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When federal immigration enforcement escalated in Minneapolis this winter, under what officials described as Operation Metro Surge, communities across Minnesota were forced to respond quickly. As businesses in immigrant corridors shuttered, families sheltered in place, and ICE activity intensified, organizers, faith groups, mutual aid networks, and everyday residents began building new forms of support in real time.

Out of that moment, a simple resource list grew into Stand With Minnesota, a volunteer-run online hub that connects people to direct support efforts across the state. What began as a Google Doc sharing links has evolved into a coordinating infrastructure for rent relief, travel support, and logistical aid, channeling generosity where it’s needed most.

Ashley Fairbanks started Stand With Minnesota in the early days of the escalation and has helped steward its growth alongside a widening circle of volunteers and partner organizations. An Anishinaabe writer, artist, and communications strategist with deep organizing roots in Minnesota, Ashley has worked across electoral politics, narrative strategy, and grassroots campaigns for years. When the surge began, she used her communications background and relationships on the ground to create a centralized place where people could act — especially those who were not physically present but wanted to materially support affected communities.

In the conversation that follows, Ashley reflects on what it actually takes to run a volunteer-driven mutual aid hub and why meeting immediate survival needs is inseparable from resistance work.

Kelly Hayes: You’ve referenced problems in 2020 when donations clustered within a few organizations and redistribution took years to implement. What went wrong then, and what did you learn from that experience? When this latest escalation began, what made you think Minnesota needed a new kind of infrastructure rather than relying on existing nonprofits or foundations?

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Ashley Fairbanks: Yeah, I think in 2020, as news stories hit, everyone directed people to give to two major places, and neither of those organizations had the capacity at the time to respond with the kind of infrastructure it takes to dispatch tens of millions of dollars in funding. So they had to develop processes and figure out re-granting structures and all of these different things.

That was a major fear of mine this time. So much stuff emerged very organically out of Operation Metro Surge. At first, I was just keeping a very messy list of links to share with people, listing all of my friends who were doing mutual aid work, and the organizations I knew were responding the fastest. When that got too unwieldy, I thought, I’m a comms person. We need a place that’s easy for people to go to, easy to say on TV or in a social post. So I grabbed the domain and put the website up the same day, hoping to distribute funds across a wider base.

Stand With Minnesota began as a simple Google Doc and has scaled into a major mutual aid hub. At what point did you realize this wasn’t just a short-term document, but a long-term organizing tool?

It became very real at the end of January, beginning of February, when moving rent became such a major focus. So many families were sheltered in place because of what was happening that we had to pay a lot of rent. The community responded widely by setting up rent funds wherever we could — at schools, out of churches, wherever. That shift made it more than just a single-moment thing to me, because the needs we were meeting were more than community defense or direct actions in the moment. We were providing long-term supportive infrastructure.

The project has coordinated flights, covered rent, and raised significant funds for direct support. What does the day-to-day labor look like for you and other volunteers?

At first, it was just me and one other volunteer who’s remained anonymous. We were working on everything by ourselves — like 20 hours a day. A lot of it was responding to emails, honestly, because we became the entry point for people who had no........

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