I drove to
Needles and Skein this week and bought a red Melt the Ice hat. For those of you not aware of this news story: a knitting shop in St. Louis Park did some brainstorming about what they might do to respond to the ICE Metro Surge in the twin cities. One of the employees, Paul Neary, read about the history of red hats that were knitted in Norway in World War II to signal resistence to the Nazis. They became so popular that the Nazis actually outlawed the wearing of red knitted hats.
So the shop
posted a pattern on the knitting website Ravelry, charging $5.00 for the download.
On the day that I went to the shop, they had raised
$750,000.00 through the sale of the pattern, which they are donating entirely to charities to help people caught up in this extraordinary situation. People all over the world have downloaded it. The wall behind the cash register was full of letters from people who had knitted the hat and sent it to the store. I was able to buy a hat for $30.00 that someone had knitted and sent in.
While scrolling through some news feeds about this, I saw
this Instagram post from a man who has a knit hat company in Norway who was talking about this story, and about the initiative to encourage people to wear their Melt the Ice patterned hats on February 26, which is the anniversary of the date that the Nazis attempted to outlaw the red hats. In the course of his commentary, he mentioned a Norwegian word that struck me as a very appropriate title for my collage this week:
Menneskeverd, which refers to the fundamental, intrinsic value of every human being simply by virtue of being human.
That is what we are fighting for, here in Minnesota.
I thought about ICE, and icebergs, and how what you see is only a small part of what is hidden underneath. I mentioned when I did my post last week that I'm doing work that I can't talk about. We are ALL doing work that we can't talk about, here in Minnesota, much of it on the encrypted app Signal. The administration is rumbling about trying to outlaw the totally constitutionally protected actions we are taking to deal with this siege, threatening to subpoena media companies to identify people who dare to criticize ICE. I have wondered about the safety of my blog here, in this little corner of the internet where I have been posting for close to twenty years.
Well. Doing what we are doing requires bravery, because you see, even though the administration argues against empathy and threatens those of us who show it, we believe in the fundamental, intrinsic value of every human being simply by virtue of being human.
Edited to add: a comment I saw elsewhere: if we are no longer in the land of the free, at least we must be the home of the brave.
Image description: An iceberg floats in water. The view shows both the part of the iceberg above and below the water. The ice berg is topped by a red 'Melt the Ice' hat. Above the water surface is black text listing things being done openly: Rent relief, The Salt Cure, Diaper drives, Donating miles, t-shirts, 3D printed whistles, GoFundMe, Rebel Loon tattoes, signs on telephone poles, too many businesses to list, Safe Haven, Concerts. Below the water surface is a Signal app logo and text in white of things done in secret: rides for immigrants, grocery delivery, the People's Laundry, school patrols, neighborhood patrols, Rapid Response, Can I get a plate check?, donate breast milk, we need a translator, Dispatch.Menneskeverd
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