It happened again. This time, they did it with a knee. Cause of death: twenty bucks and the police. For George Floyd, the crowd stretches down Chicago Avenue, cutting the city through the Third Precinct, just how the construction of I-94 once ripped through the Black neighborhood of Rondo, in St. Paul, without question or apology. On Hiawatha, a few blocks from the now destroyed precinct, there’s a day-care playground full of little Black kids. Sun-blessed, little fades and puffs and hijabs, little hands gripping the fence, little feet jumping, jumping, little mouths a chaos of smile and chant. “Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!” They say it with their teeth and whole bodies. When was the first time that they knew those lives mattered? Do these toddlers already know that some propose counterarguments? When we make it to the precinct, my love and I join the line flanking westbound Lake Street, and for us the protest is one of guarding others. We wade through the rain redirecting cars, only two or three of them giving us grief. As the rain picks up and the crowds disperse, we start the three-mile walk back to the car and we see the precinct up close for the first time since arriving. A busted door, folks at the windows and on the cars. Good, I think to myself. Though I’m scared. Cops love cops and buildings more than they love the people. Five blocks from the precinct and the sounds rush our eyes. The boom-boom-boom-boom of flash grenades, tear gas, the drum of rubber bullets hitting protesters, the sounds of something, everything, hitting the group.
The Target is on fire. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. I love me some Target, but Target doesn’t have a body. On this night, Black Twitter is cracking up at the video of a white woman trying to defend Target with a seemingly sharp object. An army of one Karen against a revolt, and she’s there to protect what exactly? She gets a few knocks to the head and a fire extinguisher’s cloudy breath to the face. Already, the people out of whom capitalism would make an unmemorable meal are flocking to defend the brands. These people find their rage in the disruption of their comfort. “Won’t someone please think of the Arby’s?” seems like a very weird place to put your concern. What America are you mourning? Target wasn’t in the fields, cotton-bloodied hands. Walmart never hung from a tree.
When I go to the protest site to clean up with my broom, I’m sad to see the Foot Locker in Midway is gone, but only for the memories of matching tall tees with the homies, the parties we dressed ourselves for, only to be stopped by cops for wearing the same color. Foot Locker will be fine. I’m pissed at whoever busted the windows out of Best Steakhouse, but I forgive them. I’m worried about who is going to get to rebuild the now burnt and burning Twin Cities, if neighborhoods in St. Paul and Minneapolis will be further gentrified by flame. Capitalism is the worst bird, able to make a tool out of its destruction. Bad phoenix. How do you kill the unkillable thing? The thing that builds the most dangerous and violent houses: the precincts, the banks, the courts, the boardrooms, the leasing office, the capital.
My love and me leave a pretty tame protest to go get pizza right quick; we’ve been forgetting to eat these past few days. Most folks in the city are probably short on sleep, ignoring the demands of the body. Heading back downtown, the energy has changed since we left. What happened? The cops showed up, anger-drunk and tear gas in hand. Folks peacefully marching in the street has turned into rubber bullets to the body, and crowds scattered in fear. We loop downtown on foot, from corner to corner, until we end up on a street trapped by M.P.D. in riot gear in our faces, the sheriff’s department to our backs. When was COVID-19? What infection did I fear last week? The cops are the sickness.
I’ve been raised to be wary. I’ve always been scared of the cops—the fear was passed like a name. Not scared, or not showing it, are the Black women on the other side of the police from me. Their voices are shred to ribbons of yell. Who fights for Black people more than Black women? Warrior matriarchs of our fed-up kingdom. Ribbons of chant, ribbons of no justice and fuck you. I’m a little braver next to them. I follow. Rattled and eyes stung, we make it home. Who is checking in on Black women? Who is fighting for them, their peace? In Kentucky, Breonna Taylor’s murderers walk free, cops who shot up an E.M.T.’s home in the middle of a pandemic. Who else have we lost to cops, lost to white folks who deputized themselves, forgotten among the never-ending repetition Justice for Justice for Justice for Justice for Justice for. . . .
The beauty of the food driver makes me cry, the piles of bread and diapers rushed from cabinets and retrieved from the ’burbs. The beauty of the cleanup makes me cry, the brooms sweeping glass into a bag that a stranger steadies. The people cleaning graffiti off bank windows makes me laugh. The old Sheraton turned into a community-run shelter makes me cry, the blessing of owning a key to something. My grandma’s spaghetti makes me cry, ’cause I couldn’t have imagined stirring sauce and boiling water that day. The semi driver who, in my eyes, tried to murder people on the bridge makes me cry, especially when the governor says that he was just “frustrated,” like that’s an excuse, like many haven’t died along the short road of a white man’s temper. The National Guard on my street makes me cry—it’s barely noon and here are their armored vehicles and guns, no other reason than to announce themselves. The tears feel like fire on my face.
The north side of Minneapolis is majority Black and historically abused. My apartment is a blink’s distance from where the National Guard has set up, on the border between the south and downtown. We’ve smelled smoke for days, put out a few fires, too. Who is protecting us besides us? What are these cops protecting?
Early one morning, we ride out to see the damage, the smolder where some bit of city used to be. Rolling downtown to see what it’s like, we find the police. Guns ready, armored vehicles posed, flanking the whole way down Nicollet Mall—the Brooks Brothers, the boutiques, the Target all protected and served.
Still the children and mothers and uncles in cages at the border. Still the prisons packed like a boat’s stinking hold filled with whom we come from. Still the drones circling above a farther sky and dropping our taxes made explosive. Still the forty-fifth President of death does the evil of Presidents with less style to make it look like good. Still the police say to shoot us on the scanner. Still they plow into us by car and bullet and choke hold. Still the Taser and the gun “mistaken” for a Taser. Still they say “vote,” like ballots are shields. Still the white supremacists running around the city, in and out of uniform. Still I have some hope. The school board abolished the police from the halls. The Neighborhood Watches sprung up across the city and make the night a more secure world. If you are reading this and you’ve never been scared of the police, I envy that silly dream, the dream where money guards your door with guns. Why do we have police? Have you Googled where they come from? The precinct’s ancestor is the plantation cabin filled with overseers, between the slave quarters and the big house. When the North came down to free my people, you tell me what burned.
