I’m sitting at my desk which is just in front of my window. Outside, the sky is blue with thin streaking clouds and grassy hills all blooming with white flowers and red cherries coming from the bushes wrapped around the school fence just across a small road from the back of my house which, too, lately has undergone some gardening. This is what puts Minneapolis in perspective for me. While there is sun here, Simon and Garfunkel is playing calmly, and the wind blowing in slowly, taking it’s time as it flies in my window, things are a lot different elsewhere.
In Minneapolis it’s dark, and huge billows of smoke are rising from the blazing fires lit at the police precinct, and the tear gas rises from it’s canisters, emptying themselves out into the eyes of protesters. Sometime yesterday, a Target was looted, just left as a dark cavern with scattered sheets and misplaced shelves and fridges under dim red lights. There’s huge white spotlights in the darkness as police push the fences of what looks like a park towards protesters with their riot helmets and their batons. This feels like the summer of 1968, and Hubert Humphrey has just accepted the Democratic nomination.
Many were alarmed when Donald Trump said that the National Guard would be out in Minneapolis in a raging tweet condemning the ‘THUGS’ dishonouring the memory of George Floyd, the innocent black man who’s death kicked all of this off. He said: ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!’
Tim Walz was a little more discreet with his deployment of the National Guard, saying that the National Guard were sent out to assist ‘Peaceful demonstrators, neighbours, and small businesses’. This is certainly a bit less bold than Trump’s condemnation, which strikes many as strange considering he did not display the same fervent disgust towards the alt-right protesters in Charlottesville, who actually were responsible for a person’s death. So far, even the less peaceful protesters haven’t killed anyone. They have only damaged big corporations like the police and Target. Kim Handy Jones, a Minneapolis resident, who’s son was killed by the St Paul Police in 2017, said: ‘They can rebuild buildings, but we can’t rebuild our loved ones.’ (Unicorn Riot)
You can argue as to whether peaceful protesting is good or bad, whether it’s warranted or unwarranted, but at the end of the day they’re doing it. People are spending too much time arguing as to whether what they are doing is good, instead of finding and ensuring a way that they will not have to. It’s difficult to ask the system why it is the way it is, but it’s easier to hold the system accountable.
The protests began on Tuesday. A few hundred people gathered at the intersection where Derek Chauvin had dug his knee into George Floyd’s neck. The people were not violent; they protested peacefully with chants and signs reading JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD, BLACK LIVES MATTER, and I CAN’T BREATHE. Protestors wore face-masks, unlike the ones in Michigan, and so what the police might have struggled with is identification. Maybe that’s why, on Wednesday, they pulled the tear gas from the arsenal.
Pictures came out of milk being poured on the faces of protesters, because the police, with riot helmets and protective gear, began to throw tear gas canisters and spray the peaceful protesters with mace. By then, there were thousands of protestors spreading across Minneapolis, protesting Floyd’s wrongful death.
As is now commonplace on social media, which is almost quite frightening, though not undeserving, the perpetrators of racism on social media or in real life are doxxed. To dox someone is to release their address, phone number, etc. The doxxing of Chauvin made a huge gathering outside of his house, a long line of angry protesters demanding justice, and that he surrender himself and go through the due process that he was meant to. Food delivery boys were blocked from delivering food, and protesters chanted all night long outside of the man’s house, and even kept going before the house was protected by a long line of identical policemen, standing up like robots serving the state. They seemed just barely human, like they were following distinct and prejudicial programming. The protesters chanted and chanted, and nobody moved. A stalemate arose at the house of Derek M. Chauvin. Things elsewhere got violent, the people became sick of the police and the police became sick of them and within the smoky haze of the gas and the screaming from all directions, a man was shot dead.
Then came Thursday.
The Target Looting was something that shocked a lot of people, for some reason or other. Target’s not a hugely important place in the grand scheme of things, but if you want to put corporations above loss of life then..Well, go ahead, as long as you have no power or influence. The Target’s light had been turned out, empty shelves mismatched and turned awkwardly as people ran with lamps and mannequins and other goods before the lights went out, dragging the lower end of the store into darkness away from the light of day. The only lights were the dying red neon on the ceiling, faded and flickering above the tossed boxes and scattered sheets of paper on the floor; a corporate corpse. It looked like a cave robbed of it’s minerals or it’s hidden jewels. People ran in quickly and ran out just as fast as looting began, back onto the streets. It is worthy to note that it is the belief of many that the Target fire was made by an undercover policeman, who dressed completely in black with a black umbrella. This was, allegedly, not the work of the protesters.
They stood on the roofs as they chanted with their signs: NO JUSTICE NO PEACE NO JUSTICE NO PEACE, BLACK LIVES MATTER and they held each other in the grey streets below with their face-masks on, while a girl passionately gave a speech in another, unknown part of town. She had a circle and spoke passionately to the others who held their signs up without surrender. SAY HIS NAME.
According to CBS Minnesota, the Fire Department responded to 30 fires in one night. One of the biggest blazes came from an under-construction apartment complex, creating huge balls of rising fire with the smoke being seen from the Minneapolis skyline. The smoke rose up heavily, like a huge black hand reaching out for something, but never getting an answer.
The 3rd police precinct and an Arby’s were set aflame amid intense vandalism on the former, with windows being shattered by the continuous onslaught of rocks. Protesters stood on cars as the crowd chanted amongst the flames of the precinct: OUR STREETS! OUR STREETS! It looked symbolic, I’ll tell you that, as if that wave we once rode fifty years ago has came back, and yet again we’re protesting the unjust murders of black men. We’re riding the wave, not yet near the high crest, and I don’t think it will be very soon that we will see the high water mark, where it breaks and rolls back like Hunter Thompson said of the ’60s. What this is now is a volatile time, a toxic time of two sides, and it we will not see the results until after November, 2020.
On Friday, the momentum kept up, and even the press were victimised. CNN reporter Omar Jimenez, an innocent black man, was arrested just a few hours ago, as of writing this. They’re just arresting people for being on the scene. The State Patrol are making themselves look like little Nixon-ites running around ripping the First Amendment to shreds. They are like a mangy dog on a chain being held by the Governor of Minnesota, and The Governor has let go of the chain and cried: ‘Sic’em!’. When the First Amendment is violated, the President has put commodities above black lives, and more and more innocent black people are dying, I can only look on from my little bubble and wonder how the hell we’re going to get out of this.
