Support for "We Had Whistles"

In December 2025, thousands of Department of Homeland Security agents arrived in the Minneapolis and St. Paul region. What followed became the largest immigration enforcement operation in United States history.

You know some of what happened next. Families separated. Parents afraid to take their children to school. People who stopped going to work, stopped seeking medical care, stopped appearing in public life. Teachers reporting empty desks. Businesses emptying out. Two of our neighbors lost their lives.

But there is another part of this history, and it is the part most likely to be forgotten.

Neighbors watched out for one another. Volunteers delivered groceries to families afraid to leave home. Parents organized. Communities built warning systems. People shared information and walked each other to work, to school, to medical appointments, to court hearings.

And when danger approached, people blew whistles.

A whistle is a small thing. But the sound carries. It can warn someone. It can summon help. It can tell a neighbor: you are not alone, and someone is watching out for you.

What we are building

We Had Whistles is a two-year oral history project documenting how Minnesotans experienced this period, while the memories are still fresh and while the history is still unfolding.

We will record oral history interviews with immigrants and refugees, teachers, healthcare providers, faith leaders, immigration attorneys, small business owners, nonprofit workers, students, and the neighbors who found ways to protect one another.

These are not immigration biographies. They are accounts of a specific moment: what people saw, what they feared, what changed in their daily lives, and what they did for each other.

The interviews will become a digital archive, a public exhibit, and a published anthology. Together they will form a permanent historical record.

We are building this in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society and the University of Minnesota's Immigration History Research Center, combining community-based oral history with archival preservation and academic expertise.

How we are protecting people

Asking someone to document their experience of an enforcement operation is not a small request. We take it seriously.

Every interview follows informed, ongoing consent. Narrators choose their own level of attribution, including full anonymity. Interviews are conducted using trauma-informed practices by historians trained in this work. Narrators retain authority over how their stories are used. A legal content editor reviews material for risk before anything is published.

Our oral historians are Amy Sullivan, Fanny García, Dr. Ibrahim Hirsi, and Dr. Tea Rozman, working in English, Spanish, and Somali.

Why this cannot wait

If we do not document this now, the historical record will be built from government documents, press releases, and headlines. The people most directly affected will be absent from it. Future generations will learn what policies were enacted without ever understanding how those policies changed the daily life of a family, a classroom, a block.

If we act now, we can preserve a fuller and more truthful account. Students, educators, researchers, and community members will learn not only what happened, but how Minnesotans responded.

What your gift does

Each interview costs $1,200 to record and transcribe. That figure covers the oral historian's time and the production of an archival transcript.

Your gift also supports interpretation and translation, compensation for narrators' time and knowledge, community storytelling events, secure digital preservation, and the safeguards that protect the people who trust us with their stories.

No one funds an interview alone. That is the point.

A gift at any level joins with others to make the next interview possible.

What you are actually funding

When you give to We Had Whistles, you are not simply funding a project. You are helping a community claim its place in the historical record. You are helping people speak for themselves rather than be spoken about.

Since 2013, Green Card Voices has helped more than 500 immigrants from over 150 countries tell their own stories, in their own words and on their own terms. This is the most urgent version of that work we have ever undertaken.

They will learn that when fear entered our communities, people organized. When families became isolated, neighbors showed up.

And when people needed to be warned, we had whistles.