By Mike Soika

My wife and I fell victim to a vicious strain of the flu, even though we were both vaccinated this fall.  Being too sick to leave the house I resorted to Door Dash to pick up and deliver my much-needed medication.

It was an easy and impressive exchange. At 10:00 am I accessed my pharmacy website and paid for the medicine including the modest delivery fee and a 20% tip for the driver.  By 11:30 am the delivery driver was at my door.  It was a bitter cold Wisconsin January day with the temperature barely above zero, and yet the young lady at my door was without a jacket and wearing tennis shoes, jeans, and a short sleeve, open-necked shirt.  What was quickly apparent (other than the fact that she made me feel cold by how she was dressed) was that she was a late 20s Hispanic young woman who didn’t appear to speak or understand much English.  She had to verify my identity by scanning my driver’s license onto her phone (something the pharmacy website told me to expect) and she was having some technical difficulties doing so.  Because it was cold and because this was taking longer than it should, I invited her to step onto our enclosed porch to at least get out of the wind.  She didn’t seem to understand, and I don’t speak enough Spanish to help.

Finally, she got my ID scanned and then handed me her phone and pointed to a blank line; one I assumed I was supposed to sign.  Unfortunately, the description above the signature line was written in Spanish.  I told her “I can’t read that” to which she visibly sighed, took back the phone while saying goodbye as she sprinted back to her car, hopping over the snow piled up on the curb.

I thought a lot about this encounter and how this young woman was braving more than just the cold.  Here she is driving around alone, going door to door with no real sense of the type of person she would encounter at each stop.  I wonder what kind of push and pull in her life is important enough for her to put herself at risk like this. She is exactly the type of person ICE would profile and possibly drag out of her car to be swooped away and detained, leaving her car stranded as would be the other medications she was slated to deliver. 

I offered up a prayer for her as I shut the porch door and watched her drive off, thankful that the ICE presence in Milwaukee hasn’t yet reached the level of Chicago or Minneapolis – our two neighboring cities.

In his book Freedom Dreams, Robin D.G. Kelly states, “Making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics, but a process that can and must transform us.” 

It seems to me that we have two competing visions for creating a revolution in America today.  Trump and his minions are working feverishly to transform our society. The violence and aggression of ICE employees is not an accident.  It is a deliberate strategy to invoke fear, intimidation, and obedience, because that’s the kind of revolution they want to achieve: to turn our democracy into a fascist government that exploits the many to benefit the few with impunity.

And then we have Minneapolis.  One can argue that the ICE tactics in that city have backfired and instead of driving people underground in fear – they have driven people into community and into the streets en masse.  Minnesotans will tell us that they have moved from demonstration to resistance.  They have been transformed by their experience, and by extension so too have many of us from across the nation who see their courage and their commitment and say yes.  In many ways – America has rediscovered its voice through the resistance of the ordinary people of Minnesota, who are performing extraordinary acts of grace and courage.

This brings me full circle, back to my Door Dash driver.  In her, I see someone who has come to embrace the potential of America; a place where hard work and determination to overcome obstacles will allow an industrious individual to make a life, if not of comfort, then most certainly of promise. 

And that is what our Minnesota neighbors are fighting to protect: the Promise of America as a place of community and freedom and opportunity for all.  Their actions may have transformed us, and in the process – sparked a revolution of the heart.

Musical  Interlude: Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis.