Protesters in Cedar Riverside show support for Somali, immigrant communities
Video reporter Casey Marble shows how some community members and activists are showing their support for their Somali, Afghan and immigrant neighbors despite the cold weather.
Published December 17, 2025
by Casey Marble
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Dec 17, 2025 at 10:17 pm
Ostensibly gathered to support Somali immigrants, this protest offers a perfect case study in how antizionists co-opt real Somali struggles. In the video, antizionist activist Amina Aden claims these raids are merely a “distraction” from the “real crisis”—”the genocide in Palestine.” Consider the arrogance of this rhetorical sleight of hand. To a Somali father facing deportation, an ICE raid is not a “distraction”; it is an immediate, existential threat. Yet for Aden, this local suffering is just a vehicle to pivot back to her preferred obsession: demonizing Israel.
This tactic does not help the Somali community; it actively subverts their interests. By coupling the need for legal and community aid with toxic “Free Palestine” politics, antizionists like Aden force vulnerable immigrants to shoulder the weight of a foreign conflict and effectively carry the inflammatory baggage of antizionism: charges against Israel of genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, settler-colonialism, and BDS. More broadly, Aden is telling the Minnesota public: “If you want to support your Somali neighbors, you must also endorse the antizionist war to dismantle the Jewish state.”
Ultimately, this is not solidarity; it is exploitation. It treats the Somali community not as human beings with distinct, local needs, but as political props to be deployed by pro-Palestinians in a separate, unrelated ideological war that alienates them from their neighbors who can really help them—Jewish people in Minnesota.