Most of the following essay was written five months ago and published in two parts on my now-quiet account on Post, so it is longer than my usual articles. I wasn’t going to share it here, except… except that so little has actually changed for the better in the last three years regarding police brutality and over-reach, racism, and violence by extremists in the United States in particular, where I live. While I no longer live in Minnesota, this tragedy is one of many that haunts me. The travesties of justice that followed it compound the grief and anger. To see such violence and cruelty not only continue but escalate breaks my heart, and indeed my belief in the overall goodness of humanity. That also means, however, that I cannot look away nor let such acts be forgotten, lest I contribute to the complacency and disregard that brought us here.
An article on CBS News in Minnesota’s website published on the third anniversary of George Floyd’s murder has a concise, thorough and direct article on what has happened since his death and the resulting uprising that took place in Minneapolis that sparked sympathetic responses across the world. It is, in part, due to this article and in seeing posts again from when I was living in the besieged city of Minneapolis that I decided to share my original article now.
An excerpt from the CBS News article:
SINCE 2020, WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN MINNEAPOLIS?
Soon after Floyd's murder, Minneapolis adopted a number of changes, including bans on chokeholds and neck restraints, and requirements that police try to stop fellow officers from using improper force. Minnesota lawmakers approved statewide police accountability packages in 2020 and in 2021, as well as tight restrictions on no-knock warrants just this month.
The city is still awaiting the results of a federal investigation into whether its police have engaged in a "pattern or practice" of unconstitutional or unlawful policing. A similar investigation by the state Department of Human Rights led to what it called a "court-enforceable settlement agreement" in March to revamp policing in the city.
The federal investigation could lead to a similar but separate agreement with the city called a consent decree. Police in several other cities already operate under such oversight for civil rights violations.
Activists say that Minneapolis has started to make critical changes, but that the work necessary to transform policing must continue.
There were also immediate cries to defund the police — and instead fund public housing, infrastructure and mental health services. But a ballot measure that had roots in that movement failed, even in some heavily Black neighborhoods.
An AP review of police funding found that some municipalities elsewhere made modest cuts that fell far short of activists' calls.
If it is difficult for you to read first-hand accounts of experiences such as these, now would be a good time to stop reading. I totally understand if you choose to do so.
And the people rose up…
As originally published, with minor edits for clarity.
This is so hard to write. It is going to take at least two installments because I cannot stop crying. Again.
I had already been torn about whether I should write anything about this time in my life at all, even before the murder of Keenan Anderson in Los Angeles, California on January 03, 2023. Yet another act of police over-reach against an unarmed person of color; yet another senseless, horrific death. What right do I, a 66-year-old white woman have, to speak about this? I cannot speak to the pain that this, all of this, all this time, has caused the Black community. Most of the time in the past, I chose instead, to try to elevate the voices of those who have experienced the racism firsthand, via the eloquence and pain of writers like Adrian Wright. There comes a point though, when that silence must be broken, even when it was meant out of respect for that which one has no right to speak of.
I cannot speak for them. But I can tell you what I have personally witnessed, because too many white people refused to hear the voices of people of color then and still do. Too many listened to the press and the police and the politicians whose “not us” rhetoric drowned out that of those living it. Too many people called it riots, when that wasn’t what it was at all: It was an UpRising.
This post is not specific to Keenan, or even to George Floyd, nor even really to the long and horrible history of the treatment of non-whites by people in positions of power. To the woefully long list of murdered people of color, primarily Blacks, at the hands of police. This is about one city out of many where this happened, is happening, day after wretched day. This is a post about what it was like to live in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May of 2020 and what followed after the murder of George Perry Floyd, Jr. Of what I witnessed happen to the City; of why I fled it. Of why it has taken almost three years to even write about it. If I have PTSD from this, what must it be like for those who suffered way more than I ever did from those events?
The problems in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St Paul Minnesota did not happen overnight. They began even further back than this event. They began long before I moved there in 2011. But we need to start somewhere.
In an account on 04 Jan 2016 by Talib K. Weli on Facebook,
When unarmed #blacklivesmatter protesters showed up to peacefully protest at Mall Of America, this is a fraction of the police that showed up, dressed in militarized gear. They secured the fuck out of that escalator. Remember this image as you watch this Oregon protest go down. Those are armed white men who stated clearly that they would use violence. Not unarmed peaceful protesters. So where are the police? Where are the talking heads on the news calling them terrorists. It seems that when armed white men make a stand, police remember their training and focus on de-escalation out of respect for life. This land they trying to claim was stolen from Native Americans. This ain't even a real cause. It's not about guns or states rights or cattle. It's about white men realizing their era of privilege is ending. And the government is giving them a pass just like they daddy got a pass after pointing guns at police two years ago. Do they have a right to protest? Sure. But so do unarmed black people. See the hypocrisy.
So what it like, to live and work in Minneapolis after news of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the police got out? Let’s go back a little, and hear what it was like before that happened.
I moved to Minneapolis in late 2011, from St. Louis, Missouri, another city with it’s own racist history. I had given my car to my daughter, knowing I could take transit or walk to most places I needed to go. And I did that, at all times of day or night. My radius was 3 miles from my home in an area called Uptown, a vibrant, eclectic neighborhood that boasted diversity, artisans, quirky shops, ethnic family restaurants and older interesting living spaces. There were parks and lakes everywhere, the tree-lined streets active with people day and night. While I was always cautious, I never felt afraid, even walking home alone in the dark from friends’ houses, events, theaters or museums, often as far as two miles away.
Until one particular day that changed… everything and everyone who lived there. May 25, 2020. The day that George Floyd was murdered by an officer of the Minneapolis Police Department. In Uptown. My home.
Now, this is where it gets personal. Where the fear and the pain get dredged up from my psyche where they’ve been hidden for three years.
It’s not like George Floyd was the first, the only, Black person to be murdered at the hands of police in our city. But his death was a tipping point. Already stressed by the arrival of Covid, the people of Minneapolis were on edge, me included, having missed three weeks of work in March of 2020 because of it. At the time, I worked in a busy food co-op in my neighborhood, and was one of the first to be infected by the virus. I returned to the once open, friendly, welcoming store to one that had to rush to put up plastic barriers, limit the amount of people who could enter at a time, with co-workers in masks and shields, angry customers, tense employees, x-marks on the floor 6 feet apart, one-way aisles. This didn’t happen all at once; we were learning. We were all learning. I almost lost my job because I had some medical restrictions. Some people left because of them; most never returned.
And then, George Floyd was murdered. And the City erupted. Please don’t ask or expect me to tell you the order everything happened in; I can’t. Things are a blur in some ways. Shock will do that. And everything happened so quickly, changed so abruptly. I lived less than two miles of the epicenter of the righteous anger that began in peaceful protests. Our co-op was on one of the main streets that pass through the neighborhood. We watched the marchers move up the street, angry but non-violent. The police were already prone to over-reaction, especially after being given extreme riot gear and weaponry and training thanks to the encouragement of those in the highest offices in the nation. And they were gearing up already, preparing to shut down even the peaceful.
At some point, fires broke out to the west, the booms of explosions and the news of a change from peaceful to something else entirely filtering through our already tense community. I can only share vignettes with you; bits of memory, not in order, but what remains and rises to the surface of my consciousness when I hear helicopters, fireworks, guns. The things that made me flee, make me jump, that make me hide, that when contemplating finally writing about it make me shut down almost completely for over a week. But I knew it was coming; knew that it would, eventually. Knew I would have to face it, finally. No matter how much I shake, no matter how many tears fall, no matter how many screams for help to finish this personal account echo into the woods. Because it’s not just about me; it’s about all of us. Those who it happens to; those who have lost them; those who stand up; those who speak out; those who look away; even those who I am trying very hard not to hate who “just followed orders”, who think they were justified, who actively seek to hurt, who shelter them, who praise them, who support them. It’s about all of us.
The pictures of the police who were present at George Floyd’s murder started circulating. One of them looked really familiar. I didn’t want to believe it. And then the messages started coming in from former co-workers, most of whom I hadn’t spoken to in at least four years. “Is it him? Is it really him? It looks like him! How could it be him of all people?!” Because this young man stood next to me some nights, guarding the department I worked in on the skyway level of a long-gone Macy’s store where multiple grab and runs had been taking place. He was kind, articulate, funny, beautiful. We had some lovely conversations, about his desire to get into law enforcement, about how he wanted to eventually make it to the FBI. We talked about my life too, and my daughter, and told each other funny stories to kill the time and keep our spirits up. I felt safe with him. Yet, there he was, finally a rookie cop, keeping people from stopping his ‘superior’ officer from killing Floyd. So many layers of loss. My heart shattered, not for the first time; not for the last.
The distant booms of the sonic cannons, echoing through the streets. They could be heard miles away. What it must have been like for those right there was terrifying to consider.
The fireworks set off nightly, for a month.
Neighborhood Watches sprung up all across the most highly impacted areas of Uptown, coordinated by mostly young people because the police didn’t care about anything but stopping the protests. MAGA people and their ilk came to the Cities in droves to stir up trouble and pin violence on the protestors. The police and the elite didn’t believe us nor care, but we did. Those of us who couldn’t be on what we called “the front lines” because we were elderly or disabled or too terrified, watched from our apartments and our buildings and our places of work, most often from darkened apartments throughout the night, messaging each other when we’d spot something out of the ordinary. We reported the cars of the good ol’ boys and their ilk with their headlights off and their tags removed creeping up the alleys to the ones who were on the ground and those on duty that night would go check it out. We existed under the radar every night and then we’d go to work or school in the morning, only those who were our contacts knowing we existed.
People who came in and bought gift cards to anonymously distribute to the Night Watch.
The time I found a box of what may have been homemade bomb elements stashed behind a fence. I called my contacts and walked away. I never learned what became of it, but it was gone the next time I passed by there.
The National Guard’s arrival. Heavy equipment and heavy boots lock stepping up the streets with weapons taking the same paths the protestors had taken. Ordering people sitting on their porches to go inside. They were not protecting us. They came to protect the buildings and the big houses and the businesses of the wealthy.
The curfews.
The smoke, heavy from the fires. There was no escaping it. It clung to everything.
The constant sirens.
The bullhorns, the words unintelligible from the distance, their intent clear.
The black ops helicopters, circling, circling, circling. All night sometimes. Spotlights through windows.
Broken shop windows, covered in plywood. Unbroken shop windows, covered in plywood. The Co-op darkened by the covering of the windows in plywood.
Artwork showing up on the plywood. Incredible works of art appearing overnight.
A woman calling to the Co-op, prompting this Poem, her entitlement one of the worst things I have ever had to tolerate at a workplace that expressed full support of the #BLM movement.
The fucking useless mayor and his promises.
The fucking useless “City Council” members and their broken promises.
And all through it, Covid raging on. We couldn’t even hug each other without fear.
Pictures of the protestors, wearing masks.
The tent cities.
The tent cities being destroyed by the police, what was left of belongings gathered and dumped.
Neighbors checking on each other.
Strangers, talking to each other.
Seeing the devastation. Not being able to un-See it.
Watching the protests spread from my neighborhood locally, regionally, nationally, internationally.
“After Floyd's murder, protests were held globally against the use of excessive force by police officers against black suspects and lack of police accountability. Protests began in Minneapolis the day after his murder and developed in cities throughout all 50 U.S. states and internationally.[78][79] The New York Times described the events in the wake of Floyd's murder and video that circulated of it as "the largest protests in the United States since the Civil Rights era."[80] Calls to both defund and abolish the police were widespread.[81]”
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd
Hoping, praying, it will make a difference.
Watching nothing change.
The trial delays.
Feeling the need to flee to safety so intensely that one is willing to move into a questionable rental situation. Being grateful the option is possible, despite that.
Wanting nothing more than creating a #SafeSpace for people to come, to offer them a place of #Sanctuary, of quiet, of a place to mourn, to heal, even if just for a day.
Fighting the disappointment in yourself that you are abandoning people by leaving.
Watching your friends who couldn’t leave collapse further into themselves, shock and grief and numbness claiming them.
Burying your own shock and grief and numbness, until it threatens your health and your sanity and your spirit.
I escaped. It will always feel like that: escape. And I feel like I managed it just in time. My vibrant, beautiful neighborhood lay in ruins over a vast area. Trust in law enforcement, in city ‘leaders’, in justice, destroyed. In its wake, massive increases in crime: carjackings, armed thefts on the streets, a rash of engine parts being stolen from vehicles, stabbings, shootings, used needles everywhere. Squatters burning down buildings. The elite buying vintage buildings, tearing them down, building rapidly constructed shoddy buildings and renting them out for huge sums of money as Airbnb's, causing rents to skyrocket and deepening the housing crisis that already existed.
All because law enforcement chose authoritarianism over communication. The situation escalated because of excessive force. I am not saying that the actions of the protestors were always pristine and pure, because they weren’t. But it didn’t start out that way. It started out peaceful. I will never be able to trust law enforcement again after what happened, because the “good few” did not stand against the abusive. As long as people just do as they are told, as long as they fall back on the excuse that they were “just following orders”, things will never change for the better.
I have only been back once. It was heart-breaking all over again. The plywood was gone over most of the intact windows now, but between the UpRising and Covid many small, eclectic businesses could not recover. The charm and safety of the neighborhood was gone. It was nerve-wracking. I won’t go back again, if I can help it. It is just too painful.
So, how do we bring about real change? Because it seems never-ending, never resolved. And that is not acceptable to me even though I do not know if it is truly possible to do so.
Eugene Kondratov posits one way in this article:
Long Read: Keenan Anderson and Effective Strategies to Reduce the Incidence of Police Violence
In conclusion, police violence in the United States is a complex issue that is caused by a variety of factors, including a lack of accountability and oversight, inadequate training, and structural racism. To address this issue, there is a need for multiple approaches, including implementing community policing, increasing transparency and accountability, addressing structural racism within police departments, investing in social services, affordable housing, and mental health resources and having a strong and independent oversight body. By implementing these strategies, we can create a culture of accountability, promote de-escalation and mental health awareness, and improve relationships between police officers and communities.
I wish I did not despair that it is possible.
Additional accounts and footage can be found here:
Unicorn Riot is publishing an exclusive 5-episode series bringing front line perspectives from the historic George Floyd uprising in Minneapolis in 2020.
To Hell or Utopia: The Minneapolis Uprising
Christopher Scott Thompson June 10, 2020