There is struggle and resolve in the eyes of the watchers, the ones who stand at the boundary between humanity and madness, knowing they risk everything, but also feeling a certainty that the price of not doing so would be intolerably high.

That feeling is courage.

Courage does not mean they are not afraid. They act with dignity, humanity, defiance, and reason, and so they know there is cause for fear. The heart-deep knowledge they carry means they see clearly there are worse things than the threat they face.

It is worse to have your conscience torn to shreds, and discarded, and the conscience of your country, and your country’s soul and purpose, by aggressors that will follow no law.

It is worse to see innocent human beings subjected to terror and cruelty, to watch them lose their family, their home, their freedom, and their community.

It is worse to see the fabric of a neighborhood vanish in the wind as storm troopers burst into everyday life with combat weapons and a will to break the human beings they encounter.

The watchers, the referees, the witnesses, are joined by countless people sharing information, gathering resources, distributing aid, acting as protectors of their more vulnerable neighbors.

The fabric of community is being reinforced, strengthened, made into something better than it was before.

Courage means walking through fear and being generous in spite of it.

The people of Minnesota are meeting terror with generosity.

It is not only violence against immigrants, the breaking up of families, and paramilitary occupation that tens of thousands of people are actively rejecting, by weaving a reinforced fabric of civil society and mutual support.

They are also working, consciously, to make sure the American experiment in human freedom and self-government is not discarded and replaced with a totalitarian sci-fi regime that spies on, attacks, and disappears people.

To bear witness is a sacred duty.

In a recent hearing, Minnesota State Senator Erin Maye Quade noted that ICE agents stand accused of heinous crimes, including rape, torture, kidnapping, child abuse, and murder. She read from Adam Serwer’s tribute to Minnesotans’ stunning cooperative decency, and concluded by saying:

Minnesotans are brave. Minnesotans are showing up. Minnesotans are showing America and the world what patriotism really looks like. It will end here. We will end it here. Then we will repair.

Violence is failure. Kindness is freedom.