It’s been a very painful week not just in Minneapolis, but all across Minnesota and most of the country. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, it seems that we’re coming apart at the seams.
For the last eight days, we at WCCO have been immersed in trying to bring public safety messages to Minnesotans, keep our listeners informed on what has happened, while also trying to do the best we can to represent the community. A community that is in great pain.
All of this while we deal with a pandemic, and a political divide we haven’t seen since the Civil War. Not easy. If you’re feeling lost and without hope right now, you’re not alone.
We have also seen things that provide some light at the end of a very dark tunnel. “Mount Cereal”, the massive amount of donations we saw Monday at Sanford Middle School, the hundreds and thousands who show up on Lake Street with brooms and shovels to clean up the neighborhood, the peaceful protests, police taking a knee in unity with those calling for an end to violence and pleas for justice. Just a couple of signs of what I would describe as "progress". Even if it is nowhere near enough.
We now face the prospect of rebuilding communities. Lake Street doesn’t look like Lake Street anymore. Business are destroyed. Lives are changed and uprooted forever.
Where do we go from here? It starts with listening.
I come from a place of privilege. I’m a 44-year-old white male. Yes, I worked very hard to get where I am. Nothing was given to me and it was far from easy. It continues to be a challenge many days.
I also didn’t face the same things a black male or especially a black female would face, given these exact circumstances. That’s a fact. We can't, speaking as a white middle-aged man, continue to ignore that. Not listen to what we’re being told by people that come from different backgrounds. But it won’t change what is inherently true:
It is harder to be black in America than it is to be white.
That was true 400 years ago, 160 years ago, 55 years, and certainly over this past week. We found that out (again) in a very difficult to watch video shot on Memorial Day. The night George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.
I’ve also come to realize, it’s not my place to say to the black community, “help me learn”, or “teach me”, or “how can I help?”, or “tell me what to do differently”. It starts and stops with me. I need to listen. I need to be in a place where I no longer NEED to say those things. We, in America, will never get past our institutional racism until we pull our heads out of the sand, admit we have problems, and start to listen.
This past week, it was our community, begging us as a society - to simply listen.
If you say it was just a bunch of thugs, rioters, looters and people intent on destroying their own neighborhoods? You didn’t listen.
If you’re screaming at your TV, radio, social media, websites, “Get these people off the streets!”? You didn’t listen.
If you're reading this and saying "You are ignoring criminals that vandalized our city!"? You didn't listen.
If you say, as I saw on a WCCO Radio post about President Obama, that he should shut up and stay out of it, our one and only African American President? You didn’t listen.
Speaking of presidents, let’s bring up politics briefly. This writing will be branded by some as having political bias. That’s America in 2020. I can’t help that, and that’s OK. There’s uproar because Barack Obama dared to provide his viewpoint. George and Laura Bush released a statement late on Tuesday afternoon that some will say bravo to, and others will shred because they don't like being told America isn't perfect.
There’s uproar over what Donald Trump did Monday evening following his Rose Garden statement, and subsequent walk over to St. John’s church for what appeared to be a photo op. He wanted the nation’s governors to “dominate” and took his own advice in aggressively clearing Lafeyette Square in order to get to St. John’s Church. Something he has now been chastised for by the Bishop of that church.
Some will defend his actions, and I’m certainly not here to criticize the president. We can let others do that.
I just wonder why? How does any of that actually help us?
I saw a video of a New York City Police Chief kneeling and praying among a group of fairly rowdy protesters. The chief’s actions calmed the situation. They peacefully moved on. It calmed a volatile situation just because he was willing to understand their frustration and anger, and took a moment to connect. It didn’t throw gasoline on the fire. Isn’t union better than division? Isn’t listening, and understanding better than tear gas, rubber bullets and more anger? The simple act of kneeling and listening does not change all that is wrong. But it goes a lot further than aggressive police action towards a group of people in pain.
Quite a moment: @NYPDChiefofDept, the highest ranking uniformed official in the NYPD, walked right in to a tense situation with protesters after 2 plastic water bottles were thrown at police - & he knelt down with them, holding hands. The situation clamed. The crowd marched on. pic.twitter.com/KzmCz2k5Oc
— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) June 1, 2020That’s not to say there were not situations here in Minneapolis, or any other city which saw unrest, that called for significant actions by law enforcement. Things got out of hand. Looting, vandalism, burning of property is not something anyone should condone. Certainly some of these gatherings couldn’t continue as they were Thursday and Friday nights last week. But action without understanding, and anger on top of anger, doesn’t help.
I’ve seen statements thrown around about the “failed state of Minnesota’s Democratic leaders”. Jason Lewis, for example, wants to blame all the liberals for what happened throughout the Twin Cities. I've seen other examples of people wanting to blame this on Donald Trump and his base. To say this is the fault of any politician currently in office, including Trump, Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, or Melvin Carter, is to ignore decades of unrest in minority communities in Minnesota.
This isn’t new, but this is perhaps a breaking point. This isn’t a Democrat or Republican question. Outside of our ridiculously extreme political climate in 2020 of course. It’s tossing politics into a situation that is far more complicated than “left vs. right”.
Those are distractions from the real issues. We can literally see, hear and feel the pain of our community. Matching anger with anger only leads to more anger.
Where is our empathy?
Over the past eight days, we’ve gone from senseless death and a community-driven to rage, to mostly peaceful activism across the Twin Cities calling for reform and change.
It’s now our duty, here at WCCO and across all of Minnesota, to listen. And listen with an empathetic ear. And finally, act on a too-long ignored crisis among our citizens. As Governor Walz said at 2:10pm on Tuesday afternoon, "We need to listen. But listening without action will not fix our problems."
I received an email from a listener who is a retired attorney. She told me after hearing one of our broadcasts about inequality in Minnesota’s black community on Monday, “You were so unusually persuasive that it made me take a look at what I had and had not done to speak to the problem of lack of fairness, and other injustices that black folks face.”
While I’m glad our broadcast on WCCO was compelling and persuasive, I feel even better that this person was willing to listen. Now she wants to act, and is currently trying to connect her church to black inner city churches. If, for no other reason, then to listen.
We should all take her lead.
Finally, I saw a suggestion that I'm on board with. Change the name of Chicago Avenue to "George Floyd Avenue". Let's use George Floyd's senseless death as that linchpin of change, a reminder of the time where we finally were able to stand up and say as an American society, we are going to get this right.
