as far as i can tell the origin of the minnesota ICE watchers' tactics is basically the radicalization of pretty normal immigration nonprofit legal observers?

That plus neighborhood watch tactics from the Chicago surge

As far as I can tell our big innovation is scale plus actually following. In our training we were told it was not recommended to follow ICE cars and early on there was some uncertainty about whether to do it. But it quickly became standard practice: see ICE, get a commuter or three behind them

Was it just immediate success that got people on board with following who were initially skeptical of the tactic? Phase changes like that seem like they'll be particularly instructive

I think there was just a sense of “what else are you going to do?” Otherwise they’ll simply drive off! I know some folks in Chicago did follow, but we had so many observers that we could have them constantly roam in an effort to pick up passing ICE cars and get them reinforcements when they did

And I guess those with the sort of risk tolerance to do it initially would slot right into the existing observer C3 infrastructure?