An Uncomfortable Trip To The Scene Of the Crime
Remember that time Donald Trump wanted police to shoot protesters?
Like many cities across America, Minneapolis suffers from institutional segregation. Neighborhoods are segregated by large sunken highways that bisect the city and its outlying suburbs. And, like many other cities in America, it's exacerbated economic and racial disparities.
Decades of fear and conflict came to a head in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns. It was a dark time, and nobody seems to want to remember.
In Minneapolis, down at South 31st Street and Nicollet Avenue, protests turned to riots. A Wells Fargo bank and a post office were burned down. Police "hunted" civilians and the press, including one of my best friends and colleagues, Linda Tirado, leaving her blind in one eye. Police slashed tires, kettled protesters, and indiscriminately used guerrilla warfare tactics with so-called “less than lethal” weaponry to deliberately severely injure and maim.
And that was just Minneapolis. Cities large and small rose up and called for change in 2020. Lawsuits over police abuses in 2020 are still working their way through the courts four years later. Now, recent Supreme Court rulings have some worried that shitty cops won’t just get away with violating fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, they’ll be protected from any penalty or prosecution.
"That, over there, that was the bank," Ricoh Johnson, 76, of Minneapolis says. He gestures to the carved-up parking lot where an excavator is scooping up dirt from a large hole. "Burnt the bank down so bad they just tore the shit down. And the post office down the street ... they finally just started building a new one."
The new post office is two streets over and you wouldn’t know the whole thing burned down a few years back. The new bank has been touted as a mixed-use building with a public housing facility. It was supposed to have started years ago.
"Man, they just started digging that hole," a man who identifies himself as Michael tells me with a laugh. Michael works at the Stop and Shop gas station on the other side of the block, across the street from the 5th Police Precinct.
It’s where my friend took a “less than lethal” foam bullet. Where Linda was shot.
When I asked Michael about the riots, he just shakes his head, hits a blunt, and says, "It was crazy," then stares off into the distance.
"I was in 'Nam," Ricoh says with a frown when I asked him about the riots. He lights a stick match and touches it to a half smoked Black & Mild.
Their silence reminds me of the friends, colleagues and sources who’ve survived war. Soldiers, war correspondents, refugees — they may only talk about the experience with other survivors, because how the fuck can you explain that to someone who wasn’t there?
Ricoh moved to Minneapolis in 1968 after he got out of the Marine Corps. "I followed a buddy of mine back here," he says grinning. "Just kind of stuck around. Been here my whole life now."
Ricoh speaks in a matter-of-fact tone. If he's annoyed by anything, it's that I'm asking stupid questions about bad nightmares.
"I remember hearing about that lady, the one that got shot?” Ricoh says. “A lot of people got shot ..."
We sit there on the corner of Blaisdell Avenue and let the pregnant pause float off into the wind like the smoke from our tobacco.
I wasn’t in Minneapolis in 2020, I was in Chicago. Some of my colleagues who weren’t on the receiving end of a wooden club that year recently told me that the Chicago Police Department was “fairly restrained” in its response to protests. I disagreed, seeing as how they, the overworked, understaffed and insured members of the major daily media, often leave a scene to cover other important events elsewhere in the city. And that’s when the cops would make their move.
"All of this was bullshit," says photojournalist Zach D. Roberts, who has been covering US and international conflicts, as well as the rise of fascism, for over a decade. Roberts was in Minneapolis during the riots. He remembers the violence, and its aftermath, all too well.
"The whole mass movement against police violence collapsed the moment Biden was elected,” Roberts says. “The people that actually gave a shit kept on fighting, but most of the ‘allies’ just wanted to get out in the streets because they were sick of COVID, and sick of Trump. Nobody actually gave a fuck about police violence. It had no long term effect. Even Occupy had more of an effect. But that's America, nobody gives a shit."
About eight blocks away is the activist-built memorial now known as George Floyd Square.
To call it "ground-zero" would be as insulting as it is belittling. Members of the community have taken much of the area and converted it into a makeshift community space.
Large metal black power fists sit in the middle of the street, converting it into a four-way stop and circle. The remains of a gas station now has chairs and benches between the demolished pumps. A large, sturdy shed houses a community library full of children's books. The wreckage of old bus stops have been converted to a food pantry, and distribution centers for free clothing. Potted plants flourish around the countless works of art that both celebrate and mourn victims of state-sanctioned brutality.
Lyle Miller, 47, of Rochester, Minnesota, was with his kids, touring the memorial. Miller has been to George Floyd Square several times, he says, because he's in awe of the project, and marvels at its potential for humanity.
"I wanted my kids to see this," Miller says. "This means something. It shows what people can do. It's progress."
>> Remember that time Donald Trump wanted police to shoot protesters? <<
I was one of the protesters who got shot by the DHS swat team Trump sent to Portland, albeit with a pepper ball and not the live ammunition (in the leg!) that Trump said he preferred.
That George Floyd called for his mama as Chauvin was killing him still haunts me. I cannot think of it without starting to cry. Anyone who can remain immune to that human wail, that core emotion that unites us all- the need for our mommies when things get hard, no matter how old we get - is a sociopath, pure and simple.