Emily Articulated: Midwest nice

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

“Are you okay?”

These were the last words of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse from a local VA hospital, before he was gunned down in the streets of Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Moments before, a mob of masked agents pushed toward him, knocking a woman to the ground — someone Pretti instinctively moved to help. As he reached his arm out to her (his other arm filming the event on his phone), he asked, “Are you okay?”

He was pepper-sprayed, shoved to the ground, beaten and disarmed. Once totally subdued — his only remaining movement an attempt to protect his head, as his medical training had taught him — he was shot ten times in the back. He was later labeled a “domestic terrorist” by the federal government.

I’ve been thinking about what I can contribute to this conversation that hasn’t already been said. As always, people have picked their “sides,” replacing humanity with talking points; with MAGA loyalists blaming Pretti for not identifying that he was carrying. Maybe he could have done so with a mouth full of pepper spray, or mid-kick to his body. Maybe Renée Good could have turned her car a bit further to the left. Maybe then, they wouldn’t have received the highest punishment under the law: execution.

I could state that people are being ripped from their homes, detained in overcrowded facilities, put to work for cents an hour and separated from their children. That peaceful protests are met with tear gas and labels like “agitator” and “insurrectionist,” while constitutional protections — speech, due process, equal protection — are bent or discarded in plain sight.

But people have heard all of that already — versions pre-packaged by the news stations they subscribe to — and they’ve decided how to react: with horror or with a sense of righteous indignation. So, what I keep coming back to is the instinct of a Midwest man reaching a hand out to a woman on the ground, and the rallying of Minnesota as a whole, showing us what solidarity in the face of adversity looks like. This is what I know, and what I can speak to with certainty and pride.

As a Wisconsin native with family in Minneapolis, being “Midwest nice” and being a “good neighbor” are baked into the fabric of my existence. It’s a foundation laid early: Always shovel your neighbor’s driveway after shoveling your own, drop off a hot dish in hard times and good ones, “Ask how your mom is doing, and tell her I said ‘Hi’ while you’re at it.”

What I’ve seen over the past few weeks in Minnesota is that niceness being forged into something sharper, harder — something closer to resolve. The hands that grew up in perpetual extension, reaching out in greeting, are now clasped together, locked in protection and togetherness that threatens to be impenetrable.

Midwest nice has been activated into Midwest rage, a collective “do wrong to ours, and we’ll show you what taking care of our neighbors means.” It looks like peaceful protests spanning city blocks, with more than 50,000 people gathering at a time. It means interfaith prayers and Indigenous American songs at vigils for those who have lost their lives.

It looks like thousands-strong sing-alongs and all-night marches in severe winter conditions. It means people donning the clothes they reserve for ice fishing or NFL games on frozen tundra, layering up like battle gear against twenty-below temperatures, against an invasion of everything they know to be moral and just.

Minnesotans are standing together, buoyed by their governor and mayors, reminding us what people-first leadership looks like. The National Guard, once activated, spent time handing out coffee and donuts while police stood watch, protecting protesters — showing us what it really looks like to protect and serve.

Through all of this, we’re witnessing not just outrage, but real-time resistance that is creating change. It’s shaping how people of all backgrounds and across party lines see what’s happening, from deepening calls for accountability to widespread demands for justice and transparency. We’re seeing a resuscitation of a democracy that has been creeping closer to its untimely end, and hope for our capacity to make a difference, fluttering back into existence.

So, I’ll end where I began: People are afraid for their lives, their families and their communities; of being profiled on the street and mistaken for caricatures of political rhetoric. Others are rising to that fear by assuming some of the burden; the familiar but now sharpened weight and responsibility of being a good neighbor. What I hope we take from this, even in the face of adversity, is that our deepest instinct — to reach out with care and ask, “Are you okay?” — remains worth holding onto with fervor.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.