A Loon Can Kill an Eagle
In July 2021, Danni Dickson watched a bald eagle swoop at a pair of nesting loons on Papineau Lake in Ontario. Moments later, the eagle struggled its way to shore, collapsed and died, while loons called from the water. Dickson found blood and a puncture wound in the eagle’s breast, consistent with the dagger-like bill of a loon.
The most powerful creature in the sky can make a catastrophic mistake when it assumes the creature below the surface is powerless.
Most of us Minnesotans didn’t know that a loon has the ability to kill an eagle. And we certainly don’t want to be put into any kind of position to use our dagger-like beaks that way.
Like our common loon state bird, we are used to being underestimated, and we like it that way.
In early December 2025, ICE came to Minnesota in force, and they underestimated us, big time.
The federal government called it Operation Metro Surge. As more than 3,000 federal immigration officers poured into our state, our immigrant friends sheltered-in-place while the old white ladies (OWLs) and neighbors blew whistles, honked horns, stood guard in reflective vests, and provided mutual aid to protect our neighbors.
We got arrested for legally observing, pepper-sprayed in the face, and assaulted for exercising our freedom of speech.
Then, the unthinkable happened.
On January 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good, a 37 year old mother and poet. A few hours later, ICE agents appeared at Roosevelt High School during dismissal where kids and teachers were pepper-sprayed at close range.
So we organized a massive protest action on January 23. 50,000 people filled our downtown streets in sub-zero weather for the ICE OUT general strike and march.
And the unthinkable happened, again.
The next morning, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37 year old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center.
That’s when we knew that things could never go back to normal.
Normal doesn’t exist anymore.
The loon is calling. Sit down at the fire with us. Every Tuesday, a new story from the WOMN of Minnesota. Free subscribers get the stories. Paid subscribers keep me writing them.
Look for the Helpers
We have experienced so many scary things that we are still uncovering and dealing with and figuring out, and will be sorting out for years to come. Because we didn’t know what to do with it all, we turned to a simple childhood lesson given to us by a kind man in a cardigan singing to us about neighbors in his land of make-believe with puppets, Mr. Fred Rogers.
“Look for the helpers,” he said.
“Uffda— apparently, we are the helpers,” we replied.
Each time the actions of ICE get worse, we discover deeper wells of love inside us. Our hearts have stretched so thin that they have ripped wide open, again and again. Every one of those gaps has filled in with a love so huge and so fierce that our hearts have grown to sizes and powers we didn’t know were possible.
Evidently, our childhood science teacher was right too: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So, while all of this is happening (cuz it’s still happening today), we just keep doing what needs to be done, quietly taking care of each other.
We are the WOMN.
Our stories didn’t make the news.
The journalists can report what happened: who was detained, who was shot, how many agents came, how many people marched, which lawsuits were filed, and when the operation supposedly ended.
Our stories are the interior ones, revealing our emotional truths as WOMN who are living inside these horrors, bandaging our wounds while still in the midst of our battles.
At sunrise, Alice faces eight ICE vehicles at the city park where she walks her dog. A man in a reflective vest walks the perimeter, and settles her. On the drive home, Alice notices the vests everywhere. Amber is one of them — standing outside a mobile-home park, waiting for the school bus with the children so that their parents can stay in hiding. She keeps checking her phone for a message from her daughter Sasha who is at MSP airport, using her white body as a little extra protection for her future brother-in-law on his way back to Mexico.
By nine, Lorraine is taking attendance in a high school history class that has lost two-thirds of its students. Across town in a different school, Julia hears a child crying outside her door and spends her lunch period organizing mutual aid for his classmates.
All the while, Vox is at Whipple, serving as emergency medic at the protests.
We are teachers and nurses, mothers and grandmothers, social workers and artists, business owners and retirees, medics and legal observers. Some of us have spent years, decades even, organizing and protesting. Others of us have never been to a protest in our lives. We don’t want attention or accolades for our efforts. We just want to help, because we can’t not.
The WOMN Project
I’m TeriLeigh, and I’m one of the WOMN of Minnesota, and I’m collecting and writing these stories.
After Renée Good died, like many of the women in Minnesota, I lost myself. For weeks, everything I tried to do felt frivolous and pointless in light of the horrors happening on the streets of my home state. When Alex Pretti died I picked up my pen.
Writing helped, but writing is a lonely venture, and healing happens best inside of a community. So I put out a quiet little call, inviting sensitive soul Minnesota women to gather. And they showed up. We sat in a circle and poured our stories on the ottoman between us in my living room.
And I kept thinking,
I need to write these stories.
So that’s what I’m doing.
I’ve collected stories from 13 women into a book, but that’s only the beginning.
Thirteen women shared with me their truths about what they lived through. These are the stories that hide inside the tears shed behind bathroom doors, underneath the floormats of cars delivering mutual aid, and inside the pages of private journals. For whatever reason, these women felt safe telling me their stories, and I don’t take that lightly. Being the face and the voice of their truths is the most important work I have ever done.
And there are thousands more.
So I’m building an archive. I’m creating a network where women can bring me their stories to write, and eventually I want to gather a team of writers who share this passion and this skill, because there are far too many stories for one person to carry. The WOMN Project is a living, breathing, growing record of what we did here, and what it cost us, and what light poured out of us because of it.
Become a Paid Subscriber
I am an independent, self-employed author working full-time to gather, research, and write these stories. There is no publishing house, newsroom, or institution funding the work.
A paid subscription keeps me at the desk doing the work. It also adds your voice to the collective message from this momentous time in history.
WOMN is a commercial publishing project, and this work is how I earn my living. The WOMN Project also believes that stories gathered from community should continue to nourish community. Each year, we return some of the project's resources to Minnesota through mutual aid—sometimes through established organizations and sometimes directly to individuals and families who need help. At the end of each year, we'll tell you what we gave.
I love you fiercely,
Thank you for giving a shit,
TeriLeigh 💜