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CW:Yesterday, I went to downtown Minneapolis for a brief and pleasant errand. I had my dogs with me, and we drove around downtown Minneapolis a bit - just to get a change of scenery. We don't leave our Saint Paul neighborhood very often these days. I'd heard about and read about the concrete barriers and fencing that has been installed in advance of the Derek Chauvin trial that will begin next week, and I wanted to see it while I was downtown.
[Quick reminder: this is not the George Floyd trial. This is the Derek Chauvin trial. It's the trial for the four police officers who killed Mr. Floyd. It's not uncommon for Twin Cities media and local and national social media commentators to refer to the upcoming trial as the George Floyd trial. Please remember: Mr. Floyd was denied his right to a trial by jury. Derek Chauvin was not. Mr. Floyd was denied the presumption of innocence that what we call the criminal justice system is working hard to extend to Derek Chauvin. The Eighth Amendment's protections against cruel and unusual punishment were not extended to Mr. Floyd.]
As my boys and I drove around to see the city's fortifications, I couldn't help but think:
About Washington, D.C., and the absence of real protective barriers on January 6th of this year even after several weeks of numerous credible threats of violence out in the open on social media day after day after day, implied and overt, often from the former President himself
[By the way, millions of Americans believe Trump will be reinstalled as President today. They'll wake up tomorrow still under President Biden looking for some new breadcrumbs to follow. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Disinformation is thriving here. Thriving.]
About how blatantly-false claims concerning the 2020 election are treated as credible and given a form of credence and abundant air time even still today while the blatantly clear 8 minute and 46 seconds long torture and killing of Mr. Floyd in broad daylight, on camera, may not be
About what that says about the presumptions we make about potential protestors based on the color of their skin
About the general presumptions many people make based on skin color
About the presumptions made against Mr. Floyd
About what those presumptions cost him, his family, those who loved him, those who look like him
About how the police officers on the scene protected Derek Chauvin, protected his violence, instead of protecting Mr. Floyd
About all the ways Mr. Floyd will be put on trial next week
About the ways our courts treat women and people of color when they are crime victims
About the next person who will be killed by our criminal justice system somewhere today, unarmed, pulled over on some bullshit, skin not white enough; about the next officer on paid administrative leave; about the statutes that protect police officers who commit atrocities; about all the people who love and protect those statutes; about the kind of America those people desire
About how all this is over $20. Or a busted taillight sometimes, or a couple of cigarettes, or a boy with a toy gun, or man with a cell phone, or a man waiting for a light-rail train, or a woman asleep in her own home - don't even knock, or (take the police out of it) a child wearing a hoodie, eating Skittles, trying to walk home
About America - about what is sometimes called the land of the free and the home of the brave
About what the cowardly fortification system in downtown Minneapolis says about what we call our system of justice about how the fortification system is, in its way, a vote of no confidence from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, because, even with all the evidence, they're not sure justice will result here, and about how they're right to be unsure but wrong, wrong, wrong (so very wrong) in what they're doing about it
About what their vote of no confidence says about what that system is actually designed to do
About what the city's inability to reimagine public safety by defunding the police costs - in lives, in peace, in security, in (let's speak in a language power can understand) property, in dollars
About what we value (property) about what we protect (the criminalization of skin color) and what we criminalize (people who are Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, recent immigrants) and what is denied as a result (actual justice, lasting peace, equity; life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness)
About what it would be like to have elected officials who care as much about people as they do about buildings
About what it would be like if I could be a public building, if I too could be deemed worthy of fortification, protection, investment, care
About what I've come to think of as "the desires divide." As I see it, Americans desire different things. Too many within the white majority desire over-policing in the neighborhoods where people of color live; they desire a disproportionate arrest rate, a disproportionate prosecution rate, a disproportionate conviction rate, sentencing disparities, parole disparities, a violent police force, a violence-first police force, a police force that arrives to the scene armed with warrior training and ideas about throats and bullets, a police force that escalates violence - think of how many Americans desire that world.
And for those of who us who desire dignity and humanity and equal protection under the law for ourselves and every person who walks this land (regardless of when or how they got here), our desires - our desires are secondary, up for vote in buildings that are, at present, protected, surrounded in concrete and metal, in razor wire and hateful history.
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Image Description: a coil of razor wire, held down by a pale yellow sand bag, rests between two short, dense, and nicked-up concrete barriers. Tall chain-link fences are anchored on top of the barriers.
Minneapolis, 2021. Photo credit: KARE 11 News
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