About 40 people came out for a fat bike ride in Hayward, Wisconsin in memory of Alex Pretti. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

Over 40 riders gathered Saturday afternoon, Jan. 31, in Hayward for a “fat bike” recreational ride in the snow in memory of and solidarity with fellow biking enthusiast Alex Pretti, 37, who was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol agents during a federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.

The Hayward event was just one of several in Wisconsin and hundreds held across the United States to honor Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the Veterans Administration (VA) hospital in Minneapolis.

Organizer Ian Fitch, a biking enthusiast and owner of the Whistlepunk Coffee Shop in Stone Lake, used to live near the Angry Catfish Bicycle shop in Minneapolis, the same bike shop Pretti used. Fitch said the event was inspired by the Minneapolis shop to draw the biking community together in honor of Pretti.

“This is what biking is very good at doing, bringing people together of all different types, and right now that seems like the best thing we can do for each other, to be together and to find common ground,” said Fitch.

He also said biking was a good activity to get people out, move, and process their pent-up energy.

David Schlabowske of Seeley, a former Milwaukee resident and past president of Wisconsin Bike Fed, a bicycle advocacy group, attended because it was also his way to protest how “immigration enforcement is being handled across the country and specifically in Minneapolis.”

Schlabowske said he had friends  who were members of Pretti’s Riverwest 24 team, a 24-hour community race in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee. One of the bikers was a close friend of Pretti’s since college and, Schlabowske said, he is still reeling from the tragic shooting.

“He’s just hunkered down at a friend’s farm in northern Minnesota because he is still kind of too gutted,” Schlabowske said of Pretti’s friend. “Normally, he’s a big bike-advocate guy. He would go on rides, but it’s too personal.”

Schlabowske said Pretti’s friend, who wants to stay out of the media spotlight, encouraged him to do the ride in Hayward because Pretti used to bike in the area on the 100 miles of mountain and fat bike trails.

“He said, ‘Alex would have loved your doing a fat bike ride in the winter for him,’” said Schlabowski.

Many of the riders were also concerned about the violence they’ve seen on social media and television.

“It’s awful what’s happening to our country,” said Del Bakkum, a retired dentist from Spooner. Bakkum said he is concerned over the “transgression” of constitutional rights by the government and the killing by federal agents of both Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

”I’m here also to ride into solidarity against the overreach of government that’s happening with ICE agents taking literally, taking people off of the streets, out of their homes, and creating chaos in our country,” said Susan Bauer of Hayward. “I never thought I would ever see this kind of action of our own government, hurting and murdering our own people.”

Bauer, a nurse, said she knows of another nurse working in Hayward who was mentored by Pretti as a student.

“I’m standing in solidarity with Alex because of his actions, and because he’s a nurse and because he worked for the VA and he supported our own vets,” she said, “and he was, you know, using his own constitutional right to have an firearm (Pretti was carrying a permitted concealed pistol when federal agents tackled him, but he did not brandish it), and that’s the main reason the Second Amendment was created, was to prevent overreach of government, to let citizens protect themselves against their own government.”

Ann Pollock resides in the Hayward area in the winter to take advantage of winter sports, cross-country skiing, fat-tire biking, and then lives in the summer in Madison. She came to the ride to protest the government’s actions and honor Pretti.  

Pollock said she knows of a family in the Twin Cities where the father, who has legal immigration status, was placed in a detention center for a week until, after a hearing where he proved his legal status, he was finally released.

“Why was he in detention all that time when he had his papers?” she asked. “It’s just wrong what the government is doing.”

 Pollock attended the ride to show solidarity with other riders and to demonstrate that there are progressives in Wisconsin’s deep-red 7th Congressional District.

Linda Shydlowski of Cable said she had been in Minneapolis on Friday, Jan. 23 to march with her daughter in a crowd of  40,000 protesters, and while she was in the Twin Cities she dropped  off food to Latino community members too afraid to come out of their houses for fear of being detained.

“We saw ICE circling around a drop-off facility in the Latino community, causing fear, and then to wake up the next morning, and you know Alex is shot. Devastating. Horrific,” she said.

Later, Shydlowski visited the memorial site constructed where Pretti had been killed.

“It was powerful to see so many people coming together in community, grieving together, those that personally knew him, those that didn’t know him at all, but we’re there in common ground, and that is for peace, for dignity of human life, and to care for each other,” she said.

While she was at the memorial, she said, she saw a man who spent over an hour on his knees crying.

She was also inspired to see two Somali women at the same site, a mother and daughter, passing out tea and a Hispanic woman offering food.

“It’s hard to know, really, what a group ride really accomplishes in light of everything going on,” said Shydlowski about the Jan. 31 bike event. “It’s such a small thing. But I think it’s powerful for people to come together and bear witness to what’s happened and ride with some hope, too, for things to get better.”