To the editor:

I’m pausing my anxious living room pacing and my thousand-mile stare out the window to write this letter. I’m from Saranac Lake but live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Friends and family call me to see how we are doing. I don’t have a good answer.

I’m writing to sort out my own feelings and to hopefully give a glimpse of what is happening here. Saint Paul and Minneapolis are filled with the same free-spirited people as back home. They are passionate, neighborly and overall welcoming.

And I’ve been watching my neighbors being kidnapped, tortured and killed. It has been traumatizing and life-altering. The senseless brutality and intimidation in the name “safety” is completely exhausting and it is easy to emotionally collapse inward.

But people have been resilient. Grassroots networks of love and support have sprung up to help those most targeted. Neighbors are shuttling children to work and delivering groceries to those legal citizens too afraid to leave the house. Thousands of people are coordinated in rapid response teams to warn neighborhoods that ICE agents are coming. Minnesotans are also utilizing the best weapon we have, the camera and each other.

But what is hardest is learning how to live within the duality of life. We are still going about our day-to-day lives even though innocent people are being kidnapped around us. How can both of those realities exist in my head simultaneously? The dissonance is so off-the-charts that neither of those realities can be processed. We are trapped in survival mode.

But I think the answer lies in what you focus your energy on. Focus on hate and there will be hate. Focus on helplessness and there will be helplessness. Focus on hope and there will be hope. Minnesotans have chosen hope and they are fighting back. I hope you can, too.

Ian Freeburg

Saint Paul, Minnesota