Editor’s note: This story went to press in mid-February, in the midst of the ongoing and unprecedented surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity this winter in Minnesota. While circumstances continue to evolve, this article features stories of how Macalester community members are showing up, through acts of care that define who we are.
Leah Hood ’05 stood outside Green Central Elementary in Minneapolis. Her Macalester stocking cap purposely chosen for this moment, she wasn’t there to pick up a child. Instead, she was there to watch, scanning the street for unmarked immigration enforcement vehicles, providing an extra layer of support as the school day ended and students began their journey home.
“I cannot stop our families from being targeted, but I can help them to see and understand that they are not alone, that people care about them,” Hood says.
Miles away, Adrienne Christiansen, professor emerita of political science at Macalester, sat on a street corner in downtown Minneapolis. Just weeks after foot surgery, she’d been ordered by her doctor to stay off her feet. She was obeying those orders, but as thousands of demonstrators marched past her apartment, she simply could not stay inside.
“I needed to be there,” Christiansen says. “I cannot march right now, but by God, I can cheer.”
Back on campus in St. Paul, Macalester students had recently returned from winter break, and were already hard at work organizing. Group chats coordinated rides, grocery deliveries, and support for classmates who didn’t feel safe leaving their homes. Posters advertised help with errands. Walking patrols were formed for Scots to escort their peers to class.
Collectively, these acts, varied in scale, represent the Macalester community’s response to an unprecedented crisis: turmoil unleashed in the Twin Cities by a surge in federal law enforcement. Over many weeks, Minnesotans have witnessed disturbing scenes, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of agents working for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Customs and Border Protection.
Mobilizing in the face of violence and injustice, Mac alumni, students, staff, and faculty have joined a broader movement across the Twin Cities, showing up at school gates, street corners, in grocery aisles, and behind the wheel. Beyond Minnesota, they have sent words of affirmation, opened their wallets, and reached out to their representatives in Congress. Together, their acts have helped create a network of care, work that the Macalester community hopes will contribute to a more just and peaceful world.
Standing watch
For Hood, an educator, the work has taken many forms. Beyond her school patrols at elementary schools, she’s collected $4,000 for neighbors from friends and fellow alums. She’s delivered groceries to students sheltering in place. And she’s driven people to work when they didn’t feel safe driving on their own.
“My students are literally in hiding, and they’re trusting me with their address, their locations,” Hood says. “It feels like an honor. And it feels like a heavy responsibility.”
Hood traces that responsibility back to her time at Macalester. “The commitment to global citizenship and social justice that Macalester has always espoused was definitely nurtured in me,” she says. “The people I attended Macalester with are still to this day the smartest, bravest, most outspoken, most giving, fiercely compassionate human beings in the world.”
That compassion is visible in a Minnesota Mac group chat that’s been “extremely active” in recent weeks. When Hood needed winter clothes for a student’s child, she posted the request. Within minutes, alumni responded: “I got you. Pick it up whenever.”
When a local church needed boxes for grocery deliveries, the Mac chat group fulfilled the request in minutes. “The activism and generosity and commitment to community service that Macalester grads have is really second to none.”
Protesting as Care
From her 15th floor apartment, Adrienne Christiansen has had a birds-eye view of the many Minneapolis protests held in response to the federal law enforcement surge. And on multiple occasions, she’s rolled herself down to the street corner to cheer them on.
So determined in her haste to make it to the street, she hasn’t always worn the warmest of clothes. During one protest, with temperatures hovering around nine below zero, a woman left the march and placed her own knit cap on Christiansen’s head. Other protestors repeatedly approached her with hand warmers.
“I was absolutely floored by that human kindness,” she says. “It felt a bit like Halloween, except instead of candy, I came home with hope and pockets full of hand warmers.”
In 2017, the political science professor took Macalester students and staff to Washington, DC, for the Women’s March. Gathering together to march and protest, she argues, is a critical act of community care.
“When you see 50,000 people gather in your town to say, ‘no, this is wrong,’ all of a sudden the sense of isolation disappears. You realize that other people also care deeply about you,” Christiansen says. “And now, with ICE being here like an occupying force, to show up is quite literally to say: ‘Even at the risk of being knocked down or pistol whipped or arrested, I’ll take that risk to show my care.’”
Gathering together
The Reverend Dr. Hannah Adams Ingram, college chaplain and associate dean for Institutional Equity, began working at Macalester last summer. She chose Macalester because of the college’s commitment to create change, honor diversity in backgrounds and viewpoints, and respect all community members. Just months into her tenure, she has witnessed Scots live out those values.
“People are trying to take to heart that community togetherness is the antidote to the kind of violence that festers when we don’t know each other well,” Adams Ingram says.
The chaplain helped organize campus vigils in response to the deaths of Good and Pretti. The chance to gather, mourn, and reflect as neighbors, Adams Ingram says, offers people the opportunity to start seeing a path forward.
“Sometimes ‘thoughts and prayers’ get a bad rap, but it’s when we come together in these moments, when we pull together in reflection and are inspired by one another, we remember that we’re not alone,” Adams Ingram says. “And it’s there, when we quiet the panic, we can access deep wisdom, not just in ourselves, but with each other to figure out what to do next.”
All around Macalester, Adams Ingram has watched strangers gathering for impromptu acts of care: Students walking each other home. Neighbors arranging potlucks. And Minnesotans meeting over a lit candle.
“You never like to see crisis or tragedy be what spurs us to action,” Adams Ingram says. “But it has spurred us to action, and now we’re seeing people take care of one another, try to connect with one another, and I’m really excited to see where that could go.”
Sustaining the work
Carlos Mariani Rosa ’79 has helped organize support for schools across Minnesota. The former Minnesota state representative, who now serves as executive director of the Minnesota Education Equity Partnership, has developed training materials for educators on how to respond to the federal law enforcement surge.
“Our ability to run public schools and to be a community in Minnesota has been threatened, but we’re not giving up. Minnesotans are acting,” says Mariani Rosa, who has watched volunteers teaching students in homes, arranging food drives, and showing up for countless school patrols.
“It’s just remarkable what folks are doing in terms of stepping up and putting their lives on the line, giving their time and resources to protect their neighbors.”
While inspired by those actions, he encourages anyone looking to get involved to first reflect on their motivations.
“It’s important to reflect, because that gives you the deep will to make sure this isn’t a one-off kind of thing,” Mariani Rosa says. “Instead, what will be required to make lasting change is community building and forming deep relationships.”
Safe passage
As students prepared to return for spring semester, news outlets reported that rideshare drivers felt unsafe, due to the presence of ICE agents, picking up passengers at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. The college’s leadership team faced a dilemma: how would hundreds of students get back to campus?
It didn’t take long before the college’s van pool was identified as a solution. Student Affairs booked the fleet for two days straight, and within minutes, faculty and staff had filled about fifty volunteer shifts to drive the shuttles.
“Our Macalester community was just clamoring to help,” Tom Halverson, dean of the faculty, says. “It was almost like people wanted to do more than we could offer.” Ultimately, thirty faculty and staff members helped transport nearly two hundred students to campus.
“This is a community that’s deeply involved in the Twin Cities and especially wants to care for the people on our campus,” Halverson says. “And I think we sent a strong message to everyone watching—this is the kind of place Macalester is.”
That message was amplified this January by significant donations from the global Mac community. More than 300 people have donated $55,000 to support Mac’s community members through the Open Pantry and the International Student Support Fund.
Finding your lane
Contributing in this time of crisis has rarely looked the same from one Scot to another. Some have taken to the streets. Others have worked behind the scenes. All contribute meaningfully to the common good, according to President Suzanne Rivera.
“We all have to pick our own swim lane,” Rivera says. “Where’s the place that we can have impact that feels right to us given our own personal level of risk and what assets we can bring to the table? Everybody has a different point of entry to this.”
Professor Duchess Harris, who chairs Mac’s History Department, has been watching the current turmoil with an eye on the past. In early January, she called on Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to deploy the National Guard to ensure students could safely attend school—an action that echoes how troops were used to desegregate Arkansas schools decades ago.
Harris believes Minnesotans and their neighbors should feel empowered to contribute in a multitude of ways to protect American democracy.
“When community members believe that government actors are acting outside of the law, there are accountability mechanisms,” Harris says. “Accountability is not only legal, it’s democratic. Public protest, legislative pressure, media scrutiny, and sustained civic engagement—those are not failures of the system. They are responses to its limits.”
For Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty ’86, the work has meant relying on the community in unprecedented ways. When her office was denied access to evidence by federal investigators in the killings of Good and Pretti, Moriarty created a public portal asking residents to submit videos and information.
“I think this was first of its kind, maybe in the country,” Moriarty says. “We’ve received lots of information that’s been extraordinarily helpful.”
As Moriarty works to ensure justice is still served in a time of turmoil, she is motivated each day by the care she sees across the state. “We can stand up, we can stick together, we can care for each other, and we can speak out.”
The path forward
Hope can be hard to find in the midst of a crisis. But care in community, these Scots believe, will light the way to a brighter future.
“Crisis points lay bare our values and whether we’re going to live into them,” Adams Ingram says. “Right now, we’re seeing the Mac community lean into its values to build the world it believes is possible.”
“Regardless of the great perils in front of us, Minnesotans are still coming forward, not cowering behind closed doors, not just complaining, but putting themselves forward,” Mariani Rosa says. “It’s a remarkable trait, and I’m so proud to be a Macite and I’m so proud to be a Minnesotan.”
