Tuesday afternoon wasn't a typical one for Dante Williams, 30, of Brooklyn Park.
On Tuesday, Williams found himself boarding up windows outside a strip mall just north of the Brooklyn Center Police Department.
The area has been the center of protests and demonstrations after Daunte Wright, 20, was shot and killed by Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran on the Brooklyn Center Police Department.
"You see things on the news and social media about businesses getting broken into and things like that," Williams said. "I wanted to help out wherever I can to keep businesses, especially BIPOC businesses, up and running."
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Williams, who is training as a doctoral student in counseling psychology at the University of St. Thomas, said a post on Facebook asking for volunteers drew brought to Brooklyn Center on Tuesday.
"However I can help out is how I will help out," Williams said. "Just trying to organize things in general if more clean-up is needed. From the mental health side of it, business owners are worried that their business will go under, especially in this area where there are a lot of immigrant families."
Williams, who also runs VENT, LLC, added that the killing of Daunte Wright, an unarmed Black man, had an immediate impact on him and nearby Brooklyn Park.
"Especially living in Brooklyn Park and sharing the same name as Daunte, I think about how that could have been me, in a different context," Williams said. "A lot of people are feeling that anger and frustration, which is of course represented through the actions. Whether you like it or not, that's part of the frustration and angst people are feeling."
Part of that frustration, according to Williams, is the lack of understanding about how experiences in communities can be different for different people.
"I think we're starting to discover and find out what it's truly like for folks who look like myself and come from different communities and backgrounds," he said. "I hope we begin to see changes, reform, and conversations about how mental health plays into we interact with one another, especially when it comes to perceptions and implicit biases."
Despite the boiling frustrations spilling out for consecutive nights following Wright's killing, Williams added that he's hopeful there's an opportunity for people to finally listen to one another.
"Angst and civil unrest demonstrate that there's two different realities that people are living in," Williams said. "I hope that we can come together and have conversations that maybe we didn't think we've necessarily had."