catherineldf | Entries tagged with minneapolis on fire

Hi there. Okay, I've had some decent sleep for the first time in a few days. The last couple of days have been very intense and I've been sleeping in the living room with the fire extinguisher, etc. while the helicopters buzzed overhead, there was lots of gunfire, I kept getting up to check the "perimeter" on the regular, etc. We are far enough away (4 blocks or so) from the site where George Floyd was murdered by the MPD that we haven't gotten tear gas in the house; homes closer to the the site and the protestors keeping vigil there haven't been so lucky. There are so many opportunities for multi-level rage right now and we don't even have to leave our own neighborhood!

So, some things that came as recent pleasant surprises, in no particular order:

The protestors at the vigil site weren't harassed last night.
The attempts to burn down and/or vandalize several buildings, including my friend's birthing clinic in North Minneapolis and DreamHaven Books, failed thanks to alert community members.
Mail delivery and trash pickup started again yesterday.
The Minneapolis Police Department is now under investigation by the State of MN for cases going back 10 years.
This is honestly the angriest bunch of Midwestern white people I've ever seen, outside of lefty organizing or a sporting event, and most of them are angry for good reasons, even if some of that revolves around a dream they wanted to believe was true for everyone.
A whole bunch of us went and cleaned up on Lake Street, on the Northside and Midway and at individual businesses; people formed watch committees and block patrols; food shelves have been overrun with donations and volunteers; a local hotel opened itself up to a newly formed collective as a shelter for people who had lost housing; fundraisers are going on all over the place. None of this takes away from the cops, the State Patrol, the Sheriff's Department, a supposedly random truck driver, roving white supremacists, or National Guard personnel brutalizing protestors, community members and journalists or, you know, centuries of white supremacy, but it's still pretty amazing to watch come together and participate in it.

What you can do:

Do you live in Minneapolis? The MPD's contract is being negotiated right now. Reach out to your council person and the Mayor with your concerns. Here's a handy list of reforms that Minneapolis for a Better Police Contract tried to get them to consider last year; they got shut out of the process. But now, thanks to murder, over brutality, the "blue flu" that caused them to unable to actually respond to actual problems instead of shooting people on porches and harassing neighborhood patrols, and the aforementioned angry white people, there's a chance to be heard. Seize it.
Fundraisers, we got 'em! Here's a list on Bring Me the News - I've been sending them daily updates and you can too! I just sent them this one so it should be up tomorrow - Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's Bookstore rebuilding fund.
Volunteer, if you can. It helps. There's a ton of stuff going on - check Holy Trinity Church in Minneapolis, this list here and North Minneapolis churches and the Midway neighbor's group. Cleaning, medics, people to help at the Sheraton, people to pick things up, distribute things, etc. etc. The need to gigantic.
And when they're looking at people to help with COVID-19 testing and support, gonna need help for that too, unfortunately.
Buy things from locally-owned businesses that are still open or reopening. Seriously, a lot of them/us were hurting before this. Hold off on getting shit from Amazon if you can find it locally in your price range. Check local first.
Fight police brutality, military occupation and racism on your local level, if you don't live here. National level, as well.
Pace your self as much as you can. People burn out fast on this stuff. Go smell whatever proverbial roses that you got.

And tomorrow, we start the Pride Month StoryBundle and I'm curating so expect things to be about that for a few weeks, interspersed with rage and news. Good times!

Let's start with the fun stuff. My story, " Cardinal's Gambit," is out at Heather Rose Jones' LHMPodcast, If you liked the pirate/spy couple that I introduced in "The Letter of Marque" and wrote about in "One Night In Saint Martin," they're back! Have a little distraction!

Okay, back to the horror. So last night we had a friend over for birthday dinner (Jana's and his) and he left right before curfew (a brand new thing, started last night at 8PM, both cities). When he left, we found a bag of food from a local restaurant on the porch. We tried unsuccessfully to reach them and there was no name on it, so into the fridge it went. More on that later.

Now many places, putting a "curfew" in suggests that it will be enforced, in this case by the MN National Guard and the local constabulary. Or, you know, someone in authority. But that was not how this rolled. I have said elsewhere that a number of our public officials are people that we elected in good times for good times, not necessarily people who could handle many, many simultaneous crises, back to back. Some of them are trying, but aren't good at it yet. Some are not trying and it shows. Last night, the rest of Lake Street burned, along with a big chunk of St. Paul and some of North Minneapolis. Today, we are finally wrestling with the notion that the Fire Department needs to be able to get to the fires in order to put them out. We are also dealing with the notion that if you start out with huge, interracial groups of protestors, then suddenly have small groups of white guys with suspiciously new gear running around setting fire to things and encouraging looting, then maybe you have a different set of problems.

Last night, we lost, amongst other things too numerous to even begin to list:

Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's Bookstore - the oldest indie sf-speciality bookstore in the country. Staff are unharmed, fundraiser likely coming soon.
Broadway Family Medicine Clinic, one of the largest medical facilities left in North Minneapolis
2 post offices (one of which housed my p.o. box as well as several things on hold that were due to be delivered when mail service resumed - the 2 shirts that I had ordered for Jana for her birthday, the DVDs I was looking forward to watching and some other things). My all time favorite mail clerk worked at our closest one.
More restaurants, nail shops, barber shops, gas stations, coffee shops, banks, pharmacies, drug stores, grocery stores, etc. than I can count.
A photojournalist has lost an eye to "nonlethal" rounds, DreamHaven Books was broken into and trashed, the Minnesota Somali Museum got trashed and the Midtown Global Market and its apartments were attacked (the tenants fended off the looters and arsonists and now it's one of the few buildings left standing). Paper Source got looted (Paper Source? I mean all the why?).

No, you do not get to tell me what I can or can't mourn or how I should do it. No one gets to tell those of us who are living through this right now that.

Today, I dropped off donations at the food shelf, helped raise the Bat Signal to assist DreamHaven Books, shared food from the restaurant delivery (I paid the restaurant even though they tried to give us the meal kit for free) with our neighbors, helped clean up DreamHaven and locked up our trash cans and recycling bin so they can't be used to start fires. The farmers we buy goat cheese from fought their way to our house to deliver the goat cheese order I couldn't get downtown to pick up.

Tonight, the word is that we are going to get an influx of white supremacists. The highways are closed. We no longer have mail delivery or public transit. All over the area, people are assembling block patrols. One of our favorite cafe owners to begging people to come and stay overnight to help her protect her restaurant (an East Coast Big 5 editor informed me today on Twitter that "no one did that," when in fact yes, they do). The full Minnesota National Guard will be out, along with troops from other states. Tonight, they have been told they can use lethal force. Tonight, I will be sleeping on the couch with a fire extinguisher and sundry other equipment and waking up periodically to patrol our yard and keep an eye on the surrounding houses. We are all angry and scared and I just hope we stop these fuckers tonight and save what's left of our cities.

And no, I haven't forgotten about George Floyd. Hell, I haven't even forgotten about COVID-19. But we're in in survival mode now and have to do the best we can with what we have. We'll get justice for him, but we gotta survive the night first. Good luck out there and stay as safe as you can.

As I noted in my previous post, I live in Minneapolis, 4 blocks from where members of the Minneapolis Police Department murdered George Floyd, 1.5-3 miles from Lake Street, depending on which part of it you're looking at. I participated in the first march and went down to the vigil site again last night. I shopped at most of the local businesses and other buildings that have been destroyed and know people who worked in many of them.

So far, we have lost:

2 members of our local community, including Mr. Floyd.
Countless small businesses, like restaurants and stores run by POC and immigrant folks.
Buildings with offices that employed numerous community members
Affordable housing and apartments
A building housing a 40 year old nonprotit that worked with Native youth, teaching communications, and its entire archive.
A post office and its equipment
Things I haven't even begun the catalogue.
An independent Spanish-language radio station
And this doesn't begin to cover the intangibles and the buildings that were badly damaged that will be deemed unrepairable.

Honestly, I would cheerfully trade the 3rd Precinct, which I do not consider a loss, to have any or all of these other things back. "Burn it all down" is for people who don't plan to clean it up.

Is it understandable? The marches and the vigil that's been running 24 hours a day demanding justice for Mr. Floyd, definitely. Some of the attacks on various building, particularly the 3rd Precinct, definitely. But it also sounds as if some of it, the fires in particular, may have been set by agent provocateurs. There are also obviously people just looking to create trouble. At this point, the fires and looting and so forth have gone well beyond the groups who came together to protest the murder (murders, really, since this was hardly the first) and the likely mishandling of justice for that crime when administered by some of our current officials.

Has some version of this been coming for a long time? Yes. So, honestly, is the decision to have the MN National Guard step in when the police and the city government failed at even basic protections for firefighters fighting the blazes. This has to stop for any kind of dialogue or change to begin. My concern is that we will end up like St. Louis, where urban riots hollowed out the city core in the late 1960s and it still hadn't been rebuild by the mid1980s when I lived there. Where Ferguson is an ongoing crime (look up what happened there after the world's attention turned away - activist assassinations, etc.). And I really don't want to see that.

So here we are, going into the first weekend of curfew, enforced by the National Guard. Things are happening, support networks are getting built, cleanup and fundraising is already happening. Will it be enough to create a new future for this city I fell in love with? I have no idea. But I'm hoping. I'm also hoping that we don't lose any more.

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