Renee Nicole Good. George Floyd. Completely different tragedies, however the identical grief for a neighborhood betrayed by the individuals who have been supposed to guard and serve.
Crowds gathered once more in Minneapolis on Wednesday, marching via the identical streets the place a few of them have been protesting 5 and a half years in the past after Floyd’s murder.
The complete power and fury of the federal authorities landed on Minnesota final week.
“You can be held accountable to your crimes,” Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem stated Jan. 6, as the most important immigration enforcement motion in company historical past surged into the state. It felt like she was addressing all Minnesotans, not simply the handcuffed man she paraded earlier than the cameras.
Minnesotans reeled as masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers descended on the state. They stated they’d come to root out fraud. They tackled individuals to the bottom in metropolis parks and harassed dad and mom and youngsters on the best way to highschool.
They shot and killed a 37-year-old girl who would nonetheless be alive if ICE had by no means come to city.
“Get the (expletive) out of Minneapolis,” stated Mayor Jacob Frey, who remembers Memorial Day 2020 when a police officer murdered a person on digital camera as neighbors pleaded with him to cease kneeling on the helpless man’s neck.
5 and a half years in the past, police tried to cross Floyd’s homicide off as a “medical incident.”
On Jan. 7, Noem accused a lifeless girl — killed by an agent who fired into her car, on digital camera, at point-blank vary — of being “a domestic terrorist.” The president claimed on social media that Good had run over the agent who shot her, regardless of clear video proof from different angles that this was unfaithful.
However this is similar administration that after tried — and failed — to degree a felony assault cost in opposition to a person who hurled a salami sub at a Customs and Border Enforcement agent in D.C.
5 and a half years in the past, protesters gathered and regulation enforcement pushed again with mace and foam bullets. The crowd marched from thirty eighth and Chicago to the Third Precinct police station. For days, the violence escalated till the precinct was in flames, till Lake Avenue was burning, till the entire metropolis smelled like smoke and tear fuel and grief.
Minneapolis rebuilt. Minneapolis was attempting to maneuver on. Till the president of the USA began calling Minnesotans “rubbish.” Till the federal authorities put the town in its crosshairs.
However the killing of George Floyd didn’t finish within the smoldering rubble of the Third Precinct. It resulted in a courtroom.
Derek Chauvin, who knelt on George Floyd’s neck for 9 and a half minutes, was placed on trial and convicted of homicide. He went to jail, together with three different officers who stood by and did nothing to cease him. He’s still in jail. Killing a Minnesotan on digital camera is a really unhealthy thought.
On Wednesday, Minneapolis marched. On the lengthy, chilly stroll down Portland, from the location of the killing towards downtown, they cried out in opposition to the administration that thought Minneapolis would make a enjoyable backdrop for a new round of Trump memes.
However Minneapolis is 5 and a half years older and wiser. Minneapolis is aware of that violence is precisely what this administration craves. Trump deployed the Nationwide Guard to quell protests in Los Angeles and deployed troops to Chicago and Washington, D.C., for no reason in particular.
“I really feel your anger. I’m offended,” Gov. Tim Walz stated Wednesday. “They need a present. We can not give it to them. We can not.”
