After an ICE agent shot Renee Good through the side window of her car at point-blank range, I found myself in the streets again to protest the growing violence of ICE in my hometown of Minneapolis. For weeks, we had been rapidly organizing in solidarity with Black and Brown people who bear the brunt of the brutality ICE has brought to our beloved community. After Good’s death, hundreds of us walked down a South Minneapolis street singing that we belong to each other. As we passed clapboard houses we could see small brown hands between window panes and blinds waving to us from attic apartments. Children—afraid to show their faces but needing to be seen.
The Buddha’s four noble truths teach us to know suffering, and then turn this knowing into energy for clarity about what will help. Here in Minneapolis, this basic idea is being manifested by Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. People are setting up ride sharing, rent, and grocery funds for Black and Brown folks who don’t feel safe to leave their homes. Many, many thousands of people have taken to streets and parks to sing, chant, and demand that ICE stop brutalizing the people of our community. Loose networks of people do the wrenching, dangerous work of following ICE and recording their cruelty and lawlessness.
“The truth of suffering is not a place to dwell; it is an invitation to realize where the suffering comes from, to know there is an end to it, and to walk the path of liberation.”
Last month, I and my colleagues in MARCH—Multifaith Anti-racist Change and Healing—started nightly spiritual care meetings for the folks doing this work. We see the suffering and find ways to manifest care and compassion. Since then, people from all over the country have been reaching out to ask how they can support us.
So last week, MARCH folks decided to issue a call for faith leaders across the country to come and stand with us and meet the violence of ICE with non-violence. We frame this as an echo of Dr. King’s clergy call to Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Several hundred faith leaders from around the country, including Buddhists, have answered the call and this Thursday we will spend a day of witness, training, and grounding. Then on Friday we will join tens of thousands of Minnesotans and many organizations for “ICE Out of Minnesota: A Day of Truth and Freedom.”
As a Zen teacher of the Mahayana tradition, there are basic teachings I seek to embody: that I cannot ultimately be separate from anything, that everything we do matters, that everyone always has the capacity to do something conducive to liberation from suffering, and that there are myriad ways to engage in liberation unique to each person and each moment. This morning I spent a couple hours at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in formal meditation, chanting, and cleaning practice. Then I met with my MARCH friends to plan our gathering.
With MARCH I’ve spent years sitting around tables, planning vigils, attending protests, handing out snacks, listening to prayers, offering meditation, hugging, and singing. We have focused on making long term networks of trust and care. Our capacity to suddenly say, “This is the time to make a Call to Minneapolis” is the product of years of careful tending relationships with each other and across the country. The Mahayana teaching of emptiness is medicine for our desire to control. MARCH was founded by queer clergy and its culture is less about making a particular thing happen than it is about embodying this moment of relationship in a way that helps us all be free. This aligns as deeply as could be with my root vow—to practice for liberation for all beings in each moment.
Although I sometimes feel anguish, anger, and fear in the face of the violence that ICE is bringing to my community, my days are filled with inspiration. People are doing amazing, compassionate, and beautiful things. The truth of suffering is not a place to dwell; it is an invitation to realize where the suffering comes from, to know there is an end to it, and to walk the path of liberation. The Buddhist eightfold path can manifest in boundless ways. We are unique, our practices cannot be the same. At any time we can see clearly, act, and speak with kindness, and focus on what is here right now: while cooking, meditating, praying, protesting, planning, cleaning, crying… all of it.
Dear reader, you are here with us in Minneapolis, and we are with you. Let us realize the seamlessness of our lives, leave no one out of the circle of care, and share the path of liberation.
Ben Connelly is guiding teacher of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center and author of several books, including Inside the Flower Garland Sutra.
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