Activists unfurled a 24-foot-long quilt protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violence at the Minnesota State Capitol on Tuesday, September 22. Made of 11,000 individual patches representing individuals disappeared by ICE in the state, the “Stolen Neighbors” quilt was stitched together by dozens of volunteers over the course of five months.
MIRAC member Owen Lubozynski told Hyperallergic that he was inspired to create the quilt based on discussions with activists about the most effective ways to keep people, including key Minnesotan lawmakers, engaged after Operation Metro Surge, President Trump’s deadly deployment of more than 3,000 Minnesotan officers and ICE agents across the state this past year. ICE agents shot three people; Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were murdered on camera while protesting ICE presence in the Twin Cities. Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan immigrant, was shot in the leg, but survived.
“We wanted to resist a return to normalcy while Minnesotans were still being quietly terrorized,” Lubozynski told Hyperallergic. “I thought one way to do that would be to create a visual representation of every stolen neighbor, one that was impossible to ignore.”
Although they originally intended to unveil the quilt over the mezzanine, members of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) realized it was too long and might hit some light fixtures, so once inside the Capitol, they slowly unfolded the quilt horizontally over the rotunda floor as they chanted “stand up, fight back.” A few representatives looked on from the balcony above as supporters in inflatable frog suits stood around in solidarity.
