Honoring Defiant Love in the Twin Cities of Minnesota

By Lilly Lombard, US Servas Peace Secretary

In recognition of their tireless work to empower Minnesota communities to act with agency, solidarity, courage, and love in the face of the prolonged and targeted surge by ICE into the Twin Cities this winter, US Servas proudly presented two $5000 Peace Awards to UNIDOS-MN and The Immigrant Defense Network.  As US Servas Peace Secretary, it was my great honor to shepherd the nomination and selection process for these Peace Awards, and to lead the award ceremony at the 2026 US Servas National Conference in Minneapolis, MN. This year marked a strengthened commitment by the US Servas board to our organization’s foundational peace-building mission by increasing the Peace Award from $1000 to $5000, and by selecting two recipients rather than one. 

This spring, our US Servas Peace Team met and decided that, given our National Conference location in Minneapolis, it would be fitting to focus our Peace Award on peace-building organizations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region; in fact to do otherwise would've been tone deaf given the struggles and abuses that the city endured during the recent ICE surge, and the intensely creative, non-violent ways neighborhoods defended their vulnerable neighbors, resisted and documented abuse of government power, and modeled courage, defiant joy, and love to the rest of the country and world. 

After issuing a “Call for Nominations” to US Servas members of any peace-building 501-c3 organization working in the Twin Cities, and receiving 14 nominations of 6 organizations, the Peace Team unanimously selected UNIDOS-MN and The Immigrant Defense Network (IDN) for the many ways they collaborated to support targeted individuals (providing relief such as rent, food, legal advice, and support, etc.), while also educating thousands of neighbors to be constitutional observers and documentarians of ICE abuse. The peace-building and democracy-defending work of UNIDOS and IDN continues, ever relevant and effective, and examples of the educational resources they offer so that every US resident knows their constitutional rights can be found on the resource pages of the Immigrant Defense Network and UNIDOS websites.

The Peace Award ceremony was enriched by the deeply moving words shared by nominators Maria Kaefer (who nominated UNIDOS) and Annika Fjelstad (who nominated IDN), both of whom–along with tens of thousands of Twin Cities residents– received critical upstander and constitutional observer training by these organizations; and were also both part of self-organized neighborhood networks that protected their vulnerable neighbors in countless loving ways.