Minneapolis
What to say about Minneapolis? I grew up there, and think it’s the greatest city in the country, there’s that for starters.
It’s a city with a lot of problems, like all the other ones. I’m sitting here right now listening to The Current 89.3, Minneapolis’s NPR affiliate that plays “eclectic music,” as I usually do when I’m at home, streaming online over our speakers.
They are playing Minneapolis-themed songs such as Atmosphere’s “January on Lake Street” interspersed with songs like the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power,” and the Youngblood’s “Get Together.” Now they are on their morning coffee break. This morning’s theme is “Peace, Love, and Understanding,” and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” is on.
The riots over night are devastating and at the same time completely understandable. I haven’t lived in Minneapolis for a long time, but I’m sure the majority of sentiment in the city is both chagrined at the great violence while also strongly in favor of police reform.
In the majority-white, middle-class neighborhood where I grew up, whenever I go back there, you see “Black Lives Matter” signs all over the place in the yards. My mother recently reported a whole blossoming of “Happy Ramadan” signs in the old neighborhood as well. After all, this is the heart of the Congressional district that elected two black Muslims to Congress in a row, currently served by Rep. Ilhan Omar.
True police reform is a long time coming. One of the most difficult moments I had in the city was when I was a fresh, new intern at the Minneapolis Mayor’s Office. I felt so lucky everyday to have that job in the summer of 2000, working for someone I admired deeply, Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, the first African-American and woman to be mayor of Minneapolis. I also worked directly under Ron Thaniel, who specialized in transportation policy, who was part of her very diverse, wonderfully experienced, thoughtful, intelligent, compassionate staff. I loved working there.
I didn’t even really know or understand what internships were hardly, as it was a time people were only starting to do them a lot, but I had cold-called the Minneapolis Mayor’s office and sent them an unsolicited cover letter and resume. To my great surprise, they actually responded and gave me the intern offer.
But about a month into the internship that year, the most uncomfortable situation I ever had to deal with in my simple, lowly role as an intern was related to police violence. See, I had to respond to angry constituents as they wrote in with emails, letters, and phoned the Mayor’s office. The Mayor’s office took all issues like this seriously, but after the mid-1990s when Minneapolis was known as “Murderapolis” amidst record-high crime levels, the sentiment was definitely with the police.
But this case was egregiously wrong. A woman named Barbara Schneider was shot to death in her own home by the Minneapolis police who were responding to calls from a neighbor about a noise complaint. Schneider was psychotic and raving about how the police were sent from Satan, making florid statements that clearly indicated mental illness.
But the police who arrived at the door didn’t know that, and didn’t even know how to recognize it, as they had never received the right training to do so. Schneider was a diminutive woman about five feet tall, but she held a small knife, she was freaked out by the police presence, and she allegedly charged at them. They shot her dead.
And I went to the Mayor’s office doing my regular constituent duties and had to say there would be an investigation and the whole rigamarole that usually leads to nothing.
And when I got home from the office, my mother ranted and raved and wailed. She was a long-time mental health advocate and activist. She hated this injustice with a passion. For years she clipped news articles about police shootings and kept her own count of how many happened, because the news media never did, no one else did. She wanted to keep track of the police shootings, the sheer number of them, in particular to see how many of the victims were mentally ill. They were a clear majority. The Washington Post started to record these tallies a few years ago, too, and found similar results.
It was a major strain living at home with a mental health activist with righteous passion about the issue and then going into an office to sort of kind of defend the situation as a fresh, young intern. And eventually the issue passed, and we all got on to other business.
And the Minneapolis police officers who shot and killed Barbara Schneider? They got an award. Everything was upside down.
So when years later one of my students at the University of Tampa was shot by the police when they were responding to a call from his wife that he was alone in his car, suicidal, I was devastated, outraged, you name it. And shocked, all over again. It never ceases to be shocking. I’m so lucky my student, a military veteran, survived, but it was the same kind of problem as years earlier in Minneapolis — the police hadn’t been getting the proper crisis intervention training to know how to respond.
I railed, complained, got in an email back-and-forth with Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor. And to no avail. Well, apparently they eventually may have changed the crisis training policies, after local media picked up on the story. But too late to help my student, who was severely injured and traumatized by what happened, but lucky to survive with his life.
And what happened to the officers involved? The guy who pulled the trigger got an award.
I can’t begin to say how angry I was.
Add deep, institutional racism to the mix, extending far beyond the police, and you have such a toxic stew that is so poisonous to our communities and corrosive to their growth and well-being.
The police officer who killed George Floyd couldn’t even make the flimsy claim that Floyd wasn’t following orders or was involved in a violent crime or anything like that. It was just pure, evil racism.
And it’s so bad, so graphic, and so ON VIDEO that even President Trump this morning in his tweets CANNOT DEFEND IT. Think about that! I don’t believe he wrote his tweet about the incident himself for a second, but still…
Think about it! This president who has defended the worst war criminals, thugs, (and who is a criminal himself!) CANNOT DEFEND THIS. Love to watch how his base processes this one…
The current Minneapolis police chief, who my mother remembers and likes from her Minneapolis schoolteacher days, did the right thing by firing the officers involved. The Mayor did the right thing by calling for action. We’re just waiting on the county attorney on up now.
But there needs to be so many larger conversations and actions. The way that police use force needs to be rethought. The whole presence and interaction of police in the communities needs to be rethought. The whole patterns of de facto segregation that happen need to be rethought.
And these aren’t just Minneapolis things. One thing I definitely remember from my Minneapolis City intern days is how cities are on the frontlines of every major issue — but they don’t have the resources themselves or legal authority themselves to make the most meaningful, impactful changes.
And for that, we need robust federal responses to make sure everyone has a shot at a good quality of life and basic, human dignity. That means access to affordable housing, civil rights protections, health care, good jobs, you name it.
What happens in Minneapolis depends on how people vote in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Maine, California — and vice versa.
People like to separate themselves into better, more perfect communities, ones where they don’t have to interact with people unlike themselves, and Minneapolis is one of those havens for many people.
But the whole country is in it together — and the whole lot of us need big change, which needs to be political. At the ballot box. A true shift in power to push for real reforms in law and policy — changes you can take to the bank. After this year especially, don’t we all deserve this?
