A few weeks ago, as the news that ICE and Border Patrol might invade the Bay Area in a full-scale operation had begun spreading, I was at Sports Basement, shopping for some new soccer socks. As I put back a pair I decided not to buy, an older woman came up to me, mistaking me for an employee. "Do you know where the whistles are?" she asked. I didn't, but I asked her whether she was buying them for sports or for protest. "Protest," she told me. She had heard that they were effective from a friend in Chicago.
We got to chatting as we looked for the whistles, and I learned that she wanted to get involved, wanted to do something, but didn't know where to start. She didn't have a church group, she didn't have any connections to activists, but she couldn't stomach the idea of her neighbors being snatched off the street. I gave her the names of some local organizations and we hatched a plan for how she could turn her gardening club into something with a deeper community connection.
When we left, her with her whistles and me with my socks, she hugged me. "I suppose I begin today!" she said.
"There is no better day to begin!" I replied.
I thought of that woman this weekend, when I heard the news that yet another observer in Minneapolis was murdered — this time by a Border Patrol agent. This comes 17 days after Renée Good’s murder at the hands of ICE. Both were in the streets documenting and resisting a federal invasion prompted, in part, by racist misinformation about the city’s Somali community. At least, that’s the latest excuse piled on top of the administration’s baseline dedication to terrorizing and disappearing anybody they deem not quite white enough.
Alex Pretti was the sixth person shot dead by federal law enforcement agents in the last few months of raids. The Trace, a nonprofit outlet tracking ICE-related gun violence, counts 19 different cases of officers firing on civilians — and that’s not counting this past weekend.
Despite this clear and present danger, the city of Minneapolis has not been cowed. Regular people are showing up in astounding numbers, in brutal, below-freezing conditions — watching, documenting, and trying to keep their community safe.
"I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I have never seen anything approaching this scale,” posted Margaret Killjoy. “Minneapolis is not accepting what's happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman for participating in this, and all that did is bring out more people, from more walks of life."
Many have also noted that Minneapolis was a poor choice for a federal attack. Not only did the feds make a classic military blunder of invading a winter people in January, they also picked a city that has gotten its organizing reps in.
In 2020, when George Floyd was murdered by a police officer, the city kicked into a new gear around collective care. Thousands of people trained to become legal observers and took to the streets to monitor state violence coming from people in slightly different uniforms. Today, those same neighbors say that they are calling on that experience again.
Friends from Minneapolis tell me the same thing: They've been building community for years. They’re ready for this, even though they wish they didn’t have to be. One noted that his kids were ready to talk about Good’s murder because they've been talking about state violence since Floyd’s.
A table full of free food put together by a group of neighbors in Berkeley at a mutual aid swap in November 2025. (Photo courtesy of Vincent D.)
The Bay Area has been resisting its own ICE presence for months now. Every week, observers and protestors gather at office buildings and street corners to try and interrupt ICE proceedings and protect our neighbors. We have not yet been targeted with a full-scale occupation the way Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, and Minneapolis have.
But that does not mean it will not come. In fact, we know thatICE is planning to be active at the Super Bowl in just a few weeks. At any moment, the federal occupying force could arrive at our doorstep. We should be ready — and the best way to get ready, as Minneapolis has shown, is to get plugged into networks of community care and support.
Today, we published a comic about how to host a Mutual Aid Swap in your backyard. In working with artist Vincent D., one thing that came up was that people often think they need Official Permission™️ to do things. But you don't need to be an NGO or a nonprofit to help your neighbors. What you need to do is care.
We see examples of mutual aid in every single social movement, whether it’s people raising money forworkers on strike, setting up a car pooling system during theMontgomery Bus Boycott, puttingdrinking water in the desert for migrants crossing the border, training each other inemergency medicine because ambulance response time in poor neighborhoods is too slow, raising money topay for abortions for those who can’t afford them, or coordinatingletter-writing to prisoners. These are mutual aid projects. They directly meet people’s survival needs, and are based on a shared understanding that the conditions in which we are made to live are unjust.
Still, many people find the dispersed and informal nature of mutual aid projects daunting. Mutual aid takes so many forms that there are almost certainly examples happening right under your nose. But how do you actually get involved? How do you sign up? Where do you go?
To that end, we've compiled a very incomplete list of groups in the Bay Area that are doing mutual aid right now (please comment with suggestions of your own!). Some of them are already engaging in resistance to ICE. Others will likely become a vector of resistance should the threat increase. We've also put together a list of more general tips for how to get connected in your neighborhood, and how to talk to your community about activism and keeping one another safe.
There is no better day to begin. Talk to your neighbors, your local groups, your clubs. Get yourself connected to the networks around you. Let Minneapolis, LA, Chicago, and Portland all be an inspiration to you. Together we can beat ICE. Together we are more powerful than they could ever be.
General Tips
Meet your neighbors. This seems silly and basic, but as we've seen in Minneapolis, it's huge. Host a local gathering, say hello, learn your neighbors’ names.
Attend mutual aid events you see advertised and talk to the organizers. COYOTE puts mutual aid events on our calendar every week.
If you are spiritual, see if your local church, synagogue, mosque or other gathering place has community projects — many do.
Talk to the groups you are a part of — your gym, your book club, your gardening group — about what folks in the group are doing, what they might need help with, and how you can help one another.
Reo Eveleth is an award-winning reporter and writer who has covered everything from fake tumbleweed farms to million-dollar baccarat heists. Their work has been nominated for a Peabody, an Emmy, and an Eisner Award.
