(RNS) — As tensions in Minneapolis continue between residents, federal agents and protesters, the Rev. Stacey Smith, an African Methodist Episcopal Church presiding elder, said Black churches are taking action to address complex needs in the Twin Cities area.
“We recognize that we are in profound crisis,” said the supervisor of 10 AME churches in Minneapolis and St. Paul. “And when you’re in profound crisis, it’s like putting your finger in a dike, and another hole opens up, and you have to put your finger over here.”
Black faith leaders are taking steps to aid Minneapolis residents who have seen an influx of federal officers in their city and are joining calls for new legislation to increase their accountability. A week after the shooting death of Renee Good and more than five years after the death of George Floyd, each at the hands of law enforcement, some are seeking to defuse the tensions between protesters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or between agents and the people they seek to detain.
On Thursday (Jan. 15), Smith and other Twin Cities-area AME Church officials issued a statement, saying Good’s death “never should have happened,” and listed more than a dozen ways they have tried to meet community needs there, including being present on the streets or at the state capital, bringing food to families that are fearful of leaving their homes, or “intentionally patronizing immigrant-owned businesses harmed by ICE operations.”
Smith said AME church members have long supported such businesses, but it has been particularly important to help them in recent weeks.
“These are legal citizens of our country, and their businesses are being targeted, and they are being harassed,” she said. “These people have to live, they have to eat, they have to pay bills. They have to do all those things, too. So it’s important for us to support those communities and to allow them to know that they have the community behind them as well.”
RELATED: In Minneapolis, George Floyd-era faith networks reignite after Renee Good’s killing by ICE
Smith is also collaborating with the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network on plans for an upcoming vigil in Minneapolis to honor Good’s memory.
The Rev. Jerry McAfee, pastor of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in North Minneapolis, describes his church as having “boots on the ground,” in the streets, seeking to defuse tensions. However, he urged caution.
“Normally what our group would do is be between ICE, the police and the protesters,” said McAfee, former president of the Minnesota Baptist State Convention. “What we’ve consistently tried to tell people is, ‘Protest all you want, but what we don’t want you to do is agitate and provoke to where our people get hurt.’”
He also said he has begun conversations with leaders of the local Somali community that involve “hard questions,” like whether someone in the country illegally should leave instead of hiding from federal authorities.
“If you know your papers ain’t right, and you know if they catch you, they’re going to take you, or your kids are just going be left,” he said he suggested in a Thursday meeting, “would it not make better sense for us to have a conversation about another action plan that could help get you to a place safe, as well as your kids, to where you’re not in danger?”
And as tensions continue in Minneapolis, some Black faith leaders across the country are calling for state and national legislators to pass laws that limit some of the activities of divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, such as ICE.
The Rev. Boise Kimber, president of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., on Wednesday urged leaders of his historically Black denomination to call on cities and states to follow California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lead and enact laws that prevent ICE and other law enforcement from wearing face masks, comparing them to members of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan who covered their heads as they terrorized Black people.
“When you go back home, you go back home sharing with your pastors and sharing with the leaders that we no longer will support you if you do not come out with legislation — saying to your mayor, saying to your chief, saying to this state legislator and governor, take the mask off,” Kimber said at a news conference during the denomination’s midwinter meeting in Florida.
Both Smith and McAfee said they agree with passing such legislation. “Some of them need to be identified because here’s the reality: How do you ramp up ICE as quickly as it has been ramped up and safeguard against bigots being part of ICE?” McAfee said.
And on Thursday, a wider coalition of 74 faith, civil rights and advocacy organizations signed onto a letter urging Congress to take steps to reduce “this Administration’s ongoing, lawless campaign that is terrorizing American communities.” The NAACP, which signed the letter, noted it was sent in the wake of not only Good’s death but also the killing of another U.S. citizen, Keith Porter Jr., who was shot by an off-duty ICE officer on New Year’s Eve in Carson, California.
The letter, spearheaded by UnidosUs, another civil rights organization, also included signatories from the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the United Church of Christ, and Faith in Action East Bay in Oakland, California. Among its demands were banning the use of masks by federal agents and forbidding military members and resources from being deployed for domestic policing operations and immigration enforcement.
RELATED: In the neighborhood where Renee Good was killed, a pastor keeps patrolling for ICE
