In April, a close friend joined me on a trip to Minneapolis, where I spent the day surrounded by early childhood educators and organizers fighting for fair pay and affordable care. These are the people who hold up families and economies, but most are paid hourly wages less than the price of a Whopper meal. As costs continue to rise in Trump’s erratic economy — a far cry from the “day one” lowering of prices he campaigned on — the childcare crisis continues to put working families at risk. This scene was the background to my first trip to Minnesota, just two states away from my home — and the soundtrack was dozens of childcare providers chanting together: you got the workers outside your door, got the workers outside your door. We left with a radically romanticized idea of the city, and for good reason. 

My friend and I toured Minneapolis in our downtime, soaking in its hard-earned sense of political community — something we want for our midwestern corntown a few hours away. We wandered through the basement door of Mayday Books, where the walls were crowded with zines, prints and radical reads. We were still thumbing through titles when a woman with a clipboard stepped through the door. She was from the state, and she came to announce that Minnesota had just passed one of the strongest Paid Family and Medical Leave policies in the country — one that would even cover volunteers and gig workers who usually fall through the cracks. We were watching critical connections be made between people, education, and resources in this portal. Volunteers gave us suggestions for what to buy and we left with a short stack of books and a glimmer. 

We shared a walleye sandwich and drank sweet elderberry nettle iced tea at Gatherings Cafe, known for healthy, locally-grown Indigenous food with ingredients largely sourced from Native businesses and producers. The cafe is housed inside the American Indian Center in Minneapolis, where local artist Gordon Coons spent a long time with us, weaving stories about migration, healing and transformation evident in his work. We walked over to Pow Wow Grounds and marveled at the full seed library, the free little library filled with hand-selected and empowering children’s books like Sometimes People March, and a bulletin board with no space for another flier — full of food share co-ops, clothing swaps, organizing meetings and gatherings for local artists. 

Before leaving Minneapolis, we went to Boneshaker Books, a volunteer-run shop with a riso printer that local artists use to create prints for sale with phrases like, “stop being weird about trans people.” On our way out of the store, we noticed a traffic ticket on the windshield of the rental car. The sign in front of the car read “permit required 5 pm – 6 am.” The ticket was written at 4 pm with the words no permit. We walked back into the store, and in a small but mighty act of solidarity, a stranger in the store gave us their name and phone number to act as a witness before muttering, “there’s a reason people burned down a police station here.” 

Five years ago, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Five years ago, the summer of uprisings let loose a cry it hasn’t stifled since: I can’t breathe. This city shaped the response to that tragedy, and Floyd’s death also shaped the city.  

Police violence has been rising every year since 2020, and each major city in America has its own George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, or Sandra Bland. But injustice everywhere does not spark the same resistance Minneapolis held that year. Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit writes about the fungal effect of our movements for justice: 

“After a rain, mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many do so from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms mycologists call the fruiting body of a larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but less visible long-term organizing—or underground work—often laid the foundation.”

We left feeling more appreciation for Minneapolis than for the neighboring city we shared, and in the five-hour drive home, we talked about the balance between moving for the community you want or building community where you are. The allure of moving to a more progressive city with a familiar Midwest landscape was potent. My friend shared generously with me her interest in the ‘politics of place,’ how our neighborhoods are political — the way they’re planned, resourced, and protected. We want to live in cities that draw out what’s possible in all of us: Walkable, relational, connected. And that doesn’t come from geography alone — it comes from people deciding to make it so. Most of our neighborhoods experience something very different: isolation, rugged individualism, and suspicion of our neighbors. 

In the summer of 2020, I was living in Texas when our city lost Atatiana Jefferson, and we gathered with neighbors for workshops like cities across the country did, to ask: What really makes us safe? We were fighting for more investment in our communities and looking at lopsided police budgets that were taking so much from our futures. This small gathering and hundreds like it were legacies from Floyd and Black abolitionists across the country like Mariamme Kaba and Angela Davis who had laid decades of fungal groundwork. 

What we learned then is that the politics of place aren’t just about policy. They’re also about presence, and choosing to love where you are by making it more livable — for everyone. Abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore once said:

“Freedom is a place we make (and make),” meaning “we combine resources, ingenuity, and commitment to produce the conditions in which life is precious for all.”

Or, we can build something real right where we are now.

Even as we face new and daunting attacks on our communities, we can go beyond resistance to the Trump Agenda and demand more for one another and for ourselves. And one thing we can do right now is to take notes from Minneapolis and stop waiting for permission. We can trust each other even though we have lost trust in the system and many of its leaders. We can invest our time and energy into our communities: Open the bookstore. Create the seed library. Knock on a neighbor’s door. Host the potluck. Start the childcare co-op. Fill the bulletin board. Organize. Volunteer. Get your hands wet. Be bothered. Imagine a future we can believe in. Not just to survive the next election, or the next administration — but to build real, lasting power, together. Those are the kind of networks we will need to survive authoritarianism and keep everyone safe now and in the years to come. 

We can build the communities we need — right here, right now. 

We can make, and make, and make.