Thank you for sharing. I lived in Minneapolis and Saint Paul from 2014 to 2019. I love the Cities and its many neighborhoods. I love the nuances of each block. I lamented the crappy feeling I had as a driver down Lake Street and Chicago Ave on the busy and often too crowded thoroughfares, because it was so antithetical to the great feelings I had as a pedestrian in those same places: finding a beer, picking up a donut, hunting for a record, walking my dog. I never lived in the immediate proximity of Powderhorn or of 38th Street and I moved away before George Floyd was murdered, so I was never forced to attach my personal history with this horrific injustice in the same way as I was forced to reckon every few days with Philando Castile's death that took place on the route I took to drop off my wife at school and work. The growing heat and flush of emotion that comes with knowing you are in the place of an unseen but palpable pain. As a white man, who has many times felt the pain of loss but never a loss directly at the hands of oppression, these feelings were new to me, but important, and part of my awakening to the truth of what life truly is in America. Today, I am afraid to return to the neighborhood blocks of Minneapolis that I love. I have good memories; simple memories. I'm afraid to attach, again, the truth of life — specifically the anguish of the Black experience — to the proximity and history of my life. And yet I know that I must — to grow, to learn, and to appreciate the beauty of all that people are capable of in the face of injustice, and pain, and a democracy unworthy of their sacrifices. / Bobby Beets
Thank you for sharing this experience with us, along with your verbal cues of processing, and your vivid description of what you encountered. -Naomi Hattaway
Thank you for sharing. I lived in Minneapolis and Saint Paul from 2014 to 2019. I love the Cities and its many neighborhoods. I love the nuances of each block. I lamented the crappy feeling I had as a driver down Lake Street and Chicago Ave on the busy and often too crowded thoroughfares, because it was so antithetical to the great feelings I had as a pedestrian in those same places: finding a beer, picking up a donut, hunting for a record, walking my dog. I never lived in the immediate proximity of Powderhorn or of 38th Street and I moved away before George Floyd was murdered, so I was never forced to attach my personal history with this horrific injustice in the same way as I was forced to reckon every few days with Philando Castile's death that took place on the route I took to drop off my wife at school and work. The growing heat and flush of emotion that comes with knowing you are in the place of an unseen but palpable pain. As a white man, who has many times felt the pain of loss but never a loss directly at the hands of oppression, these feelings were new to me, but important, and part of my awakening to the truth of what life truly is in America. Today, I am afraid to return to the neighborhood blocks of Minneapolis that I love. I have good memories; simple memories. I'm afraid to attach, again, the truth of life — specifically the anguish of the Black experience — to the proximity and history of my life. And yet I know that I must — to grow, to learn, and to appreciate the beauty of all that people are capable of in the face of injustice, and pain, and a democracy unworthy of their sacrifices. / Bobby Beets
Thank you for sharing this experience with us, along with your verbal cues of processing, and your vivid description of what you encountered. -Naomi Hattaway