We Keep Us Safe

The same day Renee Good was killed, I was doing community patrol in South Minneapolis near a Spanish immersion daycare. Just that morning, a beloved teacher had been taken by masked, unidentified men into the street and then into an unmarked vehicle—all in front of the infants, toddlers, and young children who adored her. In response, parents and neighbors had coordinated a daycare watch within a couple of hours.

This was the first day most of these children had seen people outside their daycare with whistles and hi-vis vests. It was the first day of something that would become the new norm for them and their families. I vividly remember a time a parent had just exited the daycare at pick-up time, holding the hand of her toddler. Someone on the street was honking repeatedly as they drove by, which we patrollers initially interpreted as a warning to look out for federal agents. Instinctively, I put my whistle in my mouth so I would be ready to blow it when I spotted the agents. 

Out of my peripheral vision, I could see the mother stop and put her hand in front of her child to stop walking as well. Her eyes were glued to me with fearful anticipation, watching to see what I would do next. The child was confused, asking her, “Why did we stop?” Once I realized that the honking was not a threat, but perhaps instead honks of support for our community organizing on a historic day, I let the whistle leave my lips and announced the all-clear. I watched the mother’s body loosen to a more normal state as the two continued walking to their car.

The little girl asked her mother who I was, and she responded very simply: “She’s here to protect us. She’s here to keep us safe.” The little girl thought about this and asked a follow-up question. “Is she a police officer? She doesn’t look like police.” At that I kind of chuckled, since I was wearing my clerical collar under my hi-vis vest. The mother responded, “No, she’s a neighbor. Neighbors keep us safe.”

I have since spoken these words at United Nations Plaza for a panel and a rally about migration. But I did not learn them there. I learned them in sub-zero temperatures from Somali mothers, curious children, and thousands of neighbors.

This post is a blessing for anyone who has ever waited for a savior that didn’t arrive. The savior is not late. The savior is not coming. And that is genuinely the best news I could possibly offer.

Theology in Action

The monarch butterfly doesn’t wait for permission to cross into Mexico. The caribou doesn’t file for asylum. They move because the land changes. Because staying put is death. Humans are no different. We are animals who remember, who plant, who cook, who sing. And we are animals who move when our homeland is no longer tenable.

To call that movement “illegal” is not just bad policy. It is bad theology. It denies the interdependent web. It forgets that every being has inherent worth and dignity—not despite migration, but including migration. 

Migration is not a crisis. Migration is a sacred act. It is how life survives.

The community response to Operation Metro Surge was a creation of theology, and from that theology, I offer these blessings:

Blessing #1: You are not helpless. Waiting for a savior teaches helplessness. Keeping each other teaches power. You already have everything you need to keep someone: hands, a phone, a spare room, a bag of oranges. That’s not nothing. That’s the web.

Blessing #2: You are not alone. “No one is coming” sounds lonely. But it is actually the discovery that everyone is already here. The web is not a rescue helicopter. It is the person next to you right now.

Blessing #3: You can stop waiting. Waiting is exhausting. It keeps you oriented toward a horizon that never arrives. You have permission to stop looking up and start looking around. The person you’ve been waiting for is you. And the person next to you.

Blessing #4: The monarch doesn’t wait. The caribou doesn’t wait. Migration is not a crisis. It is a sacred act of survival. And survival, when done together, is joy.

I am not saying governments should do nothing. I will keep demanding policy, accountability, and climate reparations. But I refuse to make my hope dependent on those demands being met. 

“No one is coming” is not an excuse for the powerful to do nothing. It is not despair. Despair is waiting for someone who never shows up. This is freedom. It is an instruction for the rest of us not to wait. 

Despair says: Nothing matters because no one is coming.

Freedom says: No one is coming, so everything we do matters.

No one is coming to save us. And that is the good news. Because it means we are not waiting. It means we are already saving each other. The question is not whether governments or NGOs will act. The question is whether you will.

What This Means for Climate Justice

I have been talking about Metro Surge. But the same theology applies to climate disaster—because the two have never been separate.

The people who fled drought in the Dry Corridor of Central America. The people who fled rising seas in coastal West Africa. The people who fled wildfires that choked the air of entire towns. They arrived in Minneapolis with the knowledge of how to survive loss. And during Metro Surge, they used that knowledge to keep us—the born-here neighbors—calm, organized, and fed.

Climate justice is not only about reducing emissions or protecting land. It is about what we do when the land can no longer protect us. It is about who we become when the soil fails and the waters rise and the fires come.

No government is coming to save every coastal city. No international agreement is coming to resettle every climate refugee in time. That is not cynicism. That is honesty.

And that honesty is a blessing. Because it frees us to ask the only question that matters: What do we have? Who is next to us? How do we keep each other when everything shifts?

The gardeners who built raised beds in a church parking lot after tear gas soaked into the soil are the same people who will build community gardens on high ground after a flood. The phone trees we built during Metro Surge are the same networks that will check on elderly neighbors during a heat wave. The rotating shelter across mosques, synagogues, and churches is the same model that will house families displaced by wildfire smoke.

Climate justice, at its deepest level, is not about waiting for someone to save the planet. It is about becoming the kind of people who can save each other while the planet changes. That is not a consolation prize. That is the blessed work.

No one is coming to stop the climate crisis for us. That is a blessing. Because it means we were always the ones we were waiting for.

A Blessing for Those Who Don’t Wait

Blessed are the ones who stop looking up.

Blessed are the ones who look around.

Blessed are the casserole bringers, the Signal organizers, the raised bed builders.

Blessed are the gardeners who feed their hiding neighbors.

Blessed are the children who draw suns in cold basements.

No one is coming. That is the blessing.

Because you are already here.

And you are enough.

And the web holds.

We kept each other during Metro Surge.

We will keep each other during the next flood, the next fire, the next surge.

Not because we are heroes.

Because we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Amen. And let it be so.