MN Frost, Red Hats, Dildos & the Rebel Loon

Emma - Solidarity at a professional women's hockey game

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.

Not everybody is built for the front line.
Not everybody is built to shout

~Paul Neary
owner of Needle & Skein and creator of the red resistance hats

Go Home ICE

Grand Casino Arena called for a moment of silence to honor the life of Alex Pretti.

Minnesota couldn’t just be “Nice” anymore. We chanted instead.

GO HOME, ICE!
GO HOME, ICE!
GO HOME, ICE!
GO HOME, ICE!

It was January 25, 2026, one day after Alex Pretti was shot ten times in the streets of Minneapolis, the second brutal murder by ICE.

MN Frost professional women’s hockey games are usually family-friendly events, a popular father-daughter outing for pre-teen girls to feel empowered. We should have been celebrating our team, two-time league champions, gearing up to send six players to the Winter Olympics in Italy.

We were too angry to sit in silence. Moments later, during the national anthem, we decided we could, in fact, be silent, and we sat down in protest.

“I love watching how Minnesota expresses their anger,” Emma says to the woman next to her as they watched a woman on the JumboTron wearing a Rebel Loon Frost jersey dance while lifting her middle finger and clearly saying “Fuck Ice.”

The camera quickly turned off, and the JumboTron replaced her image with their official Code of Conduct.

Alex Pretti’s death pulled the f-word of the tongue of Minnesota-Nice.

“We are so fucking reserved,” Emma’s eyes twinkled as she said the word fucking, as if she had only recently given herself permission to say it out loud.

“Not anymore!” the woman next to her says motioning to the fans clapping and chanting FUCK ICE as if the Code of Conduct was a challenge.

Dildos & Baloney

“Did you see that reel of the woman taunting the Fox News reporter at Whipple?” Emma asked, “She danced around him singing ‘I’m a big tough guy…I’m such a big tall strong tough guy.’”

“Yup. And the dildos?” the woman laughs.

“Oh my God. The dildos! We’re funny. We’re funny and creative. Let’s throw dildos and let’s throw baloney. That’s funny. And we’re not shooting guns—we’re throwing dildos and baloney.”

This is not how Minnesotans are supposed to behave. We are not a dildos-at-federal-agents people. At least we didn’t use to be. We were a hotdish-at-church-basement people. But the old rules weren’t working anymore, and the absurdity of the moment demanded an absurd response.

Once absurdity was allowed, creativity poured through the crack.

When ICE started patrolling our streets, the Smitten Kitten got mad, and their form of mad showed up as mutual-aid-married-expressionism and had a nonbinary baby. The Smitten Kitten, a progressive, sex-positive adult toy store that has been quietly serving the community for years with the warmth of a neighborhood bookshop and the inventory of, well, not a bookshop, gave us permission to be weird in public. They organized. They donated. They went viral on Instagram, and yes, they taught us how to attach freak flags to our protest signs.

And yes, they supplied the dildos.

“I’m proud of us,” the woman agrees.

“I have so much Minnesota pride. Don’t attack winter people in the winter. That huge protest when it was negative bajillion degrees out. Thinking of creative ways—the Singing Resistance, all the things—to continue the fight and hopefully inspire the country. We’re so fucking creative!” Emma’s eyes twinkle again, only brighter this time, as if using the word fucking is a super power she’s recently discovered.

The Rebel Loon

“Yeah! We are fucking creative!” The woman says, “Speaking of creative, I like your earrings,” she points the rebel loons dangling from Emma’s ears.

The Rebel Loon seemed to appear overnight, building momentum for Minnesota in ways we couldn’t have planned, but sorely needed. We were in the midst of a rebellion, and we are not a rebellious people. The simple design of Minnesota’s state bird rising into the shape of the Star Wars Rebel Alliance took on a life of its own when “feral_user,” a Moorhead web developer named Bernardo Anderson, shared it openly for anyone to use.

“Wearing these is a form of micro-activism.” Emma said, “I get excited when I see someone wearing a loon. It builds momentum.”

The Rebel Loon moved rapidly through social media feeds, the same way mutual aid and rapid response moved, passed along, neighbor to neighbor. Within weeks, it was everywhere, including a limited edition run of the MN Frost jersey.

“Those new rebel loon jerseys are only $60, and the proceeds go to mutual aid,” the woman tells Emma, and shows her where to get one for herself.

During nesting season, loons have the water, and eagles have the sky. The loon doesn’t meet her prey head-on. She disappears, underwater. And when she comes back up, she knows exactly where she is, driving off her opponent, the bald eagle, our federal government, again and again.

“I have a loon tattoo,” Emma tells the woman. “I’ve had it for two years, but now I feel prouder to have it. I feel prouder to have it tattooed on me.”

When Emma puts on her resistance loon earrings and her new loon Frost jersey, she doesn’t have to explain who she is. She doesn’t have to say anything out loud. . . She can just wear it.

To Emma, microactivism is wearing things to quietly make a loud statement.

She used to coach a hockey team, and had the opportunity to go to Washington DC to meet Senator Amy Klobuchar. Everyone was supposed to wear matching team sweatshirts for the event. But Emma wore a shirt that read “Racism and misogyny are injustices to all.”

“I don’t want to be the one following ICE. I don’t want to get blown in the head with a gas canister. What I can do is wear my activism.” Emma says. As a social worker who works in the ER where ICE brings protesters they’ve arrested and assaulted, she knows too well the personal consequences of that kind of resistance.

“I don’t want to be a soldier, and I felt kind of bad about that for a while because I’m an able-bodied white person that’s young and healthy that could have been out there.”

Emma has friends who are on the front lines, in the rapid response networks, chasing the ICE caravans and putting their privileged whiteness between ICE and our immigrant neighbors.

“There are people that can be on the front lines, that want to be out there, and that’s great. And sure, I’ll wear a whistle around my neck.”

“I don’t know if I’m going to see anyone,” she says. “But if I do, I’m ready, and it shows community support. And whenever I see someone walking with a whistle around their neck, it’s like — okay, yes. We have community here. Everyone’s looking out. We’re on the same page.”

The woman pulls a whistle out from under her turtleneck and winks at Emma.

Red Resistance Hats

“I can’t imagine myself on the front lines either, but I can crochet” the woman adds, motioning to the crowd, “Look at all those red resistance caps!”

In just a matter of weeks, women across the globe gathered in knitting circles to click-click-clack their needles. The red hat resistance started when Paul Neary and Gilah Mashaal, owners of Needle & Skein, a knitting store in St. Louis Park MN, reached back into WWII Norway and revived the nisselue, a simple red hat once worn under Nazi occupation. They sold their simple pattern for $5, went viral, and raised over $700,000 for mutual aid in under two months. The hats aren’t mass produced. Each one is handmade by mothers, grandmothers, aunts, friends, fathers, neighbors. The pattern reached more than 43 countries.

“I’ve made a crochet pattern with the Rebel Loon with laser eyes.”

“That’s super cool. Can I get a copy?”

“Of course.”

“My name’s Emma, by the way.”

“I’m Kim. It’s nice to know you, Emma.”

“I like that. It’s nice to know you too, Kim.”

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.

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I love you fiercely,

TeriLeigh 💜