Nominate Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize

I want to ask you to do something simple: visit MNOMINATE.org and send a message to the Norwegian Nobel Committee supporting The Nation’s nomination of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize. It takes two minutes, and everything you need is there.

Here’s why it matters.

While we are enjoying the return of spring, cast your mind back to the bitter cold of January, when a surge of ICE and Border Patrol officers occupied Minneapolis–Saint Paul during an operation that left behind wrongful detentions, family separations, children transferred to out-of-state facilities, and the deaths of two U.S. citizens — Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.

In response, fifty thousand people marched through Minneapolis in ten-below-zero weather.

Not for a candidate.
Not for a party.
For their neighbors.

[Watch — Don’t Mess with Winter People in the Winter]

For weeks before and afterward, ordinary people across the Twin Cities delivered food to frightened families, escorted children to school, documented abuses, and showed up—peacefully, persistently—to protect one another.

In a recent Atlantic article, Adam Serwer gave this ethic a name: “neighborism”—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from.

That word is what this campaign is about.

In January, The Nation, America’s oldest weekly magazine, formally nominated Minneapolis for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum named the people of the Twin Cities recipients of the 2026 Profile in Courage Award.

The world is already paying attention.

MNOMINATE.org is how we as ordinary Americans can join that recognition—and remind the Nobel Committee that citizens are watching too.

Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that Americans had a unique genius for forming voluntary associations to solve problems together—the “science of association,” which he saw as the foundation of democratic life.

When people join around a shared purpose, he wrote, they become “a power seen from afar.”

In Minnesota, they call it showing up for your neighbors.

That is why my colleague Deb Callahan and I created MNOMINATE.org. We first met 45 years ago at the National Clean Air Coalition, both of us working as grassroots organizers.

A belief that has never left us: democracy works best when energy moves from the bottom up, when people organize and show up for one another.

MNOMINATE is one small act in service of that larger idea.

We may have created the campaign, but it belongs to anyone who believes neighbors still matter and democracy still depends on people showing up for one another.

Share it.Make it your own.
That is how democratic movements grow.

Under the terms of Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize honors those who have “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind in the field of peace.” What emerged in Minneapolis reflects that principle: nonviolent civic action to protect vulnerable people and uphold community in the face of fear. This is what peaceful resistance looks like.This is what democratic courage looks like.And it deserves to be recognized.

So here is what we are asking. Visit MNOMINATE.org. Send a message to the Norwegian Nobel Committee in support of the Nation’s nomination. The site includes a pre-loaded email, along with sample language for those who want to write their own letter or postcard.

This is something parents and children can do together. A classroom. A congregation. A scout troop, civic club, or neighborhood association.
A small but meaningful act of democratic participation. Then share MNOMINATE with your friends, family, and community.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 9th.

But democracy is not something we watch.
It is something we practice.
MNominate Minneapolis.And vote.
Democracy survives when ordinary people decide to practice it.

Neighbor to neighbor.
Generation to generation.
Toward a more perfect Union.