Lynn Hinkle, our resident policy wonk, has shared position papers for what we know as “The 3.5% Rule”:

---

Basic Elements: Racial Justice Activation of the 3.5% TC ICE Resistance     WMRJMN v3

It’s certain that several significant racial justice actions emerged and were widely reported such as the white disruption of terrorism targeting Black and Brown neighbors, but other less visible actions were just as important forms of racial justice activations during ICE’s Metro Surge in Minnesota. It is critical, in terms of national replication, to understand what constitutes the full scope of the racial justice ICE opposition unreported outside of Minnesota. Beneath the surface was a kind of organic reparations, a seemingly spontaneous expression of racial wealth transfer, expressed during and after the full on ICE racial terrorism. Notably, an essential element of that resistance activity had been constructed by explicit Minnesota campaigns to repair the harms of stolen land and stolen labor for years deep inside both faith based and civic reparations programs. 

To be clear, it is not as simple as saying White people who showed up to disrupt ICE  with only whistles and phones had just come from a reparations sermon or congregant landback discussion, but it is true that thousands of Minnesotans for years have been working to develop and implement reparations programs not just talk about opposition to White supremacy ideology. It is not hard to see how this restorative action is an essential building block of the racial justice opposition to ICE in Minnesota. Some would assert that reparations is the key basis for racial justice opposition to ICE in Minnesota, while others would hold that reparations work is essential to organize racial justice and that other anti-racist work such as fighting mass Black incarceration should be supported as well. 

Do the numbers support this reparations centric assertion? Let’s look inside the Minnesota reparations networks to determine how many activists in those networks helped reach the 3.5% population threshold needed for revolutionary change.

• United Church of Christ Minnesota pastors training (200) representing 5,000 congregants using the Sacred Reckonings Reparatory Eco Map to oppose NAR’s White Christian Nationalism that lead to the assassination of MN House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband.
• MN Council of Churches ( 1M members ) five years into a Truth and Reparations ten year program.
• Presbyterian Synod of Lakes and Prairies ( 700 congregations X 100 = 70,000 members ) adopts Restorative Actions and begins actual wealth transfer.
• Righteous 38 Black led disruption of Cities Church ICE collaboration. “Down, Down with Deportations Up, Up with Reparations”
• ST Paul Reparations Commission Slavery Disclosure and Redress Ordinance, BLM MN Reparations Now Focus.
• MN Inter Faith Power and Light Reparations Learning Labs (4 X 400 = 1,600) and Rise and Repair Indigenous Rights Legislation.
• Repair Network working to undo the Doctrine of Discovery and Screening of Last Winter Count.
• Breakthrough mainstream reporting on the racial wealth gap, institutional anti Blackness and Black and Brown targeted policing even before the spectacle murder of George Floyd and the global racial justice organizing it inspired.

Clearly, hundreds of thousands of White Minnesotans in either public or church settings engaged in reparations work know that resisting ICE assault on our Black and Brown neighbors is the first important step to building reparatory unity (cessation of harms). We believe it is a critical part of what drove significant numbers of Minnesotans to risk their own safety disrupting ICE’s recycled version of terrorizing Black codes. This is the truth that those of us building multiracial unity in Minnesota have a responsibility to tell.

Minnesota WMRJ Immersive Prep – Justice Action Plan and Partnership Building 

All WMRJ members participating in the October Minnesota Immersive will be expected to develop a Justice Action Plan Partnership that sets out concrete plans to up their racial justice work coming out of the Immersive. This Plan may take many forms including increasing work where folks are already active or taking first steps into new support locally or elsewhere. The Plan may include a commitment to activity from a range of existing reparatory programs fighting the compounding harms from stolen land and Black enslavement presented during the prep sessions. To be clear, this is not just an effort to suggest a more complete set of anti-racist practice, but an exercise in truth telling, racial repair and healing.  With an initial Plan in hand, every man will be given time during the Immersive to identify a partnership of 2-4 men to support their Plan’s implementation. 

Lynn Hinkle, our resident policy wonk, has shared position papers for what we know as “The 3.5% Rule”:

---

Racial Justice ICE Resistance Activates 3.5% TC Population                WMRJMN v3

The “3.5% rule” originated from political scientist Erica Chenoweth and her co-author Maria Stephan in their 2011 book, Why Civil Resistance Works, If a resistance movement managed to sustain the active participation of at least 3.5% of the population, the campaign was historically successful in bringing about major systemic reforms or regime change. According to the underlying dataset (the NAVCO Project), nonviolent civil resistance was found to be twice as successful as violent armed conflicts.

Was the 3.5% threshold for revolutionary non-violent change met for Minneapolis and St Paul resistance to ICE ? Minneapolis population x 3.5%=15,000: St Paul population x 3.5%=11,000. UNIDOS multi-faceted training = 30.000 (subtract suburban trainees and add activated union, congregational members, businesses and students)  Yes, there is little doubt that the Minnesota ICE resistance exceeded the threshold of revolutionary resistance.

It is clear that the resistance to ICE in Minneapolis and St Paul during Operation Metro Surge activated the 3.5% of the population needed for regime change. The question is, to what degree was that resistance based on racial justice?  The answer lies in a careful examination of how multiple resistance events emerged in a racial justice context not just  an analysis of headcounts. 

To be clear, the TC resistance to ICE’s Operation Metro Surge was animated by a range of opposition to militarized tactics, family separation, brutal detainment methods and openly unconstitutional deportation enforcement tactics not a singular center organizing for racial justice and multiracial unity. The reality however of the racist core of ICE’s occupation called for centering racial justice regardless of white folks initial motivation resisting ICE. The facts are clear, U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud, an appointee of President Trump wrote, “Plaintiffs (detainees) have made a clear showing that defendants have adopted a policy authorizing federal immigration officers to conduct investigatory stops based on ethnicity or race without reasonable suspicion that the individuals were violating immigration laws.” 

“No Justice, No Streets” Minneapolis stands up again to a surge of racial terrorism. 

Our Black neighbors saw the ICE activity as a clear expression of multi-generational anti Black terrorism. Our Black neighbors understood that the masked ICE thugs were not the gestapo but the deeply American and evolved manifestations of lynchings and other forms of anti-Blackness. Collective Black memory recalls how lynchings of Black Americans were treated as public entertainment and community spectacles for White populations. During the 19th and 20th centuries, these acts of racial terror were widely publicized, drawing crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands, including families, community leaders, and law enforcement. Far from spontaneous mob violence, these highly ritualized killings were designed to reinforce white supremacy, instill terror, and force Black Americans into submission. The large and visible White opposition to ICE terroristic tactics against Black and Brown neighbors is foundational for even broader multi racial class mobilization. The murders of Alex Pretti and Rennee Good who were killed to drive other White activists away from racial justice work was an oft repeated tactic to intimidate White “race traitors” during the civil rights movement. The message is clear, work for racial justice expressing your class unity with Black and Brown neighbors and you will be tear gassed, pepper sprayed, beaten or murdered.

The multiple forms of the Minnesota ICE revolutionary resistance:

1. During the Twin Cities ICE occupation large White mobs disrupted ICE’s terrorizing our Black and Brown neighbors as the streets of Minneapolis turn Jim Crow Black codes upside down. Changing the darkest moments of our history into an act of revolutionary love – Multi Racial unity.  These events involved federal immigration agents (ICE) confronted by White community members  at Minneapolis and St Paul schools in response to aggressive ICE deportation operations, Over 1,000 parent and community volunteers formed “sanctuary school” human chains at dozens of schools, including elementary campuses, to disrupt federal agents targeting Black and Brown staff and children for abduction. 

2. January 23, 2026, A multi-racial crowd of 50,000 march thru Minneapolis downtown demanding “ICE Out Now” culminating organization of virtually every Twin Cities union, hundreds of businesses, residents and students. TC general strike – putting on display a whole of society non-violent resistance to ICE terrorism.

3. ICE Murders Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Instead of acting as a deterrent to Minnesota “Race Traitors”  these spectacle murders spur thousands more people being trained to do exactly what Alex and Renna were doing when they were murdered by ICE. 

4. Massive Multi Faith organizing involving the arrest of over 100 faith leaders representing 10,000 congregants protesting ICE violence and racial intimidation. Many denominations had already been engaged in significant reparatory activity to redress the harms of stolen land and Black enslavement. The City of St Paul had been doing city authorized reparations work for years.

5. Not just opposition to ICE anti-Black terrorism, but disruption of ICE collaborationist at Cities Church resulting in Federal charges against a multi-racial disrupter cohort led by several leaders of the Twin Cities Black liberation movement. “Righteous 38”

6. High integration of digital tools to coordinate the full range of resistance activities such as patrols, rapid response, safe rides, food shelves, rent support, etc. An already vibrant racial justice movement including SURJ, ISAIAH, UNIDOS scaled up training in the tens of thousands to match the surge in the ICE occupation. 

7. Significant development and deployment of singing resistance and support for self-care and recognition that we’re building a movement of revolutionary love not just a moment of resistance.

8. The racial wealth gap is clearly exposed as a systemic reduction of financial reserves affecting our Black and Brown neighbors who are unable to pay for rent, child care, food and other necessities that are forced to hide from ICE abduction. The impact is felt across the entire economy clarifying the need to address the racial wealth disparity not just ending non-white ICE terrorism.

9. The several months long Metro Surge proved that a significant White population of the Twin cities did engage in a form of wealth transfer as every non-white financial gap was being filled graciously by white folks – everything from rent, food, gas money, childcare etc., But just as notable was the volunteering to patrol, deliver groceries, prescriptions, secure rides to and from schools It is hard to quantify the full scope of this effort but it’s safe to say that thousands of white folks put in thousands of hours to protect and build community beyond resistance. While notable, this reparatory White activity was just as much the result of a deep local culture working to redress stolen land and stolen labor as spontaneous strong neighborly support,  

10. Despite 3.5% activation of ICE resistance in the context of racial justice the City of Minneapolis continued to undermine implementing a plan to stop Black displacement in the neighborhoods surrounding the site of George Floyd’s neo-lynching. Instead of working to repair the lost generational Black wealth compounded from 35W freeway displacement, Minneapolis used the noise from the ICE occupation to distract from its ongoing failure to stop Southside Black displacement.

11. Minnesota racial justice resistance to ICE was sufficient to derail Operation Metro Surge and is a clear people’s victory but it’s insufficient to abolish ICE much less the overall Federal anti-Black and Brown policies that systematically widen the racial wealth gap. Other metro areas need to take up the elements of the TC racial justice programs and the Twin Cities activists need to deepen commitment to those programs and engage Democracy Défense organizing to resist the next round of surging slave patrols disguised as some policing “authority”

This movie, the latest directorial effort of Sheldon P. Wolfchild (The Indian System, Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code) has been completed after several years of research and production.

In the film, Wolfchild who is a lineal descendant of Dakota chiefs, tells a “Wintercount” of true Mdewakanton Sioux history, including the true cause of the U.S.-Dakota war, deceit and corruption in Minnesota and the little known story of a Reservation the U.S. government tried to hide from its benefactors for over 100 years.

If you’d like to support this important movement, please consider donating to the legal representatives here: https://www.isuegov.com/lake-pepin