Minneapolis Social Injustice and Related

[caleb]

I've had a bad habit lately of waking up at first light, and this morning I smelled smoke. After reading the news and making coffee, I got on my bike and rode toward Lake and Hiawatha to see for myself.




At about 7am, I went by a guy sitting on his front steps drinking a beer. It only got stranger from there.




The destruction on Lake is difficult to comprehend. It went for at least a mile on East Lake, and I understand it went for a few miles further to the west. There was still open flame coming from an incomplete housing complex that was totally burned, and the smoke was thick.


















The most surreal moment was standing in the Target parking lot, in broad daylight, directly across the street from the police station with officers standing outside, when a woman came out of a side door of the Target pushing a shopping cart full of what looked like TVs and just casually loaded them into the white van like she was out for a shopping trip.



I understand that the governor is calling out the national guard.

[AngryScientist]

Wow. These images are really sad and tragic in so many ways. Very depressing and concerning. Stay safe!

[caleb]

The really tragic part is that the damage will fall most heavily on communities of color in the area.

The two grocery stores that were looted served heavily black and Latino customers, and without them the area is a huge food desert.

The building project they burned was an affordable housing complex.

Lots of the damaged businesses were minority owned and/or managed.

[Saab2000]

I was appalled when I saw the first reports of what happened. I am equally appalled by the rioting and looting. This is my adopted hometown, having spent much time there since my childhood and it's sad to see what it has become.

Make no mistake - George Floyd was murdered and the officers need to be held accountable but more violence isn't going to solve anything. It will only beget more resentment and more violence in a never ending cycle.

[dashDustin]

woah. how is this not front and center on my typical morning news sites.

[sk_tle]

Honestly this is depressing, but I can understand people of color losing their nerves and wanting a revenge after what happened with George Floyd.

How else but a scum of a country can a man be tortured to death while being handcuffed ?How can a community accept to be tortured and murdered by the people that should protect them ? And it is not one bad police officer. They were 4 in total. Killing black people has become part of the police culture. Looting might be unacceptable, but if not for covid all the country and not only people of color in Minneapolis should have marched and protested in front of their local police station all day and night to call for a stop.

[caleb]

woah. how is this not front and center on my typical morning news sites.

There was no news anywhere to be seen. Not even local news.

[rwsaunders]

The really tragic part is that the damage will fall most heavily on communities of color in the area.

The two grocery stores that were looted served heavily black and Latino customers, and without them the area is a huge food desert.

The building project they burned was an affordable housing complex.

Lots of the damaged businesses were minority owned and/or managed.

That’s really the sad part but I can understand the frustration and the anger regarding the police event. Too often the protests occur in the neighborhood where the event took place and when emotions spill over, the businesses take the brunt of the impact. Thanks for posting as your photos are real and unaltered, which is unlike many of the images shared on news outlets these days.

[vertical_doug]

There was no news anywhere to be seen. Not even local news.

Minneapolis Mayor says George Floyd would still be alive if he were white | Daily Mail Online

Dailymail has shots from the evening when the shops were on fire.

Is it localized to a 4, 5 block area?

[caleb]

The video up on the NYT matches what I saw this morning. It captures the scale of the burning better than my pictures.

George Floyd’s Death and Minneapolis Protests: Live Updates - The New York Times

[caleb]

Minneapolis Mayor says George Floyd would still be alive if he were white | Daily Mail Online

Dailymail has shots from the evening when the shops were on fire.

Surreal.

[Todd Amunrud]

Minnesota Public Radio is covering the story really well all morning.

[beeatnik]

The destruction on Lake is difficult to comprehend. It went for at least a mile on East Lake, and I understand it went for a few miles further to the west. There was still open flame coming from an incomplete housing complex that was totally burned, and the smoke was thick.

Now imagine those scenes on every north-south arterial street in a 150 square mile area; that was Los Angeles.

[caleb]

Is it localized to a 4, 5 block area?

Oh no, it's a huge area where the windows are all broken out. It starts near the west bank of the Mississippi, and I understand it goes all the way to Uptown. That's four or five miles of commercial district.

I do think the fires were mostly isolated to the shopping center around the police station.

[beeatnik]

That’s really the sad part but I can understand the frustration and the anger regarding the police event. Too often the protests occur in the neighborhood where the event took place and when emotions spill over, the businesses take the brunt of the impact. Thanks for posting as your photos are real and unaltered, which is unlike many of the images shared on news outlets these days.

I was a kid during the LA Riots/Uprising. I often heard people ask that question. The black community was certainly affected but the burning and looting extended to Hollywood and crossed through neighborhoods that were in the early stages of gentrificafion or redevelopment. I understood the rage. Although I was an honors student at an elite, white prep school (the wealthiest and oldest high school in the city), I was mistreated or profiled by the LAPD on a regular basis (4 traffic citations in one year on average). And I was a 120 pound Latino who wore Doc Martins. I can only describe what I felt as elation and awe when I witnessed the early scenes of people in the streets near Downtown Los Angeles with riot police unable to act. Of course, the Reginald Denny scenes were upsetting and incomprehensible.

By day 2, half my friends had looted or acquired televisions and personal electronics from the hundreds (thousands) of targeted business in areas away from their homes. As I mentioned the riots spread through diverse areas of the City; however, the super majority Latino neighborhoods northeast and east of Downtown didn't experience any destruction or looting. The only looting reported in Boyle Heights/East LA (historic Mexican/Chicano center of LA) occurred at a Sears as six individuals gained access to the store but, according to now legend, returned the merchandise after their mothers and grandmothers became aware of their lawlessness. I don't know what kept Latinos from uprising in their own neighborhoods; we were nearly as persecuted as African-Americans at the time. The black-white binary of American
racism, immigrant disenfranchisement, Catholism, historical patriarchy all these forces made (continue to make) our community passive and fearful.

[Too Tall]

How than are people in these communities where deaths occur to express themselves when time again their outrage is ignored and passed by the next news cycle? My question does not condone destruction of private property or causing harm to public servants. My question is are you expecting these affected populations to fold their hands in their laps and just take it?

I ask you to not focus on the mayhem, it may be a result of neutered rights.

Honest question.

[jimcav]

CNN had a correspondent on last night covering the protest and they cut away from coverage as the auto zone was burning. I thought it would be worse and possibly occur in other cities. That video was just awful to watch, and in the wake of even more heightened awareness in the last few years, it is shocking. I can't imagine having that happen in your community as a 2020 visceral reminder of how citizens of color are routinely treated. If this is what they do in broad daylight, with cellphone everywhere, what must they be like in more private settings. The looting and burning is stupid and pointless, if not worse than pointless, counter-productive. However, absent true protest leadership, it is understandable as a ready and easy way to express the deep and longstanding outrage. I imagine it would have been much worse if the 4 were not immediately fired. As others have mentioned, a double whammy for the local store owners and the customer, who are all hurt by the destruction.

[Clyde]

“Free shit for everyone”
That explains a lot.

[vertical_doug]

I think both the crazy behavior of the protests on Michigan Capital and the riots in Minneapolis are possible now because of growing frustration with the economic reality of the shutdown. In general, people are more angry and frustrated than before and any incident can blow up into a larger ugly event. I'd expect to see much more of this over the summer as people become increasingly frustrated with the economy as the unconstrained largesse of the United States Government on corporations is offset against it's stinginess towards normal citizens.

(Although the Michigan one did not turn violence, there was a message of implied violence. Imagine if those protesters had been black, how the response might have changed.)

[cny rider]

How than are people in these communities where deaths occur to express themselves when time again their outrage is ignored and passed by the next news cycle? My question does not condone destruction of private property or causing harm to public servants. My question is are you expecting these affected populations to fold their hands in their laps and just take it?

I ask you to not focus on the mayhem, it may be a result of neutered rights.

Honest question.

Historically speaking peaceful, organized mass resistance has generated positive returns.
Looting and burning down neighborhoods, not so much.