Another black man was murdered by a white police officer
His name was George Floyd.
For eight minutes, the officer (whose name I will not bother to mention) was filmed kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck, eventually killing him. As if we needed another reminder, the murder of George Floyd was another reminder to the racist, brutal and inequitable treatment of blacks, the indigenous, and people of color.
First there were protests of course, and rightly so. Then came the riots and looting. The damage was incredible, and destroyed an unbelievable swath of these beautiful cities which are my home and George Floyd’s home.
While the rioting and looting has grabbed so much of the headlines, there is another story here, a better story. It is my goal to tell that story.
Riots and looting in Minneapolis and Saint Paul
Friday morning, after riots and looting that devastated entire neighborhoods of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, I went for a bike ride. Of course, I brought my camera.
The first sign of the looting that had swept across the Twin Cities was in downtown Saint Paul. I came across a man puzzling over a massive pile of Starbursts, Peanut M&M’s and rolls of toilet paper. “Who would just leave this here?!” he implored (I was waiting at a red light). “What the hell is going on here?”
On closer inspection, we discovered the pile was obviously some looters bag, maybe fallen off the back of a truck.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I wish I had a bigger bag!”
He scooped up the toilet paper (a smart move) and ran away juggling ten extra-bouncy rolls, looking this way and that.
I was making my way to University Avenue, between Hamline and Snelling – Saint Paul’s Midway neighborhood. That’s where most of Thursday night’s bad news had come from. On the way, I came up on a man and woman riding bikes with jumbo garbage bags parachuting from each of their handlebars. I followed them to a nearby grocery store close to Dale and University. The store’s front windows were smashed in, the doors had been torn off and the alarm was ringing. The man and woman rode their bikes right in the front entrance., billowing garbage bags and all.
Saint Paul and Minneapolis, after the riots
Any other day, this bike ride would have been exceptional. But Thursday night’s riots transformed the landscape of the Twin Cities into an upside-down world. I saw block after block of burned and destroyed businesses. Many of which were still on fire and burning freely. Of course, I got a flat tire and as I was not-so-successfully repairing the flat, I saw passing cars and trucks brimming with revelers hurling bottles out the windows.
After I fixed my flat tire (finally) I saw a guy walk past with a swastika on his phone. And when I asked him about it, he made up some story about how he likes to do drawings and he just drew this little thing and it wasn’t a big deal.
He held up his phone for me to inspect, “Look,” he said. “It’s gone. I deleted it.”
I took many pictures that morning. They are all terrible. They were exhausting to edit, I don’t mind saying. You can only look at so many destroyed, burning buildings until they all just blend together into one depressing montage.
But this was not the story I wanted to tell. The news was already doing a top notch job of telling the awful story of the rioting and the looting and the violence and the fires and so on. I was certain there was more out there than just the sensational stuff.
For all the terribleness, a fine antidote
I returned to Minneapolis again on Saturday, we needed dry ice (long story). And, just in case, I brought my camera along. And just in case, I brought a second camera for close-up shots.
As the guy at Ace Ice was measuring out my dry ice, I asked him if the riots had hit their business. He said, miraculously Ace Ice had been spared. Like a tornado, the crowds completely devastated some of the businesses close by. They burned down everything indiscriminately, he said. The White Castle just across 35W – gone. But, thank god, Ace Ice made it through the night untouched.
This was a big man, and obviously not used to sharing emotions. But he said this anyway, shaking his head as he handed over the dry ice, “I just never seen anything like it. Horrible. Just horrible.”
Outside Ace Ice, there were groups of people all walking in the same direction, with brooms, and push brooms and dustpans and garbage cans. Again, I followed my nose to Chicago and Lake street where there was a massive clean up underway for the stretch of destruction along Lake Street and Chicago.
For all the terribleness I’d seen the day before, seeing the crowds who’d come out to clean up and rebuild Minneapolis made a fine antidote.
Nobody I spoke with had much of an idea what they were doing. That is what many of the people I spoke with said, “You can take a picture if you want, but we have no idea what we’re doing.” They’d just shown up with the tools and threw-in where they could.
These were strangers meeting strangers, brigading buckets of glass and rubble to clear a path together. People were dropping off carloads of canned goods and water and supplies to a huge donations drop on the corner of the Midtown Market. One man just started setting up cones on Lake Street and, like a traffic cop redirected westbound traffic away from a gas leak a block to the west.
Many people with signs were heading to Cup Foods, a couple blocks to the south, the site where George Floyd was murdered. Naturally, I followed them to George Floyd’s memorial.
Remembering George Floyd (and countless others)
Again, the scene at E. 38th st and Chicago, and the surrounding blocks was a salve to the torn landscape of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Yes, the Cities are reeling right now. Yes, people are pissed. But there is more going on than just rioting and looting in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
There was a teeming crowd of people. Protesting, grieving, arguing and telling stories. Yes, the crowds were blocking traffic, yes they’d packed-in despite suggested social distancing efforts during this pandemic. All of the things – all too beautiful and horrible for words.
I kept hearing a phrase from the speakers at Mr. Floyd’s memorial, it’s the same one I hear in the news to preface updates on the protests and the rioting: “In the aftermath.” That is, the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd were these protests, which led to rioting which led to compounding our collective grief.
But how can it be aftermath if murders such as Mr. Floyd’s are an ongoing occurrence? This just keeps happening – the killing of unarmed black men is an impossibly repeating problem. And as this cycle repeats, incrementally, the response (as one would expect) gets worse and worse. So while this week’s cycle of protests, rioting and grief may be the aftermath of last Monday’s murder, it does not come after anything, not until we can break this terrible cycle.
Cleaning up and rebuilding the Twin Cities
At the memorial, I heard street preachers calling out the clean up on Lake Street a short walk to the north. He was yelling at anyone who would listen, it was too soon to clean up. He said we need to let these wounds sit for long enough, so that the world can see what happened to our cities. Our apparent over-eagerness to clean up and repair the wreckage of the riots was just another effort to whitewash what had happened there.
That may be true, which I guess is why I was taking pictures at such an incredible clip, to record what happened. But that our cities would come together so quickly, and without direction, to clean up and to heal our broken streets, it gives me hope (in spite of myself).
Too often we hear about that which divides us, separates us and makes Americans adversaries. It’s a nice change to see how, when it comes down to it, people grab a broom and head out to who-knows-where to help. Yes, the mess is incredible. And yes, the extent of the wreckage seems overwhelming and impossible to fathom. So I can’t blame anybody for not having much of an idea where to start shoveling. It is reassuring however, for lack of a clear place to start, we’d begin shoveling right where we’re standing.
