What’s happening in Minnesota isn’t an anomaly. It’s a warning.
Immigration raids. Armed police operating with sweeping authority. Communities terrified. People harmed. Accountability diluted. We’ve seen this pattern before and every time, it’s framed as necessary. It’s framed as control. Every time we’re expected to accept it. The truth is simpler and harder to face, we’ve turned a blind eye.
Because it felt far away. Because outrage is exhausting when injustice is constant. So we protest and we post. We share. Then we move on. Having hope and trust that visibility is enough. It’s not.
Protesting for a free Palestine cracked something open. It revealed just how many people understand injustice instinctively even when governments refuse to name it.
But protests was never meant to be the end. Too often it becomes symbolic rather than structural. The marches fade and the headlines move on. Those in power wait. They know attention is temporary. Listening requires inconvenience. Change requires disruption. Power rarely gives either willingly.
There is a myth that systemic racism is contained and that once a community is acknowledged, the work is done. But that’s not how systems work. Systems don’t discriminate emotionally. They discriminate structurally. Once a framework is built to control, detain or dehumanise one group, it doesn’t stop there. It adapts. It finds new targets. This is why it is never just “us” vs “them”. It will always be about power, and who gets to use it without consequences.
At the centre of every conflict is the same question. Who holds power and who is protected by it.6)3 people writing the rules don’t live with the consequences. They don’t experience stop and searches or raids. They are free to issue generic statements whilst others experience pain and face the destruction.
Audre Lorde warned: “The masters tools will never dismantle the masters house”.
We cannot fix a system using the same logic that but it. The word reform means “to make changes in order to improve it”. It is sold to us as reassurance. In the UK, this word has been twisted and is misrepresented politically. The reform party doesn’t just borrow rhetoric from America, it’s mirroring it. The obsession with borders and framing migrants as threats. These are just a few of the policies that America is using to “justify” these raids, enforcing the military on the streets, and normalising violence under the guise of protection.
It’s a different accent but the same playbook. When fear becomes a political strategy, the outcome is always the same. It means fewer rights, more force and a public encouraged to look away as long as they feel temporarily safe. People often say that it will never happen here. History tells us otherwise. History tells us it always starts somewhere first. What we excuse sets precedent.
If we don’t challenge who holds power, how they use it and who they are willing to sacrifice to maintain it, then Minnesota won’t be a warming and by the time we realise it, it won’t feel shocking anymore.
