Hi Folks,

Kirk Bangstad here from the Minocqua Brewing Company.

We had a great panel on the Up North Podcast yesterday that included Evangelical Lutheran Church of America Bishop of Greater Milwaukee Paul Erickson, Milwaukee Senator Chris Larsen, AFT President Jon Shelton, and Ben/Patti — to discuss how Wisconsin was preparing for an ICE invasion similar to what we’re seeing in Minnesota.

In short, one of the best ways that Wisconsinites can plug into resistance efforts to slow down ICE, at least in Milwaukee, is by going to Church. It should come as no surprise that faith-based organizations are unified against ICE since a major tenet of most religions is to “love thy neighbor.”

I’d encourage you to watch the whole episode above, or tune in to Substack, Facebook, Youtube, WCPT 820 AM (Chicago Radio) ,and even Twitch for the live broadcast at 6 pm every Wednesday.

If you don’t have time to watch the whole episode, here are the most important clips from the show.

We started by reminding our audience that Democrats in the U.S. Senate already gave away their leverage to ABOLISH ICE, which SHOULD be their main goal, when they passed funding for most of the federal agencies a few weeks ago. That being said, they now have an obligation to defund the Department of Homeland Security until ICE complies with the most simple guardrails that are already enshrined in the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments to the U.S Constitution.

These guardrails include ending indiscriminate arrests, requiring warrants for entering private property, body cameras, banning masks during enforcement, and avoiding sensitive locations like schools and churches.

Next, we asked the Bishop what faith-based organizations were doing across Wisconsin to resist ICE, and he mentioned the following initiatives:

* MICAH (Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope) launched an Immigration Rapid Response Team and published an extensive set of Know Your Rights resources in multiple languages.

* Wisconsin Council of Churches (WCOC) — representing 23 Christian traditions statewide — is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against DHS, arguing the rescission of the “sensitive locations” policy violates religious freedom.

* Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — encompassing 115 congregations and 59,000+ baptized members across seven Southeast Wisconsin counties — joined the national New England Synod v. DHS lawsuit in July 2025.

I thought one of the most poignant moments in this segment was when Bishop Erickson said that the Christian Nationalism running rampant in the Federal Government was a “perversion of the Gospel,” and that religion should be the “conscience of the state,” not the “servant of the state.”

In the third segment, we discussed what the plans were in Milwaukee to resist ICE. Bishop Erickson mentioned all the needs surrounding mutual aid—bringing food to immigrant shut-ins, organizing food drives at churches to replenish food kitchens, etc. Senator Larson talked about signing up with Voces de la Frontera’s “Community Defense Network,” which is organizing volunteers to monitor ICE activities and manage hotlines that document ICE terrorism within communities. He also mentioned all the trainings being held at the Milwaukee Turners, including Immigration Training, Know Your Rights, and Legal Observing.

Next, since AFT President Jon Shelton was with us, I asked him to update us on how close the labor movement was in planning a general strike to bring Trump’s regime to its knees. He said that conversations have started among unions across the country to strike, but that right now, it was more important for folks around the country to join a union. Alternatively for retired folks or those whose jobs make it hard to unionize, the goal was join civic organizations like Indivisible, and push them to connect with the labor movement so that we’re all pulling in the same “resistance” direction.

And finally, because I’ve dedicated the entire month month of February to raising $150K to grow and strengthen our new e-commerce boycotting tool called the Minocqua Marketplace, we dedicated our last segment of the show to talk about how boycotts will accelerate regime change, and how donating to our kickstarter campaign can help us make boycotting MAGA companies easier and more affordable. We’ve already raised over $91K in less than two weeks, but we need more help to get to our goal. To learn more and donate to our Kickstarter campaign, go to this link.

Thanks for watching clips from our show last night, and thanks for doing your part for the resistance. Whether it’s signing up to protect your neighborhood, bringing food to shut-ins, protesting at detention centers, or simply donating money to groups on the front lines, now is the time to DO SOMETHING.

Only together can we stop fascism from taking over our country, and the time to organize is now.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/Minocqua Marketplace Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC

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