These businesses opened for free food, resources during Minnesota's economic blackout
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
It’s Friday morning in Powderhorn, the Minneapolis neighborhood where Renee Macklin Good was killed.
Sunny Draves-Kellerman flips pancakes at the May Day Cafe. They’re planning to make at least 150.
“I was just kind of having an internal debate if I needed to make more,” they say. “We'll see what happens.”
Hundreds of Minnesota businesses shut their doors Friday in observation of a general strike. But a few made the choice to close their doors to customers but provide free coffee, food and resources for protesters.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
May Day opened for a community meal between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., with coffee, pancakes and soup free or by donation.
The cafe is a worker-owned co-op, and Draves-Kellerman is both cook and owner.
They say the surrounding neighborhood has been busy with ICE activity. At least once a day, they’ll hear whistles. The entire cafe empties to go observe.
“So it's also kind of beautiful to watch everyone come together in that way,” Draves-Kellerman said.
“I feel cared for and feel like I'm caring for the community as I'm working here.”
Staying open Friday felt like living up to the cafe’s values as a community space.
“Since Renee was shot, it's been pretty busy,” Draves-Kellerman said. “I really felt like customers are really just needing this space and needing somewhere they feel warm.”
The cafe has that warm feeling, all yellows and browns and wooden family-style tables.
At one of the tables, Crystal is eating pancakes with her seventh-grade daughter. MPR isn’t using the full name of most activists in this story because they are afraid of being targeted by federal agents. They live in the neighborhood, just blocks away. Some of her daughter's classmates have stopped showing up to school since the surge of federal immigration agents came to town.
“When I first heard the announcement in December about the big operation planned here, I just wept. I spent the whole day crying,” Crystal said.
“And then when I saw people coming together, I felt that it was for me, this antidote to despair.”
It's double digits below zero, but a few blocks down from the May Day Cafe, four people are gathered around a campfire on a roundabout.
They're bundled up, whistles around their necks. They're watching for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. They ask not to share their names.
“There's kind of a crazy attack on us right now, on our neighbors, and it's not cool,” one of them says. “And so, we're just here to keep eyes out and get together and get to know each other more if we haven't already.”
They point down the street. There are more people gathered on another roundabout.
On another side of the city, Central Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis is a mix of international grocery stores, restaurants and cafes.
This street has also seen an increasing amount of ICE activity for the past few weeks.
Coffee shop and music venue Pilllar Forum is also closed for business, but open for a community potluck and free coffee.
Inside, a woman named Sophie says she lives down the street. She’s seen federal agents here.
“Greg Bovino was here,” she said, referring to the senior official with U.S. Border Patrol. “And I watched them take a man into their car and then later come into the crowd and tackle an observer to the ground and arrest him as well.”
Sophie has felt let down by what feels like a lack of response from some local leaders.
“I see the mayor of New York City out on the streets with the protesters. I don't see our mayor out here on the streets because he's afraid of his own people, and that is just so disheartening to me.”
Pilllar Forum is a small space, but packed with people on Friday. There are whistles and hand warmers and signs. Owner Corey Bracken is serving coffee behind the bar.
He says federal law enforcement activity has made the coffee shop a gathering place of sorts.
Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne and State Sen. Doron Clark, DFL-Minneapolis, have joined community patrols in the neighborhood.
They were near Pilllar Forum when ICE officers surrounded a woman's car outside. A crowd gathered, and demanded the agents leave.
“And all the ICE agents ended up getting back in their vehicles and leaving. And it was kind of a shining moment for the community,” Bracken said. His video of the interaction outside his coffee shop went viral.
On Friday, there’s typically a show. That’s canceled. Instead, a table is in front of the music venue's stage, piled high with vegetables, hummus, clementines and cookies.
Bracken had planned on serving free coffee and absorbing the cost. But donations poured in once word started to spread about it.
“It's been amazing to see the support that this community is getting, not only here from our own people, but also across the country, that people feel so helpless that they can't do anything,” Bracken said.
Just outside Pilllar Forum on Friday afternoon, a small anti-ICE protest of children and parents pass by on the sidewalk. The sentiment from these small businesses is on the streets — even on a bitterly cold day like Friday.
