Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Happy Anniversary from your friends, the right-wing accelerationists, Nazis, Umbrella Man, the Klan, Trump supporters and other deplorable people bitterly clinging to their guns and Bibles.
Joe Doakes
. . . right up 38th Street:
For the second time in less than a week, Minneapolis city crews worked to reopen the area around 38th Street and Chicago Avenue to traffic and activists have returned makeshift barriers to the area.
Minneapolis city crews, at around 4:50 a.m. Tuesday, were removing items from George Floyd Square in an attempt to reopen the intersection to traffic.
Once crews were done removing items, they left the area.
Later Tuesday, a 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew reported activists had returned makeshift barriers to the streets near the intersection.
Our friends in Minneapolis have turned fecklessness into an art form.
Seriously, what’s the point? Either you clear the intersection and ensure it doesn’t get blocked again, or you admit you are too weak to run your city and let the local warlords run the show. This is a stupid game.
The Minneapolis City Council is going full blown Maoist.
The council sent an “open letter“ to city employees in May, “encouraging“ them to sign a declaration that there was pretty much nothing to any white culture but racism:
In a May 28 meeting, Bender referred to an open letter which all city employees are invited to sign — anyone who signs the letter is acknowledging racism as a public health crisis, accepting responsibility for the “pain” they have caused as “stewards of the City of Minneapolis’s policies,” and recognizing that Minneapolis has been and continues to be harmful to the BIPOC community.
The letter was filed into the official city record and will be published on June 11 with the signatures of all who choose to sign, making it easy to know which employees decide not to sign the letter.
Bender said this statement should not have to be “courageous.”
“This should be baked into our systems, and what we all commit to unwaveringly every day,” Bender declared. “Our staff of color, particularly in Minneapolis, have been carrying the burden of white supremacy throughout our systems every day, for a very long time.”
Riots decimate entire neighborhoods.
Gangs turn commercial streets into free fire zones.
Hot rodders make the streets unlivable after dark on weekends, at best, and at worst blaze away at each other, harming only bystanders (as usual)
And this is what the city Council busies itself with.
Winston Smith, the man killed last week in Uptown, was apparently already “at war” with the police:
Smith’s violent resistance to arrest may have been motivated by his belief that he was engaged in a “war” on cops.
For years leading up to his death, Smith made statements across social media platforms vowing to shoot police officers if he were ever to be apprehended, encouraging his followers to bring guns and bombs to protests and outlining tactics he believed would be most effective to kill members of law enforcement. He also frequently suggested that he was meeting with like-minded people and taking tangible steps towards these aims.
“Get ready for war,” Smith told his followers via Instagram in mid-April.
“Motherfuckers are finna move on these ‘ops,” he continued, using a slang term that means people would attack police.
“All the shooters, suit up,” he ordered. “Lace your boots up, it’s war fucking time. Bring your gun to the protest, bring them fucking bombs and rocket launchers and all that shit.”
Even some of the local media – in this case, ,reliably left-of-center Fox9 – are taking their break from the Twin Cities media’s usual “write a hagiography first, ask questions later” procedure and noting that there just might be an elephant in this particular room.
UPDATE: It’s unclear from media or law enforcement reports whether Smith was involved in January 6, the only example of violence in American history.
Do you remember Kate Knuth? When we last heard from her, she was cashing checks as a resilience officer for the city of Minneapolis. It didn’t end well:
Knuth, an environmental educator and former DFL legislator, spent her first months in the job interviewing people and conducting a survey, but had not delivered any finished work product before she resigned.
So what happened? Tell me if you can figure out what happened:
Mychal Vlatkovich, a spokesman for Mayor Jacob Frey, said they’ve begun looking for a replacement and hope to hire someone by the end of March who will focus on the mayor’s goals. He said the mayor’s office did not ask Knuth to step down, but declined to answer whether she was allowed to continue in the position and referred further questions to Knuth and former City Coordinator Spencer Cronk, who is now the city manager of Austin, Texas.
Go ask the guy who moved to Texas. We aren’t sayin’ nothin’.
As you might imagine, this unceremonious departure didn’t sit well with Knuth, who has been rent-seeking for the better part of her career. And unsurprisingly, after her tussle with the tousled mayor, she’s looking for revenge:
Frey’s contentious relationship with the city’s elected representatives, among other issues, got Knuth thinking in January about running for mayor. “Especially in the last year, especially in the last six weeks, there has been an absence” on the part of Frey, she said. “I also haven’t seen as strong of an interest in the basic running of the city that I would like to see from my mayor.”
In theory, revenge is a better motive for running than monomaniacal incoherence, which is what usually delivers the goods around City Hall. But is Knuth coherent? Let’s check out her Jack Handey imitation:
“The thing that I bring is this really strong commitment to moving through the work of structural transformative change, particularly when it comes to public safety, particularly when it comes to climate change,” she said. “Pairing that with [my] experience in, and just liking working within, big public institutions and working with them and through them to make sure they’re serving what we deserve as a city is potentially really powerful and I think something people in this city would really value.”
Dude. But there’s more. Oh my yes, there’s more:
Climate change intersects with progressive economic policies for Knuth. “I think one of the best resilience strategies we could accomplish is if every family had $500 in the bank,” she said. “Whether it’s a car breaking down or the power going out and losing some food, they’re better able to handle that. Does that sound like a climate policy? No, but if climate change increases risks in the most vulnerable [communities] now or even more vulnerable [communities in the future], decreasing vulnerability overall is super important in terms of dealing with climate change.”
That’s just super.
Will Knuth have a chance? Given the puzzle palace structure of elections in Minneapolis, it’s entirely possible. Frey has been weighed and found wanting, but the current competition has Mos Eisley Cantina written all over it, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Coming on like a amalgam of Marianne Williamson and Rachel Carson may just work.
“George Floyd Square“ in south Minneapolis is being cleared.
By…
…well, somebody:
But it’s been kind of interesting; reporters on channel 11 and channel 9 are both saying that, while city workers are doing the work, the city is not involved.
According to CBSN Minnesota, city workers began clearing concrete barriers from the area in the early hours of Thursday morning. Local network KSTP reported that angry community members have started arriving at the scene.
Bill Keller’s on-the-scene reporting at Channel Nine led with “this is a community project” – as if a “community group” (Agape, which to be fair is a well-established group in Minneapolis) could get a bunch of public works employees (who report to the. Mayor) out on the street at 4AM, to clear the most incendiary political hotspot in the city, if not the US, without the Mayor’s say-so.
Why, it’s almost as if the city of Minneapolis realizes leaving part of the city blocked off is not politically tenable, but the “progressive” wing of the DFL that runs the city doesn’t want an even more “progressive“ wing to use this against them next year.
(Because that is the option in Minneapolis; if you think Jacob Frey and Lisa Bender are bad, he’s not going to get replaced bye a Republican; he is going to be replaced by someone who makes Ray Dehn seem like Hubert Humphrey).
UPDATE: Oh, yeah – no cops, no how:
Not everybody’s buying it:
I’ll meet the city’s PR campaign half-way – I believe the MPD is being kept far from the scene.
Ready, yes.
Nearby in plain sight? No way.
Minineapolis has been through crime waves before. The thirties, the late sixties/early seventies, and of course the “Murderapolis” years almost thirty years back.
Not sure if this sort of thing happened at any of those times:
Sounds like Beirut in 1984.
It’s rapidly becoming a Berg’s Law: if the media doesn’t give any demographic details about a violent criminal (say, a white Hell’s Angel with an umbrella), you can infer the rest.
When I saw the initial coverage of Saturday morning’s bloodbath in the Warehouse District, I treated it as a test.
Up until noonish yesterday (Sunday)? Even after the arrest was made? Not a word about the shooter.
So – was I right?
What do you think?
Carroll was arrested in 2016 for a variety of felonies egregious enough for Mike Freeman to put down his bottle for a moment at try to make an example of.
Carroll ended up getting all charges dismissed, in exchange for pleading guilty to “disorderly condcut”.
Remember – public safety is a privilege.
Friday Morning: local media cover the bejeebers out of a press conference – the sort of coordinated coverage that screams “a PR flak is working this hard”:
While challenges remain, downtown Minneapolis’ progress toward a post-pandemic revival is picking up steam, according to the panelists who joined a Friday morning online forum hosted by the Minneapolis Downtown Council…“My take on all of this is that you haven’t seen anything yet. Downtown is going to come back stronger and bigger than ever,” said Fhima, who leads the kitchen at Fhima’s Minneapolis.
Still, the panelists said, downtown is currently battling the perception that it’s unsafe — a perception Fhima [1] said was fueled by the lack of foot traffic on downtown streets during the pandemic, when many office workers shifted to working from home and widespread closures of restaurants and venues kept visitors away. Just as an empty restaurant might make diners question the quality of the food, he said, an empty downtown can leave visitors unnerved
“Challenges remain”, indeed.
18 hours after that coordinated burst of manufactured sunshine blowing up the Twin Cities collective nethers:
Two people were killed and 8 wounded in a shooting in downtown Minneapolis, police said early Saturday.
“Preliminary investigation reveals that two people were standing in a crowded area and got into a verbal confrontation,” the Minneapolis Police Department said in a statement.” Both individuals pulled out guns and began shooting at each other.”
Look – I enjoy downtown. I’ve worked there, and 2-3 years ago I used to go down there for concerts fairly regularly – move the Dakota than the First Avenue these days, but whatever. And as a taxpayer, I’ve had a lot of taxpayers money “invested” in it on my behalf, so it’d be nice if the current occupants at the City Council stopped screwing things up.
Not holding my breath, of course.
[1] Have any of Dave Fhima’s restaurants ever succeeded? . I haven’t paid much attention to the restaurant scene, but going back ten years or so, any of his places turned into their own vacant slices of downtown in a year or so.
I was more than a little shocked to see this report from Channel 9 yesterday – partly because the Nine is the second-farthest-left leaning TV newsroom in town, and the station runs pro-BLM PSA liners during its newscasts…
…and partly because BLM has been strictly “hands off” as far as questioning in the local media goes.
But darned if they didn’t:
Another woman from the neighborhood took a tart swipe at “Black Lives Matter”, asking (I”m paraphrasing, since the Nine is going to make sure guns, not gang-bangers, are the enduring villains) why the protesters only seem to care if there’s a cop involved.
(If you can find the footage of the other woman, please post a link in the comments – it was one of the most startling things I’ve seen on local media…ever).
Writer for The College Fix and her story – she’s leaving MInneapolis – has gone fairly viral in recent days.
Minneapolis is my home. My happiest memories are here. It’s where I learned to ride a bike, had my first date, received my high school diploma.
But today, I’m too afraid to even walk in my neighborhood by myself.
The ACE Hardware down the street? The one that I used to bike to in the summer? Robbed twice in the past five days.
The Walgreens next to my elementary school? Molotov cocktail thrown into it.
The Lake Harriet Bandshell, where we spent countless Mother’s Days? Homeless encampment popped up next door.
These are the things you don’t read about in the news.
Ten minutes from my house, at 38th and Chicago, there is still an autonomous zone. Police are not allowed to enter. Residents have died because medical authorities couldn’t get through, and carjackers (of which there are MANY) will speed into the zone to escape officer pursuit.
Part of me says “chalk it up to perspective”. The writer – Gustavus student Grace Bureau – likely wasn’t born during MInnepolis’s last round of toxicity.
But it is different this time around. In the nineties, you not only got the impression from Norm Coleman, and even Sharon Sayles Belton, that this was not “the new normal” – that a tsunami of violent, gang crime was not the way it was supposed to be, something “good people” were supposed to suck it up and tolerate.
That’s entirely changed – as Bureau notes:
…I can’t help but look around and wonder, “What happened here? Where exactly did it all go wrong?”
Was it the liberal mob? Identity politics? The cries of “RACIST!” when someone disagreed with a particular reaction or policy?
Was it conservative silence as the loudest voices got more and more radical?
Was it our acceptance that “we live in a blue area, this is just the way things are?”
How did it all happen so fast?
Whatever it was, I’m leaving this dark, surreal, twisted version of Minneapolis on Friday. And I pray to God that I never have to come back.
If the story had a comment section – College Fix is smarter than that – it would no doubt te prog-clogged with chuckleheaded laughing boys saying “good riddance”.
I suspect Bureau, and the many like her, are saying the same.
One of the alternate jurors from the Chauvin trial admits the flamingly obvious (in an interview with KARE11’s Lou Raguse):
Raguse: Did you want to be a juror?
Christensen: I had mixed feelings. There was a question on the questionnaire about it and I put I did not know. The reason, at that time, was I did not know what the outcome was going to be, so I felt like either way you are going to disappoint one group or the other. I did not want to go through rioting and destruction again and I was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict.
So there’s your evidence that, by accident or design or pure social fact, the jury’s attitude was affected by the, er, social disruption of the past year.
I’m not going to say “It’d have been utterly impossible for Chauvin to get a fair trial under those circumstances”.
I’m going to say we can see that state from here.
Babylon Bee tries to parody the hypocrisy of the Twin Cities political class.
They’re running a solid four years behind the Twin Cities pollitical class’s ongoing self parody.
One of the traits of Urban Progressive Privilege – being the beneficiary of a double standard makes no more impression than the concept of “water” does to a fish.
Phillippe Cunningham, Minneapolis DFL City Councilman, writes:
Let’s get this straight: Cunningham, powerful elected member of a party that has had single-party control over one of America’s (formerly) great cities since it was a great city, a man who along with his family will be a part of the political class in power for the rest of his life, is complaining about “the Establishment”.
I mean, why not? “Eurasia” was taken.
You can tell by the accessories out on the street:
Last summer seemed to be “The Season of the Machete” (copywriting the screenplay title).
I just have to ask – where are all the machetes coming from?
…that DFL politicians have is that they can say anything, no matter how illogical, preposterous and risible, anything at all , knowing that not only will the media never call them out on it, but that “their” voters, of all races, classes and education levels, having as they do zero critical thinking skills, will gobble it up.
Councilman Philippe Cunningham, in a “Neighborhood Safety Manual”, repeats the assertion from last year that “Klansmen”, complete with robes and pointy hoods, were roaming North Minneapolis during the riots.
Note to non-MSP residents: Klansmen in robes will occur in the Twin Cities about the same time I go on a hot third date with Anna Kendrick.
The Top Ten Things you Never, Ever Hear in Real Life.
10. “Hey, hand me that piano”.
9. “Gosh, the Star Tribune does a great job of balanced coverage on divisive issues”
8. “You know what I could use right now? A plate of “Scrod” from Embers”
7. “The fact that the Vikings, T-Wolves, Wild and usually the Twins disappoint me terribly is a sign that my priorities in life are terribliy out of whack”.
6. “See how much clearer and more fluid writing is when you arbitrarily and mindlessly adhere to the ‘Oxford Comma?'”
5. “The ‘zipper merge’ has made my life better”
4. “I got a call back from Alice Hausman’s office!”s
3. “That Mike McNeil on AM950 is appointment listening for me!”
2. “I always feel healthy and safe riding the Green Line after 6PM!”
And the #1 thing you never, ever hear in real life:
Number 1: “Oh, good. Al Sharpton is in town. Our racial divide and social crisis is going to get better”.
As such, I have no idea if the City of Minneapolis is trying to find ways to throw the Chauvin trial, or to create grounds for endless appeals, each of them a potential spark for more riots and, of course, more springboards for more political grandstanding.
But if it were…:
Cahill’s decision followed a defense request to delay or move the trial in the wake of last week’s $27 million wrongful death settlement announced between Minneapolis and the family of George Floyd.
Chauvin’s attorneys argued that the massive settlement and the notoriety around it might taint the jury pool.
Cahill, who’s expressed his unhappiness over Minneapolis publicizing the settlement during jury selection for Chauvin’s criminal trial, acknowledged Friday that the high-profile nature of this case would be inescapable no matter if it were postponed or moved.
“I don’t think there’s any place in the state of Minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity on this case,“ Cahill told the court, explaining his decision to keep the trial in Minneapolis.
…I’d be at a loss for what they’d be doing differently.
I always someone convincing me that Derek Chauvin can get a fair trial in Hennepin County. Really, the entire Twin Cities metro.
City of Minneapolis reaches an independent settlment with the Floyd family…
…just in time to jeopardize the Chauvin trial.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called it a milestone. The city council unanimously approved the settlement.
Announcing the settlement in the middle of jury selection for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin confused legal experts.
“It was absolutely terrible timing, I would say for both sides,” said Mary Moriarty, the former chief public defender in Hennepin County.
Prospective jurors in the trial can still be questioned about their thoughts on the settlement, but Moriarty says no one knows how the news will affect the seven already seated.
“Most jurors I think would perceive [the settlement] as the city’s belief that Chauvin did murder George Floyd and that they are liable,” Moriarty said.
It’s assumed that it’d be very difficult to insulate any jury from hearing about the settlement.
Given the Minneapolis City Council’s performance over the past year, it’s hard to guess whether it was incompetence, malice or arrogance.
I say “Its the Minneapolis City Council. Why choose?”
Joe Soucheray on the Chauvin Trial and Minneapolis:
Yes, the trial, and the attendant protests, could be the end of Minneapolis. There is no political strength in place to save it. The council even exudes a vibe that suggests they are more concerned about the safety and convenience of protesters than their own citizenry.
The council cannot open an intersection because of their apparent fealty to those who occupy it. What are they going to do if rioters decide that they are going to take over six or seven square blocks of downtown, maybe the Nicollet Mall? This city let a police station burn. This is a city that called for help too late back in May 2020.
Minneapolis city council president Lisa Bender famously said that expecting public safety is a “privilege” – to which every taxpayer in that city should be saying “Yes. It Is. A ‘privilege’ I, whatever my race, creed or belief, pay through the nose for. Now provide it, stat, or get out of office and quite wasting our time”.
But they don’t ,and they won’t, and when Lisa Bender leaves the Council she, like Frey and even Alondra Cano, will be replaced by someone worse. That’s cynicism talking – well, not just cynicism. It’s the way Minneapolis politics is set up. It’s the way politics go wherever a small minority, committed to getting power at whatever cost, get their way. It’s the apotheosis of Urban Progressive Privilege.
Not even a complete apocalypse is going to change that.
A friend of the blog emails:
As you can see you today more fencing and wire went up around the 4th Precinct in North Minneapolis.
Many traffic barriers are also set internal inside the fence in the police parking lot.
So where will all the rioters go?
It’s a rhetorical question.
UPDATE: Compare and contrast with when this shot was first taken, a couple weeks ago:
Here’s the team of lawyers volunteering their time to prosecute a Minneapolis police officer in the biggest racial lynching the city has ever seen.
They must all be gunning for judge, hoping to impress Tim Walz with their sterling Liberal credentials so he appoints them to the bench. Thank God I don’t live in Hennepin County.
Joe Doakes
Same. Although let’s not pretend for a moment that if this had happened in Saint Paul, the Ramco Attorney’s office wouldn’t be just as bad.
The news is full of stories about the preparations for Monday’s opening of the Derek Chauvin trial.
Signally, all those preparations seem to involve fortifying government buildings.
That includes Minneapolis City Hall, where taxpayers are paying a lot of money to fortify a building wherein most of the City Council members believe the expectation of public safety is a privilege.
As to protecting the small businesspeople? Residents?
Additionally, Sasha Cotton, the director for the city’s new Office of Violence Prevention, said her department is working with the city’s Neighborhood and Community Relations Department on a preparedness toolkit—which includes safety tips and best practices, among other information—to help neighborhoods and residents.
A “preparedness kit”.
In other words, smoke ’em if you got ’em. You’re on your own.
Again. Government has its priorities. Government is government’s priority.
But it’s OK – because city officials are pointing out the precedent they’re concerned about.
January 6.
Not May 25.
“Never Waste a Crisis!”
A city’s agony is just another excuse to feed into the blood libel that there is a massive wave of “white supremacist right wing violence that’ll dwarf 9/11” waiting out there, any day now.
As Minneapolis heads towards what is almost certain to be a metaphorical and fiscal bloodletting, if not perhaps a literal one, the city is going through its crisis preparedness checklist:
You’re in the best of hands, Minneapolis.
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