Flex Learning Day

Friday was the coldest day of the winter. The coldest day of many winters, possibly. When you live here, you learn to deal with the cold. If you have to go outside, you layer. You buy long underwear. You buy hand warmers and the warmest mittens you can find. Even the furnace seems to balk at these temperatures, the cold seeping in around the corners of the house. You habitually check the thermostat several times a day to ensure it hasn’t spontaneously adjusted itself. People get sick of talking about the cold. When I’ve traveled the US and elsewhere and told people I’m from Minnesota, the number one thing they mention is the cold. This past Friday was exceptionally brutal, however, with temperatures in my zip code bottoming out at -21° F and never rising above -10° F, not to mention the wind chill, and it was a gusty day.

The weather pattern that brought in these temperatures was known about well in advance. The children were preemptively told to stay home from school. It’s a flex learning day. That means that my kindergartner daughter needed to log in at 8:30 am to a 35-minute Zoom call with her class, followed by a day of independent learning at home. I watch from the sidelines, out of view of the camera. Her teacher glides around the virtual room, masterfully controlling the mute buttons on everyone’s mic to ensure the entire class doesn’t break down into cacophony. She is exuberant and alive as she reviews the week’s lesson plan. The kids, glued to their screens, are full of laughter and giggling excitement when it’s time to say hi to their classmates. My daughter, a white non-Hispanic, is a minority in her school. Our city, a first-ring suburb tucked right next to Northeast Minneapolis, is comprised of over 20% foreign-born people, nearly double the rate of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro area average. Our multiculturalism is on full display if you drive down our main drag: grocers and restaurants from all over the world—an Indian market, at least one Mexican supermercado, a fantastic Korean grocer, multiple Greek restaurants, multiple Middle Eastern restaurants and markets, my favorite taqueria in the city—and this is just the food. There are countless other professional services dedicated to serving specific populations, stores and other businesses owned and operated by immigrants, mosques and churches dedicated to all kinds of faiths and ethnic backgrounds.

This was not the first flex learning day of 2026, nor will it likely be the last. Weather is only one cause for these “home days,” though. The other being the constant threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials showing up to school grounds and arresting parents, or even entire families. This is much more than a theoretical threat. A memo, which was previously in place by both the Obama and Biden administrations, prohibited immigration enforcement near schools and houses of worship. This memo was revoked by Trump in January 2025. Since the January 2026 surge of ICE troops in Minnesota, immigration enforcement activity in and around schools has jumped dramatically. Many families are afraid to bring their children to school, with many attempting to find alternate transportation to and from school, or some just staying home altogether. The ICE activity has hit close to home. We’ve heard the whistles and car horns that accompany the raids from our house. ICE has driven up and down our block countless times. We see them often when driving around the neighborhood. My wife and kids have both witnessed them arresting someone.

Four children have been taken from my daughter’s school district. Some of them have been classmates of hers: friends, gone without a trace. How do you explain that to an almost-six-year-old girl who has only a tenuous grasp on the concept of race or immigration status? How can you rationalize the motivation behind such actions to a child? She just doesn’t understand why ICE would take her friends and wants to know where they went. Both she and my four-year-old son have been having trouble sleeping, worried that ICE will break into our homes and take us. They don’t understand the concepts of prejudice or privilege. They pick up on our anxieties and feed off them. Sometimes I fear that my kids sense our uncertainty about the future too.

People are paranoid, some terrified to leave their houses. The fear permeates our community. It slinks down every quiet intersection and poisons our communal spaces, but it has not paralyzed us. Community organizers have arranged transportation to and from school for families who need to shelter in place, parents have organized relief efforts for overburdened teachers, fundraisers have been thrown for affected families, and more is being done to build community bonds than ever before. The cold weather and preemptive school cancellations coincided with the organizing of a general strike on Friday. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz proclaimed Friday, January 23, 2026 Day of Truth and Freedom. At least 300 local businesses closed in solidarity, and many workers chose to withhold their labor in protest. Tens of thousands marched across the state at various protest events. Others chose to spend time participating in community events, volunteering, or just spending time with friends and neighbors.

Minnesotans have a strong tradition of civic engagement. We rank number two in voter turnout by state. Three in five Minnesotan adults report helping out or being helped by a neighbor. We take it as a given to help a stranger dig their car out of a snowbank after a blizzard. Along with a strong sense of community and political engagement comes a rich history of protest. Protest action over the last 20 years has been especially heightened, especially in response to police action, with the obvious example being the reaction to the George Floyd murder in 2020. Protesters barricaded the intersection of 38th and Chicago, what would become known as George Floyd Square, for over a year. Critics will point to the property damage caused by the George Floyd protesters, and indeed it was a high toll. The civil unrest following the George Floyd murder was the second most destructive in the country, only surpassed by the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict. Thankfully, this resistance has been rooted in peace so far, not caving to the easy temptation to turn to anger and violence. Doubtlessly, on everyone’s mind is Trump’s repeated threats to invoke the Insurrection Act, and nobody wants to hand him an easy excuse to do that.

Saturday was my daughter’s sixth birthday party. It was her first friends-only party, and expectations were high. We had rented out a place that does Lego workshops for kids. We had cupcakes and gift bags all packed and ready to go. We were already running late when we arrived. We parked on the street and were immediately passed by several police cars racing down the street, sirens blaring. What we didn’t know yet, but soon found out, is that just five blocks away a protester had just been brutally executed by ICE. Calls and texts started coming from understandably concerned parents who wouldn’t be able to make it to the party due to the news. This is the second killing of a US citizen in Minneapolis by ICE agents during Operation Metro Surge, the first being the high-profile murder of Renée Good. There was also the shooting of a Venezuelan man during a supposed enforcement operation in North Minneapolis. The violence echoes escalations in counter-protester tactics, as federal agents are now deploying tear gas and pepper spray pellets against protestors. Reports have come in about U.S. Border Patrol agents using a mysterious green chemical agent to disperse crowds.

What about those that have disappeared? Where do they go and what is happening to them? The truth behind that is murky, but ICE detention facilities don’t have the best reputation. Rapid expansion in immigration enforcement activities over the past year has resulted in overcrowding at facilities that were already under scrutiny for their conditions. This past week, ICE announced it has cut paying for health care for detainees, and they are accused of illegally refusing health care to detainees as well. That means patients who require dialysis, chemotherapy, and other critical health care needs not receiving the care they need. 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, and many expect 2026 to be worse.

What are we to do when faced with times like these? How are we to respond to such oppression? When we are gunned down in the street by federal goons for practicing our constitutionally-protected rights? When our own government turns against us? When there is no light of peace or reconciliation on the horizon? What is a person supposed to do? It’s easy to despair and feel hopeless. Camus wrote, “A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.” The only hope we have for the future is in the bonds of humanity that tie us together. Relying on the community we’ve created. Reaching out to our neighbors to see if they are okay. Building relationships with the folks down the street. The only thing that defeats inhumanity is humanity. Hate can only be defeated with love and compassion.

Today is Monday, and I’m taking my daughter out for birthday pancakes. Her birthday is technically tomorrow, but she happens to have today off school. I ask her if she wants to try a different restaurant, but it’s always the same: our favorite local breakfast place, where we’ll grab a place by the counter—her favorite spot. I already know she’ll have a hot cocoa and blueberry pancakes, and I’ll have eggs Benedict. I think about her and the world she’s inheriting. I hope she finds peace in it somewhere. I hope we’ve raised her to be able to find the humanity in all of us. That’s really the best I can hope for us all.

—Ethan J. Lewis January 26, 2026