Fear Is Different Here

 Via The Stranger

March 13, 2026

I photographed the mob at the Capitol on January 6. What I saw in Minneapolis was scarier.

By Nate Gowdy

Observers blow whistles in Minneapolis to signal that feds are present. Nate Gowdy

Seattle-based photographer Nate Gowdy went to Minneapolis to document the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Metro Surge. From January 17 to January 26, and February 13 to February 18, he photographed the civilian efforts to protect their communities from the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. This is what he saw.

...When I arrived in Minneapolis, I expected to find overarmed agents, tear gas clouds, traumatized civilians, and I did. I also found people walking their dogs, running errands, meeting for dinner.

Daily life continued, but it was unmistakably altered. Community events were canceled. It came through in every conversation with residents: weekend plans became risk assessments about the federal agents operating in residential neighborhoods without visible name tags or badge numbers. Tension lived in lowered voices and furtive glances toward any vehicle with tinted windows.

For eight days, I worked from a rented Toyota RAV4 with Texas plates with a group of other photojournalists. We taped a PRESS sign inside the windows as a disclaimer to the volunteers standing on almost every street corner in the subzero cold. We tracked federal movements through Signal channels, mixing confirmed sightings with rumors in a steady stream of pings. We stayed in contact with five other cars of photojournalists, all trying to document every abduction—failed or successful—that we could.

As we moved through the city, residents told us about their community-led rapid-response trainings. Volunteers distributed whistles and explained how to document raids safely. From this peaceful resistance, we learned to drive slowly through residential blocks, roll down our windows, and identify ourselves.

“We’re press. We’re watching ICE, too.”

Five years earlier, on January 6, 2021, I photographed the pro-Trump mob as thousands laid siege to the United States Capitol. Claims that “Might Makes Right” exploded into acrid fear. I have an audio recording of that day, when I was deep in the crowd at the Capitol steps, that can still bring back that fear. Wild and chaotic.

In Minnesota, the fear worked differently. It folded itself into school pick-ups, grocery runs, work commutes. People recalculated familiar routes before starting engines. Ordinary traffic drew scrutiny. Conversations sought a lower volume. Or went completely underground. The anxiety was procedural.

Veteran conflict photographers deployed to Minneapolis recognized the pattern: when heavily armed forces operate in civilian space, residents adjust.  Click for full article

Ryan Vizzions on archiving the Renee Good memorial

 

Via The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Video: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune

March 6, 2026

When it comes to archiving spontaneous public memorials, there are no clear pathways for what to do. Ryan Vizzions, a traveling photographer, started collecting posters from the spontaneous public memorial that sprung up at the site of Renee Good’s killing. What happens next depends on the family’s wishes. Tap the link to read the full report by Alicia Eler.

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Ryan Vizzions archives Renee Good memorial site artifacts

 Via The Minnesota Star Tribune

By Alicia Eler

March 3, 2026

Ryan Vizzions:  

January 7th, 2026 - After the murder of Renee Good by a masked federal agent, a vigil was held in her honor. Upward of 10,000 Minnesotans showed up to pay their respects at the location she was killed

What happens next depends on the family’s wishes.

Ryan Vizzions started collecting posters from the spontaneous public memorial that sprung up at the site of Renee Good’s killing. The traveling photographer appointed himself the site’s caretaker.

He also gathered many other items — a cookie jar filled with handwritten letters rolled into scrolls, letters addressed to Good’s family, a canvas covered with names of people killed by federal agents since 2025.

“All these are prayers,” Vizzions said. “These are things that people brought because they cared. We owe it to them to try and preserve them and save them and make it so the future can learn about what happened here.”

When it comes to archiving spontaneous public memorials, there are no clear pathways for what to do. The work is fluid, and caretakers volunteer because they feel called to do so. It’s all open-ended and grassroots; people write the rules as they go along. Even the city of Minneapolis doesn’t have timelines for what happens to memorials, city spokeswoman Jess Olstad said.

At Good’s site, it’s unknown where the gathered items will ultimately go, but community members are in contact with the Good family about next steps.

Vizzions initially rented a storage unit for the posters and other items, but moved them to a more secure undisclosed residential location in south Minneapolis.

“These sites emerge when the future feels uncertain and the past feels unfinished,” said Alex Pretti memorial site caretaker Jadah Green, 43, at a “Caring for Spontaneous Public Memorials After State Violence” panel discussion Feb. 27. “They are not permanent installations. They are not yet historical memory. They are living thresholds.”

Vulnerable memorials

Vizzions has been guarding, cleaning and organizing the site since the week after Good was killed. The site is vulnerable to changing weather and vandalism ― like when someone poured gasoline on it and lit a nearby pile of wood on fire Feb. 17.

The city doesn’t take care of the sites, but might help with cleanup or security. Caretakers do the daily work of talking to visitors, cleaning the site and keeping it beautiful.

Paul Eaves of Minneapolis helps out at George Floyd Square and the Pretti and Good memorial sites.

“It’s not about ego,” said Eaves, 77. “It’s about service.”

Minneapolis City Council Member Jason Chavez said he would like to see a permanent memorial for Good, but stressed that it’s up to the family, and it isn’t a decision that the city will or should make.

“I’ve heard from so many Latino neighbors, immigrant neighbors, about the courage that Renee Good had to look out for our community in a time when many of us feel like we have been sent back into the shadows,” said Chavez, who called the memorial a sacred space. “She brought light into this world.”

He wants caretakers and people affected by ICE to have a place “to mourn and celebrate Renee’s life, and a place where we can never forget what the federal government did and continues to do to our community.”

Vizzions’ favorite piece from the memorial is a painting on cardboard of Good in blue with the American flag.

“When we were doing the watch and we’d sit out there next to the fire, this one was facing us,” he said of painting. “For three weeks I stared at this piece.”

Vizzions raised more than $2,000 to pay for the storage space and equipment, including lights, backdrop, camera stands, tables, storage boxes and more.

In 2017, he published the photo book “No Spiritual Surrender: A Dedication to the Standing Rock Movement.”

He was in northern Minnesota on another project when he heard about Good’s killing. He drove down to Minneapolis and began camping out in front of the memorial in his van.

Through the process, he feels he’s become part of the community, and he’s contributing to the greater good.

The family’s decision

Rise & Remember Executive Director Jeanelle Austin said community members waited nearly two months to reach out to George Floyd’s family after his killing in 2020.

“You have to be able to give the families the time that they need to do all of the other things that take priority, and then when the family is ready, for them to decide what they want to do,” Austin said. “As caretakers, we’re keepers of the stories ― our job is not to make final decisions or final calls of what’s to come next.” --Full article with photographs

Ryan Vizzions Photographed Renee Good Memorial Site Arson

 Via Minnesota Star Tribune

February 18, 2026

Someone doused Renee Good’s south Minneapolis memorial and a nearby pile of wood with gasoline and started a fire at about 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17.

A fence was charred, and several items in the memorial were damaged, but the memorial site at 34th Street and Portland Avenue wasn’t burned down. No one was injured, Minneapolis police said.

Photojournalist Ryan Vizzions, 43, smelled gasoline from inside his van, which was parked near the memorial site.

“I looked out my windshield and I see orange,” he said. “My eyes lit up.”

Vizzions jumped out of the van after seeing the flames. Neighbors who live in the apartment building in front of Good’s memorial used two fire extinguishers to put out the blaze, he said.

Community members had covered the memorial site with a tarp earlier to protect it from the rain.

“We’ve been hypervigilant in our neighborhood and obviously everyone’s keeping an eye out all of the time,” said Wren Clinefelter, 23, who lives near the memorial. “So it’s definitely very disheartening to hear that someone would try and burn down a memorial for a woman who was killed in our neighborhood.”

Vizzions posted a video of the scene to his Instagram account.

More with video reporting via WCCO on Facebook

I Was Arrested for Doing My Job as a Reporter. Who’s Next?

 Via The New York Times

by Georgia Fort

Ms. Fort is an independent journalist based in Minnesota.

February 5, 2026

"Journalism is a public service, and I am proud to be a public servant. Professional reporting, observing and documenting is not a crime. But the freedom to do so is at risk. In November alone, three journalists were hit with pepper balls or other less lethal munitions and subjected to chemical agents while covering an ICE arrest in St. Paul. One, a Minnesota Public Radio reporter, was taken away by ambulance. Cameras were rolling. Press credentials were visible but offered no protection. I interviewed the St. Paul chief of police about these attacks in December. He refused to acknowledge that the incidents had occurred, even though several journalists had filmed and photographed them, including me. I filed a Freedom of Information Act request a few days after the interview to obtain body-camera footage of the attack on these journalists. It was denied.

These incidents are not isolated. After the fatal shooting of Renee Good, the independent photographer KingDemetrius Pendleton was tear-gassed by federal agents and was apparently shot with a chemical munitions canister. The Star Tribune video journalist Mark Vancleave was pushed back into his car by federal agents after trying to report on an ICE arrest, which he was covering for The Associated Press. The KARE 11 anchor Jana Shortal was hit with a chemical irritant while reporting after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti.

Having the right to film and document matters. Footage can disprove false accusations or confirm hard truths. It can exonerate or incriminate. Days after the church protest, Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse, was fatally shot by ICE agents. In the minutes that followed, videos from multiple angles of the shooting were published online, and this allowed the public, the press and the authorities to review the evidence." --full article here.

Related: Free Speech in Deep Freeze

Image of 5-year-old boy reminds us of the power of photography

 Via National Press Photographers Association

February 1, 2026

A single image can make us stop scrolling. Make us think and feel, confront us. But what are the types of images that have the power to do this? And can they provoke societal change, bend the arc of history? A widely published photo of a five-year-old boy on his way home from school in Minnesota — wearing a winter hat with bunny ears — hints at answers to these questions.

Whatever your view regarding the immigration debate, the can’t-look-away photo of Liam puts a face on America’s attempt at mass deportation. --click for full article

Ryan Vizzions Photograph From Minneapolis Featured in NY Times

 Via The New York Times

January 30, 2026

The Case Against the Department of Homeland Security

"But the rot goes deeper at the Department of Homeland Security, the behemoth that controls ICE, Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.) and myriad other federal agencies, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the Secret Service. Since its founding in 2002, a combination of organizational flaws and mission creep has allowed D.H.S. to evolve into the out-of-control domestic security apparatus we have today, one that views the very people it is supposed to protect as threats, not humans."

Ryan Vizzions

Monroe Gallery Photojournalists Documenting Minneapolis ICE Protests and Demonstrations

 January 18, 2026

Monroe Gallery photojournalists are covering the thousands of ICE and Border Patrol officers flooding into Minneapolis and the intensifying situation after the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good.

Mark Peterson

Via The New York Times

Ron Haviv

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David Butow

 

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Ryan Vizzions

Via Instagram



“The public should assume responsibility for creating an accurate record of what’s happening. It’s a big job that requires participation from all of civil society, including the local press, religious and community groups, librarians and teachers. Everyone. In every city. This is not an act of protest. It is record-keeping. There will come a time when people will want to know what it was like to be here, now. What was it like to work in a food truck or at a Home Depot when federal agents showed up? What was it like to be randomly stopped or followed on the sidewalk while walking home from a store? What’s it like for Native Americans to be accused by ICE of being undocumented?” --Poynter

“I think we all need to recognize the assault on media across the world and even in our country over the last few years is chilling”

 

Via The New York Times

By Kellen Browning

April 18, 2021

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, on Sunday responded to reports that the state’s police officers had assaulted journalists covering the unrest in a Minneapolis suburb, saying, “Apologies are not enough; it just cannot happen.”

Protests have erupted in Brooklyn Center, Minn., in the wake of the death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was killed by a veteran police officer during a traffic stop. Law enforcement officers have fired tear gas or pepper spray into crowds and have made dozens of arrests.

“I think we all need to recognize the assault on media across the world and even in our country over the last few years is chilling,” Mr. Walz said in an interview with a local CBS station. “We cannot function as a democracy if they’re not there.”

On Saturday, a lawyer representing more than 20 news media organizations sent a letter to Mr. Walz and leaders of Minnesota law enforcement organizations detailing a series of alleged assaults of journalists by police officers in the past week. Journalists have been sprayed with chemical irritants, arrested, thrown to the ground and beaten by police officers while covering protests, wrote the lawyer, Leita Walker.

The letter provides details of some of the alleged incidents, including ones involving journalists working for CNN and The New York Times.

Joshua Rashaad McFadden, a freelance photographer who was covering the protests for The Times, said in an interview on Sunday that the police surrounded the car he was in on Tuesday as he tried to leave the protests. They beat on the windows with batons, then entered the car to force him out, beating his legs and striking his camera lens, he said.

“It was definitely scary — I’ve never been in a situation like that with so many police officers hitting me, hitting my equipment,” Mr. McFadden, 30, said.

Mr. McFadden, who is Black, said the police did not believe his press credentials were real until another photographer vouched for him — a situation that has happened to him and other Black journalists many times, he said.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” he said, to know that “if a situation like this happens, they’re not going to believe or care about anything I’m saying.”

Later in the week, he said, he was forced to the ground along with other journalists and photographed by the police.

A spokeswoman for The New York Times Company on Sunday confirmed that Ms. Walker’s letter represented the company’s response.

On Friday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order forbidding the police to use physical force or chemical agents against journalists. But Ms. Walker wrote that officers were still engaging in “widespread intimidation, violence and other misconduct directed at journalists.”

Mr. Walz said in a tweet on Saturday that he had “directed our law enforcement partners to make changes that will help ensure journalists do not face barriers to doing their jobs.”

“These are volatile situations and that’s not an excuse,” he said during the television interview on Sunday. “It’s an understanding that we need to continue to get better.”