Dear beloved friends,
After the killing of Renee Good, faith leaders in Minneapolis issued a call. I went because ICE violence is escalating, because federal funding continues to fuel terror, and because stopping the funding of ICE is not an abstract policy demand—it is a matter of life and death.
In the last week, I was arrested TWICE—once in Minneapolis and once in Washington, DC—while participating in peaceful, prayerful acts of civil disobedience against the terror that ICE, disappearing people, ripping families apart, and carrying out murders in plain sight, is enacting in Minnesota, and cities across the country.
Being arrested in the U.S. Senate, January 29, 2026
I do not say this lightly. I say it because, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965, I believe there are moments when people of faith are called to leave safety behind and show up where history is being written. When King called clergy to Selma, he said, “The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all America help to bear the burden.” Last week, Minneapolis became one of those places.
Before I ask you to read anything else, I want to ask you to help someone right now.
Please consider donating today to support Pastor Erich Kussman’s work in Trenton, NJ.
Erich is a pastor I was arrested with in Washington, DC. While national attention shifts, he is working around the clock just miles from my home in Newark, responding to an ICE surge in Trenton. Families are afraid to leave their homes. Parents are losing jobs overnight. People are disappearing into detention.
As Erich says:
“Trenton has been living in state terror. We are supporting families after ICE raids by providing immediate humanitarian aid—food, financial, and legal assistance. Anything donated can help.”
Your gift helps put food on tables, keeps lights on, and connects families to legal support when everything feels like it is collapsing.
Donate to support Pastor Erich Kussman’s work now
You can read more about Pastor Erich here.
Pastor Erich Kussman right before we were arrested, January 29, 2026
Now let me tell you why Minneapolis changed me.
When I arrived, the image everywhere was of Luis Ramos, a terrified five-year-old in a blue knit bunny hat. ICE agents had taken him from his father’s car after school—using him as bait to lure his pregnant mother out of their home. By the time I arrived, Luis and his father had already been sent to a detention facility in Texas.
That night, during nonviolence training, someone stood up trembling. They told us a car full of children had been tear-gassed earlier that day. A school had just warned parents not to trust flyers offering “food assistance,” because ICE was using them to lure families outside. Injured immigrants were being taken to hospitals under false names so their loved ones couldn’t find them.
On the coldest day Minneapolis had experienced in seven years, more than 100 faith leaders knelt inside the airport, holding images of the detained and disappeared. We prayed. We sang. And one by one, wearing prayer stoles and shawls, we stood and offered our mittened wrists for arrest. The crowd—thousands of bundled-up Minnesotans—began chanting, “Let them pray.”
Later, I rode a city bus where passengers carried gas masks and goggles because tear gas drifts through the freezing air. Restaurants required knocking to be let inside. Uber drivers told me they now carry their citizenship papers at all times. Somali aunties, who had been too afraid to leave their homes, came out to feed mourners at a vigil for Alex Pretti, a nurse beaten and killed by ICE agents.
It felt heartbreakingly familiar—like the occupied West Bank—where fear, surveillance, and state violence shape daily life.
I wrote about all of this in my article “Faith Activists Are Praying with Their Feet in Minneapolis,” published in Waging Nonviolence. I hope you will read the full piece and sit with the stories.
Please read the article on Waging Nonviolence
I also wrote a second reflection in The Nation about how Minneapolis echoed what I have witnessed in Palestine—and what it means when a society accepts terror as normal.
Please read my article in The Nation
Friends, tears alone won’t be enough. This moment calls for faith that moves, gives, protects, and refuses to look away. It calls for stopping the funding of systems that terrorize communities—and for caring for one another while we fight to change them.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for loving boldly. And thank you for answering the call of faith with action.
With tears and with courage,
Ariel Gold
P.S. Next week I will be in my hometown of Ithaca for my father’s one-year yahrzeit (Jewish death anniversary) and after that I will be joining Erich in Trenton to assist his work and will keep you updated. Again, if you’re able, please consider donating to support Pastor Erich Kussman’s work in Trenton. Your gift helps families facing ICE raids with food, legal aid, and care. Donate here
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