Autonomies

To hell or utopia: The Minneapolis uprising

Christopher Scott Thompson (Gods and Radical Press 10/06/2020)

“Rather than running off as the police intended, the protesters stood their ground. When they were forced back by tear gas, they advanced again as soon as it cleared. They reclaimed ground repeatedly, and it took the police more than an hour to drive them back. This was only the beginning…”

MOURNING

I was sitting on a park bench in the sunlight with my mask on. My daughters sat next to me, staring out at the empty park and the fountain with no water in it. Little birds hopped around the park looking for scraps of food.

We sat in silence, just listening to the chirping birds and the buzzing insects. This was the first time we’d been able to spend any time outside together since the pandemic came to Minnesota. My eldest daughter was intensely anxious, fearful that going downtown would expose her to the virus. She was breathing heavily, trying to control her fear, although she’d been almost desperate to take a walk to the park.

A man in a wheelchair came rolling by and nodded silently at me. I nodded in reply, and he turned his wheelchair around to face us from about fifty feet away. Then he picked up a trumpet and started playing – a long, lonesome, mournful, note. It sounded like a lament, a song of mourning. Maybe for the city, or maybe for the world.

The city felt dead, a quiet and almost empty place. The whole world felt the same to me, like we’d been boxed up apart from each other for such a long time that there was nothing to do except to mourn together, staring at each other from fifty feet away.

Just two days later, a black man named George Floyd was murdered when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for eight minutes while Floyd begged for his life. Three other officers helped Chauvin murder Floyd, and the killing happened in front of multiple witnesses.

Within twenty-four hours, the city had exploded.