My heart is heartbroken.
My heart is heartbroken for George Floyd’s family.
My heart is broken for my city, Minneapolis, the city I love. The city where I call home and where my dear friends and family live.
This isn’t a usual post for me, but the images, the sounds, and the messages I have been receiving – it’s in me.
My brother writes Friday, May 29, 2020:
“Mpls was again on fire last night. And another 170 looting and fires in St. Paul.
All Targets are closed until further notice, most are boarded up. Building/stores were boarding up all around town. Banks, etc. USPS is suspending most post offices. Metro Transit closed at least until Monday. It’s flipping crazy.
Looks like suburbs Targets are reopening just not any in Mpls or St. Paul.”
Saturday, May 30, 2020:
“Most of the city is boarded up. Suburbs starting too. Also Mpls and St. Paul under curfew starting at 8pm-6am tonight and Saturday for sure, not sure after that. Not to leave your house or you will be fined or jail time. Not looking good.
I changed out my front lights. I have a large metal pipe, just never know and my crazy dogs. I was going to go get Lady Gaga’s new CD at Target around 1pm (Roseville location) but they closed again, closed highway 36, supposedly someone was shooting their gun while driving ….so, I stayed home. Flipping crazy. It’s super packed down on Lake Street right now, seems peaceful enough for now.
I am not going anywhere near anything. Just going to stay home! Quarantine, lockdowns, curfews, oh my!! What a year!”
Later that evening: “I’m trying to pay attention right now, it’s after the sunset it gets bad.
I am sitting outside and just saw military helicopters flying overhead, going south.”
Saturday, May 30, 2020:
“J evacuated uptown, they are staying in Burnsville. He said last night was a war zone. Uptown is completely gone. Completely destroyed. Every building smashed, looted, or burned down. He said people were running for their lives, gunshots all night long. Rumor has it they are coming North East tonight. That’s me.”
“National Guard will be out tonight. I have a feeling it isn’t going to be good.”
It is confirmed that much of the looting and destruction did not take place from Minnesota residents. There are outside groups, white anarchists, many others that come in with the intent to destroy. Again, noting, many outside groups did much of the destruction, their intent is to destroy.
Some have no plates on their cars or other state plates. So people during the day on Saturday started taking pictures of their plates at hotels and sending them to the local authorities. Only then as my brother said, “the out of staters are stealing MN license plates and switching them onto their cars.”
I want to say – people protest to rise up. I don’t believe in destruction. I don’t believe in destruction in homes, businesses, communities, lives, and people. That energy bounces off this person, this scene, this community – and then you have to go through the steps of healing all over again. It is heartbreaking and unbelievably exhausting. It is violent and I can’t stand violence, and I don’t want anyone to get hurt.
Yet – I am a white person of privilege and removed. Anger is real and sometimes it can’t be held anymore.
I was talking with a friend the other night and if you think about it for a half-second, systemic health conditions many non-white people have generationally – high blood pressure, diabetes, heart conditions are born from stress.
George Floyd – I didn’t know George Floyd. But, if I knew him or that scene was someone I loved, I don’t know if I could actually get over it, overcome, move through my anger enough to forgive. I don’t know.
I am not sure if you have heard of Ta-Nehisi Coates. He has a widely known novel out, The Water Dancer.
In 2015 he published Between the World And Me. It echoes James Baldwin in his language, his tone, and his intention. The book is intended to be a long letter to his son, as well as hitting the corners and minds of his readers. It begins “Son.”
He writes: “How do I live free in this black body?”
And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions.
And destruction is merely superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations. All of this is common for black people. And all of this is old for black people.
To survive the neighborhoods and shield my body, I learned another language consisting of a basic complement of head nods and handshakes. I memoried a list of prohibited blocks. I learned the smell and feel the fighitng weather.
The streets were not only my problem. If the streets shackled my right leg, the schools shackles my left. Fail to comprehend the schools and you gave up your body later. I suffered the hands of both.
And I am afraid. I feel the fear most acutely whenever you leave me.
I cannot imagine trying to equip my child to the world who sees them as a threat.
How to brave,
how to maneuver,
how to speak,
how to look away, and
look downward in the streets
in the movement of life.
Why can’t a black body – anybody just be.
Walking one foot after the next;
hands sway left to right.
How can we answer the call –
“How do I live free in this black body?”
The anger;
generational anger,
the scores of illnesses grown
from systemic stress, from
not being so.
Raise up your hands
your arms
kneel and breathe
and claim each day – your day.
How can we answer his call – “How do I live free in this black body?”
While this – I have seen my city, Minneapolis, burn. And that is the word I keep hearing – burn, and the smell of the embers.
Each morning after the destruction, the people walked out of their homes with brooms and bags and cleaned. Lake St. and Bloomington Ave., Lake and Cedar, Lake and Franklin – all the way down and cleaned.
My friend when down yesterday morning and cleaned and brought food to the residents that can’t get food because of the boarding up and destruction. There is no transit. She posted a live video people swept the glass and bagged the destruction whereby she was going to go over to another intersection after she finished – it was all cleaned up. People in bunches – she said she never has seen so many brooms and bags and people asking if you need anything – “Are you okay?”
That’s the community of Minneapolis, and Minneapolis has come a long way – it’s a gorgeous city actually. Pockets of independent businesses, bookstores, nurseries, coffee shops, creativity, beauty – awesome food. There are neighborhoods in transition – that is everywhere. They have come a-looooong way. Believe me.
Systemic change needs to happen. We have to answer Coates’s call – “How do I live free in this black body?”
Sigh.
Majestic
Rise
into the wonder
of daybreak.
Be a rainbow in the cloud.
Be a free bird on the back of the night wind.
Shine on, honey!
Walk with joy in your golden feet
over crystal seas
and purpled mountains
Know your beauty
is a thunder
your precious heart unsalable.
Be brave,
like a new seed bursting
with extraordinary promise.
Shine on, honey!
Know you
are phenomenal.
– Maya Angelou
Much, much love to all my family and friends.
Here is an article that I came upon yesterday. It is really good. Take the time if you can – it is speaking of today and more importantly, the next few months ahead.
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/531/blind-hate
Works Cited:
Out of Wonder Kwame Alexander
Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates