Midwestern Nice

The lifesaving and community-saving work Minnesotans have been doing isn’t happening despite their Midwestern charms, but because of them. Honoring their upbeat attitude during frigid temperatures, we’ve seconded The Nation’s nomination of the people of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize [“The Nation Nominates Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize,” March 2026]. With six decades of Midwestern living between us, we recognized a distinctly regional thing going on amid all the chaos: neighborliness.

We have been recipients of Midwestern housewarming pies and the lucky beneficiaries when an early riser decided to shovel the sidewalks of the whole block. After a plea for help getting a teenager a trumpet, four materialized in less than 24 hours. Do you need help with that? our neighbors seem to be continually thinking. Let me see what I can do. Midwestern Nice takes care of your neighbors, and we see that is fundamentally what’s been going on in Minneapolis amid the chaos wreaked by ICE.

The skills honed across parent-teacher associations, potlucks, and sports boosters became a contemporary barn-raising of sustained peaceful action by the people of Minneapolis in the face of ICE’s repeated provocations in freezing weather (another thing they have the skills to combat). Minnesotans gathered hand warmers in bulk and got whistles into hands, thereby reasserting care, mutual support, and nonviolent norms in their community.

They even turned potential weaknesses into distinctive effectiveness. We admit Middle America can be wary of strangers driving around our streets, a little prone to gossip-y sharing of news. Which the people of Minneapolis turned into a formidable Signal chat and thousands of phones capturing ICE’s behavior from every angle. In 2026, back-fence whispering now detects masked federal agents willing to snatch neighbors’ children or shoot unarmed mothers and nurses.  

It might be uncomfortable for our coastal friends, but Midwesterners have a history of unabashed piety. In Minneapolis, hundreds of clergy kneeled to pray that Delta Air Lines would stop taking ICE’s money—that was Midwestern, too. What was not Midwestern was to arrest those clergy during prayer.

With the initial victory of drawing down thousands of federal agents—incomplete though this victory is—the power of neighborliness as a basis for action is clear. Those of us not in Minnesota need to collectively imagine: How can we protect our own neighbors, in a way that uses the distinctive strength and flavor of where we are from?

Theodore J. Iwashyna
baltimore, md

Amanda Uhle
ann arbor, mi

Theodore J. Iwashyna is a doctor and professor of medicine and public health at the Johns Hopkins University. He and his wife met and got married in Chicago and raised their children in Michigan.

Amanda Uhle is the publisher of McSweeney’s and the author of the memoir Destroy This House.

All of Minnesota has led alongside Minneapolis. Minnesotans throughout the state have been protecting neighbors from ICE, as its attacks in St. Paul have targeted Latino, Hmong, Karen, and Somali communities. Minneapolis can’t do it alone, nor can Minnesota. But we can all lead by opposing the federal government’s invasion.

Darla Kashian
st. paul, mn

Current Issue

September 2026 Issue

Today’s “Jewish Question”

Joseph Dana’s “The Long Shadow of the ‘Jewish Question’” [March 2026] raises many questions I have often faced as a Jewish progressive Democrat. Is Zionism defined by the vision of its founders and the prophetic traditions of biblical texts, or by the actions of right-wing Israeli governments and Jewish terrorists claiming its mantle to justify their actions?

The philosophical questions of Zionism are less relevant than the reality with which humanity has been confronted. The need for a sovereign Jewish state was made obvious by the Holocaust. Every nation in the world—including the United States—shut its doors to desperate people who were then murdered. For the last 2,000 years, Jews have enjoyed periods of respect and influence in various countries, from North Africa and medieval Spain to pre-Nazi Germany, only to see it come crashing down into persecution and murder.

Jewish safety in the diaspora lasts only as long as the non-Jewish majority permits it. Thus, the necessity of Israel was clearly and devastatingly demonstrated, not as a justification for a theoretical construct, but rather as a necessity for Jewish survival.

Israel is also a country like any other—its existence is a fact, not up for debate or justification. But its actions are still subject to scrutiny. The war crimes perpetrated by the Netanyahu government in Gaza, Israeli annexation of the West Bank, and appalling settler violence supported by members of the current government demand public excoriation.

Those seeking to answer today’s “Jewish Question” should focus on the pursuit to which I have dedicated much of my life in public service: to realize the vision of Israel articulated in its declaration of independence, an Israel that is “based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”

Jerrold Nadler
new york, ny

The writer represents New York’s 12th Congressional District in the US House.