batting, and squares of fabric
"This July 4, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” During the past 18 months, the current administration has pressed the National Park Service to remove American stories from its visitor center walls and websites. Erasures within American history are not new, but the systematic approach of the current regime conveys its blatant disrespect and hostility for Americans, especially the Black, Brown, and LGBTQ Americans who have fought for civil rights. The grassroots will step up, using performance and visual arts to keep these stories visible. Women have a crafty tradition of encoding history in quilts that are both a vehicle of history and its witness.
"Genny Güracar is now in her 90s. Back in the mid-1970s, she was teaching for the YWCA of Palo Alto California adult education programs....
For Genny, the quilt is not a relic of the 1970s. It is a form of witness. Quilts have tracked the things going on in people’s lives for hundreds of years, she says, and this one is no different. As she wrote: 'This quilt is a continuation of a long tradition of women’s creativity in needlework. We join and carry on the work of our foremothers who in quilting reflected on and recorded the history of their times.' And in 2026, she notes: 'We are part of our history. Making our own history.' Genny points out that women were long excluded from the formal art world, and that quilts are now recognized as works of art — another kind of progress worth naming.
Emilia Gonzalez Avalos on Voting
transcript & watch link below
"Twenty-five years I lived in this country without papers. I never lived in it without purpose.
For almost two decades I've organized: helping build the largest Latino GOTV operation in the state, running trainings in church basements. I helped pass the Minnesota DREAM Act. I organized for DACA, for driver's licenses, for healthcare for all. I helped build the democratic infrastructure that immigrants can own, that we can run, and that answers to us and our families first.
And in all that time, in all those years, I have never once been able to cast a ballot myself.
Until today.
I have spent twenty years helping other people find their voice at the ballot box. Today, I finally find my own.
So believe me when I tell you: I know what a vote is. A vote is a prayer made public. And like every prayer, it means nothing without the works that follow.
When the Laken Riley Act came to the floor, a law that turns a shoplifting charge into a cage, a neighbor into a target, a mother into a number in a cell, one Minnesota Democrat voted yes. One. She told us it wasn't about deportation during the debate last week. She was right. It was about detention, indefinite, no bond, no hearing, no end date. So that corporations could line their pockets out of our generational pain. And she stood by that vote for over a year, while people slept under lights that never go off, waiting for a country to remember they were human. We remembered. Minnesota remembered.
Regret is not a time machine. It cannot un-detain a child. It cannot rebuild what was destroyed during Metro Surge. Cannot bring our dead and the thousands of detained immigrants back.
Allow me to define a word for the Lieutenant Governor's opponent. Courage, Congresswoman Craig, is not the apology you write after the damage. Courage is leading with your whole heart out loud: when your voice shakes, when standing for people's rights could cost you something. Losing a seat to protect the vulnerable, that is a legacy worth leaving. Reaching for a higher one while your vote helped fuel the crisis Minnesota rose up against, that is not a legacy. That is a betrayal of the Constitution itself, of the due process, the equal protection, the basic human dignity, the very rights this country swore to protect. I don't need a senator who finds her heart after the funerals. I need one who never had to look for it.
My father left everything he knew so his family could be free, that is courage. And nobody knows it better than immigrants, Indigenous people, and the working families who build Minnesota everyday. The families that chased the ICE. Craig helped to bring chaos to us, out of Minnesota. Peggy Flanagan has stood in that fight with us, out front and unafraid, modeling one thing: be louder about who we are and what we stand for.
So here is what today means to me. The first vote I will ever cast in my life, the very first, I am casting for Peggy Flanagan.
Minnesota, that is the difference between a cynical politician and a history-maker. Peggy Flanagan will be the first Native woman to ever sit in the United States Senate.
And to every first-time voter, to every daughter and son of immigrants holding a ballot for the very first time: hear me. Our ancestors crossed deserts and oceans and whole decades, carving a future in this unforgiving north, so that one day a child of theirs could stand exactly where you stand. That ancestor may never get a chance to vote. But that was never the dream. The dream was YOU… walking through doors that were locked to them, holding chances they were never offered, standing in rooms built to keep them out. Today, we cast our vote for them. Pick up the pen they were never handed. Sign your name in the place they were kept out of. And check the box for Peggy Flanagan. Because some debts are too sacred to repay with money. We repay them with audacity, the sheer nerve to believe that people like us were always meant to decide who governs.
And there is nothing more audacious than walking in to cast a vote some swore we would never hold. We are casting it for a woman whose ancestors this country also tried to bury, and could not.
My people have a saying: they tried to bury us, but they did not know we were seeds.
The first people of this land, sent to the United States Senate by its newest. The buried, blooming. The erased, choosing. The ones they wrote out of history, writing the next chapter together!
We have waited generations for this moment. We will not waste it, and we will not face it alone. Because standing beside us, the whole way, has been a fighter who never once made us wait at the door.
The next voice you'll hear is the one we've been waiting for. Please welcome the next United States Senator from the great state of Minnesota: Peggy Flanagan."
