Scenes from the bourgeoisie progressive revolution in Minneapolis.
After the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police, Ms. Albers, who is white, and many of her progressive neighbors have vowed to avoid calling law enforcement into their community. Doing so, they believed, would add to the pain that black residents of Minneapolis were feeling and could put them in danger…
For decades, the community has been a refuge for scrappy working-class activists with far-left politics. The biggest day of the year, locals often boast, is the May Day parade celebrating laborers.
And you’ll never guess what happened next.
Two weeks ago, dozens of multicolored tents appeared in the neighborhood park. They were brought by homeless people who were displaced during the unrest that gripped the city. The multiracial group of roughly 300 new residents seems to grow larger and more entrenched every day. They do laundry, listen to music and strategize about how to find permanent housing. Some are hampered by mental illness, addiction or both.
Their presence has drawn heavy car traffic into the neighborhood, some from drug dealers. At least two residents have overdosed in the encampment and had to be taken away in ambulances.
Come on guys, diversity is our strength. Suck it up and accept the overdoses and needles and violence as social justice.
Last Thursday night, Joseph Menkevich found a black man wearing a hospital bracelet passed out in the elevator of his apartment building two blocks away from the park. Mr. Menkevich, who is white, quickly phoned a community activist but she did not pick up. He felt he had no choice but to call 911, so he did, but requested an ambulance only, not the police.
Ultimately, a white police officer arrived at the scene. The officer checked the situation out briefly and then returned to his squad car.
In the real world, EMTs are not going to walk into a potentially dangerous situation unless an officer checks it out. Minneapolis can try to pass laws ordering them to do so. That would be a core part of the defund movement. But that means an exodus of EMTs who are good at their jobs and their replacement by people who are doing it for danger pay.
But life is happy now in the home of the May Day parade. Very happy with social justice for all and fear and terror for local residents.
“I’m not being judgmental,” said Carrie Nightshade, 44, who explained that she no longer felt comfortable letting her children, 12 and 9, play in the park by themselves. “It’s not personal. It’s just not safe.”
Racist! White privilege! Colonialism! #ICantBreathe #NoJusticeNoPlayground.
Linnea Borden said she had stopped walking her dog through the park because she was tired of being catcalled.
That’s privilege talking. How dare this Karen object to being catcalled by this diverse population of junkies? Get her fired right away.
The women agreed to let any property damage, including to their own homes, go ignored and to request a block party permit from the city to limit car traffic. Rather than turn to law enforcement if they saw anyone in physical danger, they resolved to call the American Indian Movement — a national organization created in 1968 to address Native American grievances such as police brutality — which had been policing its own community locally for years.
Tobie Miller, Ms. Albers’s 34-year-old daughter, lives just a block away from her mother, but lately, she said, they have felt a world apart. Ms. Miller began a concerted effort last year to challenge her own privileges by taking a class on racial biases.
She worries that a lot of what has been written about the camp on community message boards has been influenced by racial profiling. To the extent that illegal activity is going on in the park, Ms. Miller does not blame the tent residents. “My feeling around it is those are symptoms of systemic oppression,” she said. “And that’s not on them.”
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at these pathetic idiots who are recapitulating a century of leftist dogma while trying not to get murdered in the park.
Ms. Miller came to see her decision to buy a home in the neighborhood as potentially preventing a person of color from doing so. And while Ms. Albers used to feel only pride about the work she put in to revitalizing the community, now, she sees her work as gentrification that may have pushed out nonwhite residents.
Confessing your crimes of buying a home and trying to improve your neighborhood is good for the leftist soul.
Mitchell Erickson’s fingers began dialing 911 last week before he had a chance to even consider alternatives, when two black teenagers who looked to be 15, at most, cornered him outside his home a block away from the park.
One of the boys pointed a gun at Mr. Erickson’s chest, demanding his car keys.
Flustered, Mr. Erickson handed over a set, but it turned out to be house keys. The teenagers got frustrated and ran off, then stole a different car down the street.
Mr. Erickson said later that he would not cooperate with prosecutors in a case against the boys. After the altercation, he realized that if there was anything he wanted, it was to offer them help. But he still felt it had been right to call the authorities because there was a gun involved.
Good thing he called the cops and wasted their time. He really should consider the car to be reparations. And insurance companies should raise the rates of anyone who refuses to cooperate with the authorities after a car theft.
Two days after an initial conversation, his position had evolved.
“Been thinking more about it,” he wrote in a text message. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”
If it evolves anymore, he’ll go kneel to them and wash their feet.
“I haven’t been forced to think like this before. So I would have lost my car. So what? At least no one would have been killed.”
Until next time they kill you because they can and there’s no one to stop them because neither you nor your neighbors will call the cops or defend yourselves. The sheep who have been going along with the Left will have to realize what happens to herd animals when the wolves come.
Go ahead, defund the police. And enjoy a life of permanent terror and guilt over being afraid.
Leave a Reply