Sheletta Brundidge, host of WCCO Radio’s The Sheletta Show, podcaster, and founder of ShelettaMakesADifference.org (SheMAD) could have gone to brunch with her girlfriends on Saturday, Jan. 31, to celebrate her 54th birthday, but she’s decided to host a bigger party, one with purpose.
“We’re going to have a good old-fashioned Saturday gospel brunch for the men and women who live in this community,” Brundidge said. She was speaking about neighbors and caretakers of the memorial site where Renee Good was shot and killed by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on Jan. 7.
Brundidge got the idea for the party while speaking with neighbors at the memorial site during a prayer vigil she hosted one week after Renee Good was killed. The vigil was 3 hours, one hour for each of Good’s kids.
“When we wrapped up the prayer service, one of the people who lived nearby said, ‘Can you bring a choir?’ I said, ‘A whole choir?’” Brundidge is delivering on the request with a full gospel choir from Progressive Baptist Church in St. Paul and food from Kabomelette, a breakfast food truck on Jan. 31 from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Brundidge passed out invites to all the homes surrounding Good’s memorial and said the public is welcome to come too. Onlookers at the Good memorial, to whom Brundidge handed invitations, said they welcomed the event.
“I think that’s beautiful,” said a woman from Minneapolis at the memorial site who asked to be referred to as T., “I think in these moments of tragedy, it is those moments of joy that help us get through it. Just like last Friday, the joy of seeing tens of thousands of people come out to march.”
Brundidge said the block party is to pay tribute to the neighbors and caretakers at the Good memorial site. “This place is heavy,” Brundidge explained. “We come out here and pay our respects, and we go home. These people live out here. They don’t get to leave and go back to their quiet community. So, we’re going to honor them, not with just thoughts and prayers, but by actually doing something.”
Brundidge handed an invitation to Betty Lotterman from St. Paul. It was her third visit to the Good memorial. Lotterman loved the idea of an event bringing people together. “Anything we can do in community is good,” She went on to ask if there was anything she could do to help on Saturday, offering to bring doughnuts.
The helpfulness and resiliency of Minnesotans have served as a light in the darkness. “In climates like this, you have to depend on one another,” T. said. “It’s the core of what the people here believe in.”