GALENTINE’S NIGHT OUT: A celebration of connection, creativity and community with curated vendors, small bites and drinks and a chance to mingle with authors Susanna Daniel, Megan Giddings, Curtis Sittenfeld, Amanda Uhle, Kathleen West and Erin White. Presented by Literature Lover’s Night Out and ModernWell. $20. 6 p.m. Wednesday, ModernWell, 2909 S. Wayzata Blvd., Mpls. (Galentine is a “holiday” invented by a character on the TV series “Parks & Recreation”).

MIDSTREAM READING SERIES: With original poetry by KateLynn Hubbard, Ronald J. Palmer, Roslye Ultan and Caleb Tankersley. Hosted by Paul Mattes. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Unity Church-Unitarian, 732 Holly Ave., St. Paul.

MELISSA FAVILENO: North Carolina-based author presents “Hemlock,” her Gothic debut novel, in conversation with Megan Giddings. 7 p.m. Monday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

PATRICK HICKS: Discusses “Greater Minnesota: Exploring the Land of Sky-Blue Waters.” 7 p.m. Thursday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

(Courtesy of Ballantine Books)

KAREN PARKMAN: St. Paul author launches her debut thriller “The Jills,” about a Buffalo Bills cheerleader with a tangled family history  who must solve the disappearance of her best friend and teammate in a hardscrabble city. In conversation with local author Alice Bolin (“Culture Creep”). 6 p.m. Tuesday, Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.

JOSEPH G. PETERSON: Chicago-based novelist introduces “The Perturbation of O,” a comic story about a loser  who becomes a winner with the publication of his memoir and the chaotic aftermath. Free. 7 p.m. Tuesday, University Club, 420 Summit Ave., St. Paul.

TRANSLATION EVENING: With Ed Bok Lee, Robert Hedin and Kaija Straumanis in conversation, presented by Rain Taxi Review. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

JASMINE WARGA: Bestselling author on tour introduces her new book “The Claiming: The Last Resort # 2” in conversation with fellow a middle-grade author, Minnesotan Anne Ursu. In Warga’s fictional world, ghosts come to life and help solve a mystery. Free, but registration is helpful. Go to redballoonbookshop.org/events. 6 p.m. Monday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul.

FRANK WEBER: Minnesota forensic psychologist and true-crime writer introduces his new book “Heartbreak Hollow” during Valentine’s Day Romance Author fair along with other local writers. Noon-8 p.m. Saturday,  Inbound Brewing, 701 N. Fifth St., Mpls.

What else is going on

(Courtesy of Lerner Publishing Group)

Congratulations to Minneapolis-based Lerner Publishing for winning multiple awards at the American Library Association Youth Media Awards at the ALA’s conference in Chicago in late January. “The Library in the Woods” by Calvin Alexander Ramsey, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, won the Coretta Scott King illustrator award and was named a Coretta Scott King author Honor book. Other winners: “The Pecan Sheller” by Lupe Ruiz-Flores; “Kaho’Olawe,” Kamalani Hurley, illustrated by Harinani Orme; “The Red Car to Hollywood,” Jennie Lu;  “Sometimes the Girl,” Jennifer Mason Black; “I’m a Dumbo Octopus,” Anne Lambelet; “Clack, Clack! Smack!,” Live Oak Media (audio). If the ALA gives a book an award, you can be sure it’s worth reading. Remember, librarians are on the front lines of fighting for our right to read.

Award-winning Minnesota writers Jess Lourey and Kristi Belcamino (a Pioneer Press employee) are organizing Authors for Minnesota Day on Feb. 28 from noon to 4 p.m. at a venue to be announced. They report great response (of course) from authors  Lorna Landvik, Matt Goldman, Wendy Webb, William Souder and William Kent Krueger. Sounds like a great event. Stay tuned.

Related Articles

What’s like got to do with it? Sara Levine on the art of ‘difficult’ women

Broadway and Hollywood songwriter Marc Shaiman looks back with pessimistic humor in memoir

Literary calendar for week of Feb. 1

Readers and writers: An eye-opening read of people who are homeless, plus fiction and history

Shelley Read’s debut novel ‘Go as a River’ becomes a global sensation

From protest signs to posters in shop windows to apparel, artists across St. Paul and the greater Twin Cities are responding to the federal immigration enforcement crackdown with a surge of creativity.

In the days after immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, live painter Noval Noir created a large-scale portrait of Good at the site.

“Art is a way to heal, and energy attracts other people, so that was my light to give back to the community,” Noir told local radio personality Sheletta Brundidge on her radio show in mid-January. “Art speaks language that words can’t. When you’re giving someone a visual, you get to change a narrative.”

And artwork that responds to and reflects social movements can be a tangible community-building force itself, artists say.

“Through grassroots organizing, we’ve always seen that art is a means of resistance,” said Chenda Hing, a digital organizer for Minnesota 8, a St. Paul-based advocacy group that works within the Southeast Asian community. “For me, as someone who really values storytelling as a way for people to understand and be moved, storytelling through visual art can really resonate and poke and prod at some feelings — and actually generate power within the people,” Hing said.

Hing and four other artists created T-shirt designs for MN8’s Deportation Defense & Relief Fundraiser, launched as the organization has seen a more-than-600 percent spike in its caseload as federal agents have targeted Southeast Asian immigrants, especially in St. Paul, Hing said.

Hing’s design depicts a yeak, a giant-like figure in Cambodian folklore, keeping a family safe from an ICE vehicle, along with the text “We Protect Each Other.” The design, Hing said, intentionally inverts the traditional characterization of the yeak as an antagonistic or even demonic force.

“I’m doing a retelling of it where it’s a misunderstood giant that is actually protecting our community members from the real evil, which is ICE,” Hing said. “My point on this in this piece was thinking about the criminalization narrative of immigrants. Trump is labeling immigrants that he’s detaining as the ‘worst of the worst’ and people who are totally harassing and disrupting this community, when, in my drawing, I wanted to portray that that is not our narrative at all.”

Across the Twin Cities, other artists, like muralist Audrey Carver and printmaker Sean Lim, have hosted pop-up events to disseminate artwork and raise money for community organizations. At a bring-your-own-shirt printing event Carver hosted at Wandering Leaf Brewing in Highland Park in mid-January, she printed more than 300 shirts and raised over $5,000, she announced on Instagram.

During upcoming community printing events Feb. 5 and 6, a design by St. Paul Indigenous artist Marlena Myles reading “ICE Out of Mni Sóta Makóče / No One is Illegal on Stolen Land” will be available to print on a shirt or tote bag you bring. The event runs 2 to 6:30 p.m. both days at the Minneapolis American Indian Center; 1530 Franklin Ave. E., Minneapolis.

Liz Derby, who runs the studio Little Dipper Art, has created a suite of “ICE out” posters inspired by local landmarks and wintertime imagery that are available at a quickly growing list of dozens of Twin Cities shops including, in St. Paul, Wildflyer Coffee, Next Chapter Booksellers, I Like You Too, Center for Lost Objects and SK Coffee.

Others still are releasing designs free online. Minneapolis design studio Burlesque of North America created a design riffing off the ubiquitous red-and-white snow emergency sign, a twist that’s earned national media coverage. The studio itself has printed more than 5,000 copies to donate and has uploaded free PDFs to its website.

Countless other artists — including snow sculptors at the World Snow Sculpting Championship in downtown Stillwater and the Minnesota State Snow Sculpting Competition at the Vulcan Snow Park at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds — are also using their skills to highlight and push back against what they see as unjustifiably violent immigration enforcement actions such as the shootings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“It’s been inspiring to see all of these different illustrators and artists and designers putting the same sentiment out there, the same kind of general feel, but in vastly different ways,” said Alxndr Jones, a St. Paul-based artist. “Some more intense, some more lighthearted, some more loving, some more angry. It just speaks so much to the creative community that there is in the Twin Cities.”

Jones’s own art is known for his distinctive gestural style he described as inspired by jazz album covers, punk rock aesthetics and the American traditional style of tattoo art. He, too, is offering some designs for free download on his website and selling prints to raise money for nonprofits.

One print, riffing off the Morton Salt mascot, depicts a person in a yellow coat dropping salt behind them and holding a sign reading “Abolish ICE” or, in another version, replacing the first word with a common expletive. In another design collection, a diving loon holds a banner reading, variously, “Protect Our Community” or “We Fight Together.”

“After the murder of Renee Good, I couldn’t pick up a pencil without drawing something that was anti-ICE, was protest,” Jones said. “We’re in a world where it feels like there’s so much we need to do, but at the same time, it’s like, what can I do? I don’t know what to do, but I do know how to draw and how to make an image that might resonate with somebody.”

The power of art to drive fundraising efforts, empower protesters to action, share cultural stories and connect with like-minded neighbors cannot be overstated, Hing said. But also? It can just be nice to look at. And that counts for a lot, too.

“When crisis hits, when we are feeling at our most down, art is really a source of joy for us all that we can really connect with,” Hing said. “Art is just so beautiful, and our people really deserve beautiful things at this moment.”

Related Articles

Appeals court affirms Trump policy of jailing immigrants without bond

Protesters arrested outside Whipple federal building on 1-month anniversary of Renee Good’s death

Prosecutors began investigating Renee Good’s killing. Washington told them to stop.

Immigrant whose skull was broken in 8 places during ICE arrest in St. Paul says beating was unprovoked

Judge orders Trump administration to bring back 3 families deported to Honduras, other countries

I can’t watch blood on a screen anymore. My body turns away before my mind can catch up. What unsettles me just as deeply is the anti-immigrant mood on the ground. Most people I know have a story: a warning, a close call, a neighbor who didn’t come home. So I reach for safer distractions — who’s headed to the Super Bowl, what I’ll make for dinner — anything loud enough to drown out what is unfolding in my hometown. But the noise can’t mask the truth: Fear is spreading through refugee and immigrant communities, and something essential has shifted beneath our feet.

My family immigrated to the United States in 1976 and resettled in Minnesota shortly after. I grew up here. I went to school here, becoming the first in my family to attend college. I built my life here. For nearly three decades, I worked in the nonprofit sector, securing public and private resources for families who live without buffers — people for whom long-term planning is a luxury and survival is a daily calculation. I know firsthand what it means to arrive in a new country: to learn a difficult language, navigate unfamiliar systems, find work, feed a family and try to feel safe in neighborhoods shaped by disinvestment. My empathy for immigrants and refugees is not abstract. It comes from my own experience and years spent working alongside the very communities now filling national headlines.

Right now, I carry two reactions at once. One is the response of the educated, once-secure citizen. I followed the rules. I paid taxes, bought a home, voted, volunteered and participated fully in civic life. I was raised to believe — almost as a civic article of faith — that all people are created equal, and I organized my life around that assumption. During the first term of this same president, I protested in downtown Minneapolis when immigrants were first targeted. I believed my status mattered. I was naturalized. I could vote. I could protest openly. On paper, I was no different from anyone else. Equal under the law, if perhaps burdened with a funny name.

This time feels different. Confidence has given way to caution — an instinct deeper than any civics lesson. I scan rooms now. I choose my words carefully. I notice exits. Not because I’ve done anything wrong, but because refugees like my family learn across generations that security is conditional and belonging can be revoked when fear becomes politically useful. Recently, my father insisted that I carry my passport or naturalization papers at all times. His advice wasn’t paranoia. It was history speaking, passed down through lived trauma rather than textbooks.

The United States withdrew from Southeast Asia in 1973, a year after my birth, leaving behind the Hmong people who had fought alongside American forces in Laos and rescued downed U.S. pilots. What followed was systematic persecution: villages destroyed, families hunted through jungles, mountains, and rivers. There was no government protection, no appeal, no safety net. Policy turned into abandonment, enforced through violence. That memory never disappears. It waits.

Today, many immigrants in Minnesota feel that same pressure returning in the dead of winter — a sense of being watched, made vulnerable, and subjected to ICE intimidation in everyday spaces. That fear is especially jarring in a state shaped by large Somali, Hmong and Latino communities whose labor, culture, and presence are woven into Minnesota’s economic and civic life. This is a place built not only by resettlement agencies or public programs, but by daily acts of belonging: neighbors working side by side, raising families, and looking out for one another. It is the same Minnesota that celebrated Suni Lee, the daughter of Hmong refugees, standing atop the Olympic podium, wrapped in gold and embraced as unmistakably American.

That shared ethic is why the recent ICE shootings have cut so deeply. When Renée Good and Alex Pretti were killed on our streets, Minnesotans did not see an abstract political debate. They saw neighbors harmed in their own communities. South Minneapolis, still carrying the memory of George Floyd, recognized the pattern immediately. These were not faceless agitators. They were people standing up for one another because something here had gone profoundly wrong in a state long defined by mutual responsibility — where safety and dignity are believed to belong to everyone.

Across the world, people already understand what many Americans are being forced to relearn: Protest carries risk, and power resists scrutiny. When fear is deliberately amplified, violence often follows. Americans, including those who lead, are not exempt from human nature simply because we live behind borders or inside institutions we assume will hold. History is crowded with lessons from tyrants who unleashed violence not out of necessity, but because they could. Rights are fragile. Norms erode quickly — sometimes within a single generation. National exceptionalism makes it easy to believe these things happen elsewhere, to other people, until they do not.

And yet something else is happening too.

Despite the fear and disruption brought by ICE’s enforcement surge, the tide is turning. Minnesota is showing its true character. The quiet ethic often called Minnesota Nice is outshining the intimidation meant to silence dissent. The protests filling our streets — chants, whistles, vigils, all-night gatherings — have been unmistakably human. Poets and writers. ICU nurses and teachers. Small-business owners and neighbors. Our elected leaders are standing up as well, demanding accountability and pushing back against the normalization of fear. As an immigrant walking among these crowds, I have never felt set apart because of my race, my accent, or my story. Here, people see you first as a neighbor, a worker, a human being.

In this moment of national moral reckoning, Minnesota has reminded the country — and me — of its values. The name “Mní Sóta” comes from the Dakota, the original people of this land. It speaks of water and reflection, of place and continuity. We are all, in different ways, immigrants here. What matters now is not who deployed fear, but whether we refuse to look away from it — whether we choose to name it, confront it, and protect one another in spite of it. Minnesota is doing that, openly and together.

Valeng Cha, Maplewood, has spent 30 years securing public and private funding for health, human services, youth development, and higher education initiatives. His work has focused on strengthening organizations serving low-income and immigrant communities. He currently owns a small business, TimberBuilds LLC, in Maplewood.

Related Articles

Working Strategies: To stress or not to stress? Some prespective

Hamid Kashani: What to know about the massacre in Iran

Letters: The surge isn’t about immigration or fraud, and some protests hurt the cause

Real World Economics: Follow the money down the river

Mark Glende: How much do I love ‘I Love To Read Month’? Well …

Today is Sunday, Feb. 8, the 39th day of 2026. There are 326 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Feb. 8, 1949, Roman Catholic Cardinal József Mindszenty was sentenced to life in prison for his opposition to the fascist and later communist Hungarian governments; released during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, he sought asylum at the U.S. Embassy when the Soviet Union invaded, living there for 15 years. Mindszenty left Hungary in 1971 and died in exile in Vienna in 1975.

Also on this date:

In 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after she was implicated in a plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

Related Articles

‘We will pay,’ Savannah Guthrie says in desperate video plea to potential kidnappers of her mother

Washington Post publisher Will Lewis says he’s stepping down, days after big layoffs at the paper

Today in History: February 7, Haiti inaugurates its first democratically elected president

Security concerns and skepticism are bursting the bubble of Moltbook, the viral AI social forum

Massive Washington sewage leak will take weeks longer to fix, water company says

In 1693, a charter was granted for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg in the Virginia Colony.

In 1904, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian Navy at Port Arthur (now Dalian, China), marking the start of the Russo-Japanese War.

In 1910, the Boy Scouts of America organization was incorporated by William D. Boyce, who drew inspiration from the British Boy Scout movement.

In 1924, the first U.S. execution using lethal gas took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City as Chinese immigrant Gee Jon was put to death for a murder conviction.

In 1936, the first NFL draft was held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia.

In 1960, work began on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located on Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles.

In 1968, three Black students were killed and 28 wounded as state troopers opened fire on demonstrators at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg in the aftermath of protests over a whites-only bowling alley. The event would become known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

In 1971, NASDAQ, the world’s first electronic stock exchange, held its first trading day.

In 1993, an Iranian airliner with 132 people on board collided with an air force jet after takeoff from Tehran and exploded, leaving no survivors.

In 2013, a massive two-day snowstorm began dumping up to 3 feet (1 meter) of snow around the U.S. Northeast, causing widespread power outages and leavening several people dead. The storm struck some areas with hurricane-force winds and coastal flooding.

In 2020, a soldier angry about a land dispute went on a 16-hour shooting rampage in Thailand, killing at least 29 people and wounding dozens. Police and military personnel hunted the gunman overnight and shot him dead.

Today’s birthdays:

Composer-conductor John Williams is 94.
Broadcast journalist Ted Koppel is 86.
Actor Nick Nolte is 85.
Comedian Robert Klein is 84.
Actor-rock musician Creed Bratton is 83.
Actor Mary Steenburgen is 73.
Author John Grisham is 71.
Hockey Hall of Famer Dino Ciccarelli is 66.
Rock singer Vince Neil (Mötley Crüe) is 65.
Basketball Hall of Famer Alonzo Mourning is 56.
Actor Seth Green is 52.
Actor William Jackson Harper is 46.
Actor-comedian Cecily Strong is 42.
Hip-hop artist Anderson Paak is 40.
Professional surfer Bethany Hamilton is 36.
Actor Kathryn Newton is 29.