A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good. ~ Barbara Jordan
I recently visited the memorials for Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It was a Saturday afternoon, after the Department of Homeland Security announced the drawdown of ICE agents. The memorials were easy to find, built on snow banks resembling caskets. Bouquets of flowers lay along the sloping sides. Tall votive candles burned. Love notes, peace signs, a stethoscope, flags, poems, a copy of the US Constitution adorned the icy snow sarcophagus.
People milled about. Some lingered, mostly silent. Grave silence. The fact that we were strangers didn’t matter. We all knew something was terribly unsettling. How did we get here? How do we move through this communal wound and grief?
We Minnesotans don’t like to be in the headlines—our Scandinavian and German early roots prefer anonymity. Our newer residents from Mexico, South America, Somalia, Laos, Ukraine, and other countries know the cost of division and trauma. What happens when it comes to our state? Our city? Our neighborhood?
The memorials carried an air of reverence and respect. A woman removed spent candles, faded flowers, small pieces of litter. She was a self-chosen guardian of the shrine.
I continue to see blue and green ribbons tied to trees, reminders of the deaths of two students, Fletcher and Harper, at Annunciation Catholic School. Killed at the opening school Mass.
The recent start of the 2026 Legislative session included a remembrance of Melissa and Mark Hortman. A bouquet of red roses rested on Melissa’s desk along with her portrait. The desk of each representative held a single rose. Another bouquet of roses marked the seat Mark Hortman occupied when his wife was sworn in. We need to remember. We want to remember. We must remember. These are our people, our children, our friends. Though we may not have known them when they were alive, we know them now—too well.
We hold spaces of grief sacred—hallowed ground. We don’t yet know how to move from a temporary shrine toward a more lasting remembrance. How do we move forward into a future that remembers, so as to honor what was, without being stuck in the trauma of a story that cannot move on?
On a visit to Birmingham, Alabama, last year, I walked the park across from 16th street Baptist church. It was in that church that four girls were killed in the 1963 bombing. The park has several sculptures including one of the four girls—Addie May, Carole, Cynthia, and Denise. Statues of police dogs represent the tactics used against children who gathered there to protest segregation, 1,000 of whom were arrested. We need these memorials to recall historical cruelties and remind us we cannot repeat them. Too quickly we want to forget.
Out of this commons flows the common good where we share goodness and pass it on to those who follow.
We all carry wounds from our past, sometimes generational, sometimes familial, sometimes personal. How do we honor those wounds without keeping them front and center in our living room, without needing to daily remove the fallen petals or snuffed out candles. I want to remember but I don’t want to live there. Alex and Renee need to be remembered but we also need to travel the street again. We have seen the struggle to find a fitting memorial for George Floyd. Many ideas with little consensus. It is hard to heal an open wound.
I found it comforting to gather with others in a common space. I grew up in a small town, and we had several places where we gathered as a community to celebrate, to mourn, to welcome. The town park included a baseball field. On Summer Sundays, we attended games to cheer with neighbors and make new friends. We could gather at the library, quietly. Or the post office, where everyone in town picked up their mail. Workers took their morning break with a cup of coffee and a donut at the local cafe. You might run into the mayor or a council person or someone from your bowling team—even the school principal if it were a Saturday. I miss those commons, those spaces where you could bump into a neighbor, a classmate, a teacher.
We also had a common source of news—national, state, and local. The town’s weekly newspaper, The Eagle, kept us all informed on close-in matters. Its gossip column often started phones buzzing. We watched the same TV shows, mostly. There were 4 channels so our choices were limited. We no longer have common news or the same entertainment, even within the family. We all have the freedom to watch what we want and enough screens to make it so.
I don’t watch professional sports much but I see that sports teams do bring people together to celebrate wins and lament losses. I enjoy gathering in school gymnasiums to watch nieces and nephews play sports and catch up with extended family.
One of the gifts of the recent ICE presence is that we have come together as a community. People helped their immigrant neighbors. Parents gathered at bus stops for their own children but also children whose parents did not feel safe leaving their homes. It has been a time to both recognize community and build it.
The ICE agents will leave. We will return to routines that don’t require vigilance in the same way. My hope is that we keep the sense of community we have fostered in these last few months. May we not drift apart. May we remember how good it feels to be connected.
I live in a first ring suburb. We have a community member who gathers local news and disseminates it through regular emails. As subscribers, we pay a small fee for the service. It provides summaries of city council and school board meetings; announces new businesses and closed businesses; celebrates accomplishments of our community members; offers restaurant reviews, sports updates, art highlights. It asks a small charge to stay in touch. I appreciate it. This is another way to build a commons—a common concern, a common knowledge base, a common understanding of who we are.
Communities require a commons—shared spaces available to all. It is there we come together to mourn and celebrate, engage and connect, matter and be known. Out of this commons flows the common good where we share goodness and pass it on to those who follow. Community. Together. Strong.
