Funds donated will immediately go towards purchasing vests that will be distributed for free to community members doing rapid response work including ICE/Migra watch, neighborhood and local school patrols, and other community protection and response roles that want to be visible to their neighbors.  As this occupation continues, and funds allow, there may be additional uses to promote and educate about community rapid response and mutual aid efforts such as t-shirts, hats, lawn signs, and posters.

Are you an organization that want to help order Vests?  Check out this guide on how to help today!

Since Dec. 1, 2025 – as Somali, Latinx and immigrant communities have faced relentless harassment, intimidation, and abduction, detention, and deportation – thousands of community members across Minnesota have mounted hyper-local decentralized community defense structures and actions to protect their communities. Through organizing their own autonomous, decentralized rapid response networks, neighbors have kept each other informed about ICE activity in real-time and have quickly come together to actively protect their family, friends, neighbors, blocks, schools, places of worship, neighborhoods, and cities.

Defend the 612 is an attempt to help community members within local geographies get connected to one another — to support and connect people into the neighborhood formations that are responding to this violent and immoral onslaught. We work to plug people into existing groups or formations near them which are actively looking for more support & resourcing, and support people with the resources to get things started in geographies where there are gaps.