Emily Witt

In that case, the city was expressing rage.

You know, Minneapolis has longstanding racial inequalities, a long history of police violence against Black people.

So the city in many ways was expressing rage against itself and its own institutions the only way it was able to.

And this is such a different situation.

Why would you go around breaking the windows of your own city when it's being, you know, occupied from an external force, which is the sense of what's happening here?

Right now, there's a sense of protection and mutual aid and kind of taking care of each other.

And the anger is directed toward, you know, a much more external actor, right?

I think that they are walking a very, very fine line.

The Minneapolis Police Department has a policy in place that says they will not participate with immigration enforcement, including even if... So there are direct odds with them?

Correct.

And one element of this policy is even that they will not help with crowd control solely at the request of an immigration enforcement body.

So you'll see local police on the outskirts of protesters being tear gassed.

And there's one video I'm thinking of where

In this case, it was a state trooper.

A line of state troopers were standing sort of watching a situation like this unfold.

You can literally see tear gas in the air.

And a man taking the video is yelling at the state troopers saying, aren't you guys on our side?

Like, why are you just standing there and watching?

Right.

And I think local law enforcement basically, they're actively not participating in the immigration enforcement, but they're also not inserting themselves between protesters and federal agents.