Out of state 'I Voted' stickers for Alex Pretti memorial flood Glam Dolls Donuts’ mailbox
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On a recent chilly Minneapolis morning, caretakers of the Alex Pretti memorial sat down to drink coffee together at a table in Glam Doll Donuts.
Looking out the window toward the exact spot across the street where federal immigration agents kill Pretti last winter, Julia Lopez Kaley said no single person started the wave of putting their “I Voted” stickers onto the Pretti and Renee Good memorials. She said it started organically.
“It feels like February again as people came from around the state and around the country and around the world,” she said.
Memorial caretaker Jeff Wendelberge remembers a local mail carrier handing him one of the first letters containing an out-of-state sticker. The envelope was addressed to the “Alex Pretti and Renee Good Memorial.”
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“And I'm thinking, this place doesn't exist,” Wendelberge said. “It's kind of like the North Pole, like Santa Claus. It doesn't exist as a street address.”
Shortly after that first letter arrived, Glam Doll Donuts stepped in. The bakery offered its mailing address for out-of-towners looking to contribute their “I Voted” stickers.
The response since has been staggering, said bakery owner Teresa Fox. She received about 100 letters alone on Thursday. The stickers come from all ends of the country — Washington, D.C., Texas, Nevada, Michigan and elsewhere.
“I've got one from Florida. It just says 'Thank you for doing this,' then in parentheses, 'We tried,'” she laughed as she shuffled through the pile of envelopes.
Letters accompanying the voting stickers explained that federal agents killing Pretti and Good last winter during what Republican President Donald Trump called “Operation Metro Surge” motivated senders to vote and, for some, to get more politically engaged.
Wendelberge told MPR News about a man from Maryland who came and placed his sticker near the top of a light pole on the memorial site.
“He was very particular about orienting himself so the sticker faced east,” Wendelberg said, his voice cracking as he remembered the moment. “So he put the sticker up there and he said 'now all of Maryland can see that we voted for Alex Pretti.”
