A protest frog watches a WoMN make ICE cry.

Frances - What a Woman's Voice Can Crack Open

What you are about to read is an excerpt from WOMN, a collaborative effort of the women of Minnesota who kept showing up during Operation Metro Surge, holding the grief, the rage, the tenderness, and the fierce love that women know so well.

If you see yourself in these pages,
Pass it to the woman next to you.

Frances

Two days after Renee Good was shot, Frances went to a protest at the Whipple Federal Building, AKA ICE Headquarters.

She wore an inflatable frog costume.

“People don’t really notice me as a person,” Frances says, “they notice the frog.”

She’s able to weave in and out amongst the people, and witness the most intimate of conversations and interactions without anyone realizing she is there.

That day, before the big fence went up to barricade the protestors, ICE agents stood in a line almost toe to toe with protestors. Things turned violent really fast. There was pepper spray, pepper balls, and multiple altercations with ICE tackling protestors and arresting them.

“I almost got pepper sprayed. And I had my frog costume on, so luckily people helped pull me back.”

Once out of the fray, Frances decided to wander the quieter edges of the protest where fewer people were gathered. In those spaces she could witness things that the people in the center of the protest would miss entirely. She found an intimacy there that didn’t exist inside the chaos.

An older woman stood face to face with an ICE agent, close enough that the mist of their breath almost mingled in the bitter January air.

The agent was young. He was masked, but from ten feet away through the window of her frog suit, Frances noticed his eyes. Behind the tactical gear and the weapon, hidden inside his eyes, she saw vulnerability.

The older woman had the energy of a third grade teacher. You know the type, the one who is soft and squishy, almost grandmotherly, but also the teacher you respect the most, the one you never ever want to make mad. She spoke to him calmly, but firmly, as he stood there silent. His eyes said he was listening, but he dared not speak. She raised her voice enough to be heard over the chaos, commanding attention without demanding it.

“You don’t have to do this. You can change your mind. It’s never too late. Just please join us.”

Together, an ICE agent, an older woman, and a frog were lost in a moment where all the chaos, the whistles, the yelling, and the pepper spraying around them faded into the background. The agent said nothing. He just stood at attention, receiving her message, like a soldier receiving a demerit.

And the woman kept speaking to him, lovingly, but firmly.

His eyes filled with wetness.

He didn’t say anything.

He just looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there — like he wanted her to hold him, to hug him. Somewhere inside the gear and the mask and the gun, there was a third-grade boy thinking:

I didn’t know what I was signing up for.
Mom, can you please help me.

He never said it.

Frances just read it in his face.

That was enough.

This is an excerpt from WOMN- a book about the women of Minnesota and what Operation Metro Surge made of us.

It’s a mutual aid effort — written by us, for us, moving hand to hand the way love does when it’s real. New excerpts will be released as I write them, every Tuesday, here on Fierce Love. When the manuscript is complete, I plan to release it the grassroots way. Self-published, and supported by grief at grounding community gathering events and independent bookstores.

If this chapter found you, it found you for a reason.

If you want to support this effort, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. If you want to support this effort, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers will receive full chapters (not just excerpts) with my author’s commentary about my process and experience at least once a month.

Do you have a “protest frog” story? Please add your voice by sharing in the comments. I’m listening. We all are.

That’s how this works.

That’s how we work.

I love you fiercely,

TeriLeigh 💜