Minneapolis Social Injustice and Related

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.

https://i.imgur.com/JpB1xEU.jpg


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

https://i.imgur.com/GLajI11.jpg


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.

https://i.imgur.com/JfAfsdz.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/xSjQI5Z.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/He8WQee.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/oyFv6FB.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/pTryj0q.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/1nORtWg.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/vfeZAwq.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/N3jSZNo.jpg


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.

https://i.imgur.com/Y9JUakw.jpg

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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Originally Posted by dashDustin

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

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

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by caleb

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

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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?

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

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Originally Posted by vertical_doug

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.

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Surreal.

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

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Originally Posted by caleb

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.

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

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Originally Posted by vertical_doug

Is it localized to a 4, 5 block area?

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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.

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Originally Posted by rwsaunders

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.

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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.

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.

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.

“Free shit for everyone”
That explains a lot.

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.)

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Originally Posted by 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.

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

The United States of America was founded as a white nationalist country. Almost 250 years later, we are still wrestling with that.

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Originally Posted by cny rider

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

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Yeah that Boston Tea Party got people nowhere. If only they'd marched peacefully in the streets rather than dumping all that tea in the harbor.

I feel for those businesses who were affected by the protesting, but Target and Auto Zone can rebuild. If we're more concerned about some justifiably angry folks lashing in out to destroy property than the police forces running roughshod over minority communities in this country, then we are hopelessly lost.

It takes genuine leadership to organize peaceful resistance, and those leaders have been eliminated by violence, historically.

This is a country where vehicles burn when a team wins a trophy.

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Originally Posted by 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?

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Perhaps take the protests to the exurban cul-de-sacs where these cops actually live, instead of a neighborhood where pretty much no cops live.

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Originally Posted by caleb

Perhaps take the protests to the exurban cul-de-sacs where these cops actually live, instead of a neighborhood where pretty much no cops live.

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There were protests at the house of the murderer, Derek Chauvin in the suburb of Oakdale. Graffiti, signs, chants, etc. It looks like about 50 National Guard members showed up for his protection.

keep america great right? isnt that the dumb new slogan? great

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Originally Posted by Sbti

There were protests at the house of the murderer, Derek Chauvin in the suburb of Oakdale. Graffiti, signs, chants, etc. It looks like about 50 National Guard members showed up for his protection.

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I saw those videos. Interesting prioritization of resources.

One of the major problems with our police brutality is that is has a freeway commuter culture. How do you fix white supremacy when you import it every single day using infrastructure designed to preserve and promote white supremacy?

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Originally Posted by cny rider

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

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To wit > Washington, DC.

No kidding.

Looting ain't the message.

I did see a clip with one good thing. A guy was going into a building to loot. A much older guy was standing nearby. A "community organizer" type I guess. He started saying "No. No! We don't do that. Step away." I thought it was going to end badly, but the guy started walking towards him. He pulled down his hood and COVID mask, gave the guy a fist bump and walked away.

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Originally Posted by caleb

Perhaps take the protests to the exurban cul-de-sacs where these cops actually live, instead of a neighborhood where pretty much no cops live.

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In Chicago, where I currently work, city employees are required to live within the city limits AFAIK.

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Originally Posted by Saab2000

In Chicago, where I currently work, city employees are required to live within the city limits AFAIK.

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Makes total sense, and I think that would be the single most meaningful reform that could come of this: going forward, all new police hires have to live in the city proper. No more living out in Maple Grove, Lakeville, St. Bonnie, etcetera and only interacting with people of color when you're policing them. That dynamic seems obviously toxic.

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Originally Posted by Saab2000

In Chicago, where I currently work, city employees are required to live within the city limits AFAIK.

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I know quite a few municipal employees from around the state. Law enforcement, utilities, city hall, etc. The residency requirement has been viewed to be a pretty antiquated thing in these times and has been abandoned by most municipalities to give them options to hire the "best" people. In the old days, just the man of the house worked so it was usually no problem. Plus I think there was more "city pride" in the '50s. Now there are many couples I know where they are city employees for two different cities. City engineer-one city, city administrator-another city. Police officer-one city, Street maintenance supt., another city. And with blended families it gets even more complicated. Whaddyagonna do? Upon hiring they might get more "points" or preference if they lived in the city along with military, protected class etc. If they are in more of an on-call or critical role, a certain response time might be required rather than residency. A lot of them would have the same retirement structure that they can keep so there is a lot of movement between cities as better opportunities come up. That's the public employee situation today. Probably worth rethinking for law enforcement IMHO.

Post LA riots and during the Justice Dept oversight period, I recall residential requirements being part of some reform proposals. However, based on appearance and most metrics, the LAPD is a post-white agency now. It reflects shifts in other high compensation, working class occupations (other than film) such as construction and the trades. Low SES whites are a tiny minority in the City of Los Angeles. Just as the LAFD struggles to recruit female candidates, the LAPD faces a challenge finding white recruits. For many Latinos, the LAPD is the GM of Los Angeles, low education requirements, job security, great pay and benefits. Here's the compensation breakdown for a Chicano kid I helped train for the LAPD candidate physical:

Police Officer II (2018)
Regular pay: $95,972.51
Overtime pay: $1,138.41
Other pay: $6,298.15
Total pay: $103,409.07
Benefits: $58,861.00
Total pay & benefits: $162,270.07

And this is the breakdown for my wife's latinx best friend who patrols a nice not so quiet, not so little beach community:

Police Officer (2018)
Regular pay: $110,526.00
Overtime pay: $9,436.00
Other pay: $26,805.00
Total pay: $146,767.00
Benefits: $71,844.00
Total pay & benefits: $218,611.00

Even at these levels of compensation for many sworn officers, it's not practical to reside in the City of Los Angeles. They live in surrounding cities, which tend to reflect the diversity of LA. As such, the culture has evolved from the Powell/Koon days when officers lived in all white suburbs. In most cases the cops look like the kids on the streets (shaved heads, tats) with 70% of sworn officers non white (39% of detectives/lieutenants and 50% of captains/commanders, white). So (ironically?) generous compensation and limited opportunities for people of color have helped Los Angeles transform its historically racist, militaristic police department. Likely not a model other cities may follow.

http://assets.lapdonline.org/assets/...1%204-2020.pdf

Brown on Brown Crime:

LAPD bodycam vid shows officer punching suspect in Boyle Heights - ABC7 Los Angeles

Not LAPD but same demographic forces at play

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Video captures violent confrontation between LASD deputy, driver in Lynwood - ABC7 Los Angeles

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Originally Posted by mzilliox

keep america great right? isnt that the dumb new slogan? great

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Don't you start. We are having a conversation here mister. xxoo

Beeatnik > thanks for that.

I was going to say that police murder thing wouldn't happen twice here..but then I thought about it for a nano-second.

We had an "Aboriginal deaths in custody" enquiry a very long time ago and SFA has changed since then. Shameful shit keeps happening, they just aren't stupid enough to do it in public, letting people film them on their phones.

As an aside, how are they going to find jury members who haven't already seen that footage and formed a view?

Sitting in the backyard right now, and it’s a din of sirens and helicopters.

Tonight feels like it’s going to be bad. It’s beautiful out, so there’s no reason to go inside. The national guard has been called out, and business owners are staking out their properties heavily armed.

One important difference between this riot and coastal cities is that everyone has guns. Call out the national guard with live ammo, and I’ll cop to being concerned.

I’m hoping that worse doesn’t end up going to worst tonight.

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Originally Posted by caleb

Sitting in the backyard right now, and it’s a din of sirens and helicopters.

Tonight feels like it’s going to be bad. It’s beautiful out, so there’s no reason to go inside. The national guard has been called out, and business owners are staking out their properties heavily armed.

One important difference between this riot and coastal cities is that everyone has guns. Call out the national guard with live ammo, and I’ll cop to being concerned.

I’m hoping that worse doesn’t end up going to worst tonight.

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I hope for the best Caleb. Watching the FBI presser last evening gave me some reassurance.

F.Y.I. What makes you think "coastal" communities are not armed to the teeth? Ever been to a public range in the DC Metro? Dewd.

"When the looting starts, the shooting starts!"
-guess who

-Three CNN reporters arrested before four murderers are arrested.

The mayor needs to find a way to transcend the anger here and stop the protests. This is becoming a test drive for future events.

I remember coming around a corner in Paris while trying get around a small but active WTO protest and running into a group of cops changing into protestor clothes. Chilling.

You could say that Diplomacy is the art of speaking slowly, continuously without fatigue forestalling irrational jumps to judgement.