Modern Times Cafe offering free meals until ICE leaves Minneapolis
A south Minneapolis staple is drawing a line. Modern Times Cafe will be free for all until Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaves the city. It's their way of making a statement.
"We've been a hub of this neighborhood for a long time," owner Dylan Alverson said.
These days, it isn't business as usual and Alverson was fed up with pretending it was.
"As soon as you're in crisis, it feels like that's how it's always felt, but it is. It's not normal," said Alverson. "I've been on the line in front of Border Patrol several times, just as someone that lives in this neighborhood, not as a protest. We closed for the protest. Friday was the first protest I've ever gone to."
The next day, Alex Pretti was shot and killed by Border Patrol.
"Saturday, after Alex was murdered and the behavior of the Border Patrol on Nicollet Avenue, it shook me. It shook me to the core, and I was changed," Alverson said.
After 15 years in business, the restaurant would become the Post Modern Times Cafe.
"I guess it just has come out of the fact that it has felt like we're living in wartime. It's been a wartime for a lot of people in this neighborhood and in the city," Alverson said.
The daily special: a free meal to anyone who needs it until ICE leaves Minnesota.
"It's, you know, a strike against contributing to federal and state taxes while we're in an unsafe environment where our neighbors and citizens are not being protected," said Alverson. "After watching the violence that is taking place and the violence that continues to take place towards people that are trying to stand up and look out for their neighbors? No, I don't. I don't feel like this is a choice, that I can just shove that away somewhere and keep trying to make money."
Employees are now volunteers working for tips to keep the community hub open.
"It was a very busy day, yeah," server and U.S. veteran Andrew McLemore said. "I feel happy that I live in a community that is focused on real changes that we can make in response to this, taking care of each other. I've heard some people ask, like, if we're willing to take volunteers."
"I want to show that people can do their best to help people around them, and I think our country really needs that right now," Alverson said.
Modern Times Cafe is accepting donations.