Greetings from Occupied Minnesota! ✊🏻💜
Welcome Friends!
Watch this intro video first for the context of why I’m doing these videos. This is very much a work in progress, but I can’t think of a more effective way to get my story out than to tell it this way and send it directly to folks I trust and want to know what is happening outside the bubble.
-Seán
Wednesday Feb 11, 2026
Mike Daisey likened today’s events to Brecht’s Stories from the Third Reich and that hit pretty fucking hard when he was talking about an ICE event that I could easily have gotten mixed up in myself today. I’m a hot mess of PTSD coming down off my second anxiety attack of the day in this video, so it’s pretty raw. This is as much for me so I can remember what is happening as it is for anyone this is getting to.
It’s not getting any better here, they are still escalating. Their malignant incompetence will kill more people before this is over, mark my words. And it’s coming for your community next, be prepared. Start printing whistles.
February 10th, 2026
I’ve got some thoughts about the mean bumblefucks who are currently executing a siege, not a surge. Some more updates on my pal Tim Catlett’s absurd fucking story that we are going to be telling until the end of time. These grunts on the ground are stupid, mean, untrained, and fucking dangerous. There will be another name in the litany after Renee and Alex’s names soon if this goes on much longer. It’s a miracle it hasn’t happened already, to people I know who have been held at gunpoint.
Awe are not ok, and this is coming for your town next. Keep watching.
Friday, February 6th, 2026
This week has been one hell of a month. Here is ten minutes of rawness about what’s going on in Minnesota right now from my perspective. Inluding my feeling about my friend Tim Catlett being incarcerated, the role of Minnesota artists in the Resistance, and a new idea I have for a new kind of whistle, a Loon Call whistle….
My friend and fellow theater artist Tim Catlett was detained by ICE!
He is fine, he is home, and his charges were dismissed. And also this image is currently on the DHS website like he is one of AMerica’s Most Wanted! I talk more about it in today’s video. They are already coming for the Artists folks. It’s not paranoia, it’s real.
Welcome to the Loon Tune!
When I was a kid, we had one of these toys at the cabin. It’s a flywheel whistle that replicates the call of a loon. I’m currently in the process of reverse engineering it and making a 3D printed version that can be shared as a digital file and shared far and wide. I talk more about this in the video above.
I have a vision of there being tens if not hundreds of these loon whistle toys at a protest. Not as a warning like the ICE whistles, but as a rallying cry and symbol of Resistance.
Monday, February 2rd, 2026.
5 minutes after learning that someone called in a fucking BOMB THREAT to little Liam’s Elementary school this morning.
It is raw. I would very much like for you to watch it so you can better understand what is going on in my community. We need your help.
WE ARE BEING TERRORIZED.
I’m Seán McArdle. Theatre artist, educator, prop designer and engineer, and Minnesotan. I live in North End St. Paul, Minnesota. I find myself currently at the center of current events!
Note up front: PLEASE DO NOT POST THIS LINK ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Please only share it directly with people you trust! Thank you!
If you have found your way here, you are someone in my extended network. I’m creating this page as a resource for folks outside our Minnesota bubble so you can better understand what is going on here, share information on how you can help, and to personally collect donations that I can direct towards mutual aid here in the Twin Cities.
If you are so inclined, you can use the link above to send me financial support that I will redirect towards mutual aid here in the Twin Cities. Read on for more about what is going on here as History’s eyes find themselves on my community.
You can drop me a line at sean@heroprops.art if you are interested in directing major support to Minnesota in this time of crisis, beyond the scope of what I am accepting. We need a rent and eviction moratorium now!
Thank you all. for your support! Defend Minnesota!
Back in October, I had an encounter with ICE in my back alley. I went out on the morning of October 6th with my dogs for a walk and there were roofers on the house three doors down. When I got back my alley was filled with ICE agents. When I confronted them I got the same refusals that have become so familiar to us all. I told my story to Minnesota Public Radio that day:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/10/03/st-paul-ice-arrests-spark-concern-among-neighbors-and-immigrant-advocates
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All of my designs are available for free on my Printables page. You can download, print, distribute, share, send to friends, whatever. If you’ve got a 3D printer you can make any of these yourself. Check this link for the Printables page where everything is available.
https://www.printables.com/@SeanMcArdle_772738/models
Ever since I have been making 3D printed whistles. In that moment I felt completely helpless. I was afraid to even call my dogs over to me for fear of what these incompetents would do if even remotely threatened. I recorded them, just like Alex Pretti was doing. But I was alone.
I saw what my friends with Chicago were doing with whistles to alert the community and decided we needed to adopt the practice as soon as possible. Since then I’ve printed thousands of whistles and distributed them out to our community.
