Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate, Folded Leaf, area students join ICE OUT! nationwide protests
Photos, clockwise: poster calling for ICE boycott; front door at Folded Leaf; demonstration in Traverse City on Jan. 13.
From staff reports
Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate in Empire is closed today, as part of a nationwide “ICE OUT!” day of protest to call attention to the federal agency’s aggressive tactics in Minneapolis, which have resulted this month in the killing of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“In solidarity with our peaceful, hard-working immigrant friends and the courageous people of Minneapolis and Minnesota, we are closed for [today’s] National Shutdown to STOP FUNDING ICE following murders, illegal detainments, and paramilitary-style community terrorism in the Twin Cities and beyond,” wrote Grocer’s Daughter co-owner Jody Hayden in an email yesterday. “We grieve for the unnecessary loss of loved ones and the inconceivable injustices and trauma to children. It’s hard to stomach what’s happening and know that it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to accept the us vs them narrative, when this world has enough for us all.”
The Grocer’s Daughter email also quoted U.S. poet laureate Amanda Gorman: “Our greatest threat isn’t the outsiders among us, but those among us who never look within. Fear not those without papers, but those without conscience.”
The Folded Leaf bookstore in Cedar will also close today in solidarity with protests against ICE’s tactics.
“While we will always support law enforcement when done with a community mindset of safety and dignity, the recent actions of these agents is something we wholeheartedly condemn,” Folded Leaf owner Rachel Zemanek wrote yesterday on Facebook.
