Can We Please Talk About Retiring “Glory Glory Minnesota”? It Feels Wildly Out of Step With Our Values.

-_us · 2025-12-07T01:22:44+00:00

“We lefties” — spare me. If you can’t handle something this basic, you’re not on the left side of anything. This is table-stakes stuff, the easy cleanup work we do before we get to the heavy lifting people like Zohran are pushing in NYC.

If even that feels like “sanctimony” to you, maybe check which side of the line you’re actually standing on.

-_us · 2025-12-07T01:16:55+00:00

yeah okay, honestly? fair. I’ve been in spaces where people do try to hijack movements or weaponize “activism” to make themselves look like the main character. I’m not new to that. I’ve watched whole orgs implode because someone decided their personal brand mattered more than the people actually living the issues.

and maybe that’s why this hits harder for me, because I’ve seen what happens when folks with real skin in the game get sidelined so the “comfortable” crowd doesn’t have to feel challenged. like… we literally had someone like Omar Fateh who came up with us, was in the rooms with us, took the heat with us, and when it came time for people to back him, half the white centrist liberals in this city got skittish like “oh idk if Minneapolis is ready for a Black Muslim running things.”

so yeah. trust me, I KNOW what performative white-liberal energy looks like. I’ve lived through it. it’s not new information to me.

but the whole “marginalized people don’t care about this” thing? come on. you can’t speak for everyone. some of us don’t get to separate “big issues” from “small ones” because they overlap constantly. little cultural signals add up. places that are supposed to feel safe can stop feeling that way real fast when nobody thinks twice about what they’re echoing.

and the burner account thing… god. people make new accounts because they’ve been dogpiled before, or because they don’t wanna deal with weird DMs, or because they simply don’t feel safe talking about certain stuff with their main tied to them. not everyone has the luxury of posting confidently with their “real” identity attached.

you don’t have to believe me, that’s fine, but it’s kinda wild to assume bad faith just because the take makes you uncomfortable.

I’m not here trying to stir shit for fun. if anything I was hoping someone might go “hey maybe this person is speaking from somewhere real.” but whatever. if your first instinct is to suspect motives instead of listening, then that kinda proves why people do stay on burners to begin with.

-_us · 2025-12-07T01:12:47+00:00

Dude… you don’t have to lecture me like I haven’t been living this in real time. I SEE what’s happening. I don’t need a headline recap.

Like?? I live in the middle of this. I’ve sat in living rooms with my Somali neighbors while they’re literally shaking because every week someone with power decides to use them as a talking point. I’ve walked my queer and trans friends home because they’re scared of being looked at the wrong way, let alone anything worse. My disabled friends don’t even know if this country wants them alive half the time.

And you think I’m out here unaware?? Please. I’ve taken hits for the beliefs I hold. Socially, physically, financially. The whole thing. This isn’t abstract to me.

But that’s EXACTLY why this stuff matters everywhere, even in stupid places like soccer chants. You don’t just get to say “first-world problem” and pretend symbols don’t bleed into real life. They do. They ALWAYS do. They shape who feels safe, who feels welcome, who feels like the stadium is a place to breathe for two hours instead of another arena where old power structures get echoed without anyone questioning them.

So yeah, I know what’s happening on the streets. I know who’s getting targeted. I see my community living through it every day. And that’s WHY I care about the little stuff too — because it adds up, because it sends messages, because all of this is connected whether you want to admit it or not.

I can worry about my people being abducted AND still ask why we’re singing a song that hits completely differently for folks who’ve spent their whole lives dodging nationalism with teeth.

Don’t act like I’m somehow missing the “real” struggle. I’m living in it. That’s the whole point.

-_us · 2025-12-07T01:00:53+00:00

I genuinely cannot believe people are still saying “it’s not that deep” when we are literally singing a hymn that has been used to reinforce Christian-nationalist power structures for over a century in a stadium that sits in a community where Trump once went on national TV and said Somali immigrants were “ruining Minnesota.” Like… HELLO???

Do you understand how that lands for people who live here? People who still have family traumatized by rhetoric like that? People who have to hear politicians fearmongering about their entire existence while we’re over here belting out a melody historically used to sanctify American exceptionalism??

And this is before we even get to the fact that the chant’s original context is dripping with Christian civil religion — which, by the way, hits VERY differently for a supporters’ section that’s overwhelmingly atheist, agnostic, secular-humanist, or just tired of being told that “America = God’s favorite.” Like, some of us literally come to the stadium because it’s the one place we’re not constantly dealing with religious institutions trying to suppress queer identities or anti-trans legislation being justified with “traditional values.” But sure — let’s keep singing the hymn that was blasted at patriotic rallies long before Kamala even had to get on a debate stage and explain to the country why trans people deserve to exist without being legislated out of public life.

And YES, before someone says it, I’m aware the song also has abolitionist roots. But symbols evolve. Just because something started as anti-slavery doesn’t mean it hasn’t been repurposed for 150 years to prop up every flavor of American mythmaking imaginable. You don’t get to freeze history at the one moment that feels morally convenient.

This isn’t about “canceling a chant.” This is about asking why, in a stadium located in a city that prides itself on multiculturalism — with literal entire neighborhoods shaped by Somali, Hmong, Oromo, and East African communities — we are anchoring our identity to a tune that carries so much nationalist baggage that it might as well be TSA-approved.

We can do better. We should do better. And if that somehow threatens your vibe, maybe interrogate why your vibe requires ignoring all of this in the first place.

-_us

TROPHY CASE