In an interview he gave last weekend, White House border czar Tom Homan announced that more than 1,000 immigration agents (ICE) had already left the previously ICE-besieged city of Minneapolis. He added that several hundred more would exit in the coming days and that only a “small force” would be left behind.
Though Homan did not of course say so, and though the victory could be considered Pyrrhic, it was nevertheless a win for the citizens of Minneapolis and a loss for the administration of Donald Trump. The latter had been so badly shamed by the former, and at such a high political cost, that the president reluctantly concluded he had little choice but to retreat.
How did this happen? How did it come to pass that the followers, the people of Minneapolis, forced the leader, the American President, to back down? After all, the people were unarmed whereas ICE agents, agents of the administration, were heavily armed. It appeared then that the people in the streets, the protesters, were weak while the authorities were strong. Especially since the people in positions of authority had not just the power of a gun to back them up but the power of the state.
Before answering the question of how the ostensibly weak beat the ostensibly strong I want to stress how counterintuitive the outcome was. After all, our assumption is that those in positions of power have power, power that they can exercise over those who have no power and even over those who have less power than they do. Our assumption equally is that those who are not in positions of power have no power or, at least, not much power in comparison with those in positions of power. But what came to pass in Minneapolis demonstrates it ain’t necessarily so. That what is expected to be the outcome is not always, not necessarily anyway, the outcome.
The outcome in this case was not an act of magic, nor was it happenstance, nor was it, so far as we know, divine intervention. Instead, it was the result of a lot of ordinary people doing a lot of hard work – as individuals and as members of groups – while demonstrating discipline and determination. Above all these people – the resisters – remained throughout unafraid to do what they thought was right, unafraid to speak truth to power.
If the overarching strategy of those in Minneapolis who strongly objected to Trump’s immigration policies was organized resistance, what were their tactics? What more specifically did the resisters do to push the president to tell Homan to tell ICE to retreat?
Their tactics included but were not limited to:
- Organizing
- Participating (the more protesters the better the protest)
- Recruiting (the more various as well as more numerous the protesters – representing civic groups, religious groups, educational groups, business groups, etc. – the better the protest)
- Employing tactics that were deliberately, consistently, and exclusively nonviolent
- Networks (the more networks – for example of protesters, caregivers, and communicators – the better)
- Employing different strokes for different folks (using different tactics in different situations and with different constituencies)
- Employing technologies (for example, filming what was happening and using social media to inform, connect, incite, recruit, and activate)
What happened in Minnesota was so evident a case of a leader overstepping his authority, and so evident a case of followers resisting a leader overstepping his authority, it did not take long for the story to attract attention. Especially after the second fatal shooting of a follower who failed in the eyes of ICE to follow, the context widened beyond the city of Minneapolis and even the state of Minnesota. The context was now national and American public opinion was becoming a factor. Enter the pollsters. Once their findings became public, it was game over. The followers in Minneapolis had won. And the leader in the White House had lost.