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RT Rybak: While the City I love burns
From former MPLS mayor, RT Rybak:
Sleepless and mortified, my heart melts in real-time as parts of the city I love so deeply burn away. Knowing these neighborhoods as I do I see way too clearly what is going up in smoke. While the TV showed things on fire, I saw flames getting closer to the first-generation entrepreneur who so proudly showed me the new business where he invested everything he had, the neighborhood kids who cheered so loudly at the opening of that library, and the seniors in that wonderful care facility where they must be trapped because of COVID.
It is nearly impossible to get these horrifying images out of our heads, but we must, because right now our eyes have to stay focused on one single image:
A human being, staring calmly off into the middle distance, while his knee suffocates another human being. Our repulsion should boil over as we see this is a white police officer, who took an oath to protect and serve that person on the ground, who is a black man, who we know would not be treated like that if he was white. We should be shocked again when we see other officers doing nothing to prevent a death.
And nothing should shock us more than the fact that we are no longer shocked, because this image is so familiar.
Until every one of us can see that image for what it is we cannot move another inch forward. Our country, and our beloved imperfect city, has tolerated two tiers of justice too long when we never should have tolerated it in the first place. We need to acknowledge that on some level, every one of us had a role in keeping this inequity in place.
I’ll go first, because after 12 years as mayor of this city, I should. My own efforts to change a police department and its culture failed badly. That will haunt me for the rest of my life, and it should. As each of us sees and acknowledges our own part it can be paralyzing. It was for me. But I was touched deeply yesterday by my colleague at the Minneapolis Foundation, Chanda Smith Baker. Having grown up and now raising a family as an African American in north Minneapolis, and leading Pillsbury United Communities for years, she has seen so many more of the consequences of our deep, endemic racism than I ever will. But as we surveyed the damage and pain in our community she said simply, and clearly: “We have no choice but to act.”
It is nearly impossible to get these horrifying images out of our heads, but we must, because right now our eyes have to stay focused on one single image:
A human being, staring calmly off into the middle distance, while his knee suffocates another human being. Our repulsion should boil over as we see this is a white police officer, who took an oath to protect and serve that person on the ground, who is a black man, who we know would not be treated like that if he was white. We should be shocked again when we see other officers doing nothing to prevent a death.
And nothing should shock us more than the fact that we are no longer shocked, because this image is so familiar.
Until every one of us can see that image for what it is we cannot move another inch forward. Our country, and our beloved imperfect city, has tolerated two tiers of justice too long when we never should have tolerated it in the first place. We need to acknowledge that on some level, every one of us had a role in keeping this inequity in place.
I’ll go first, because after 12 years as mayor of this city, I should. My own efforts to change a police department and its culture failed badly. That will haunt me for the rest of my life, and it should. As each of us sees and acknowledges our own part it can be paralyzing. It was for me. But I was touched deeply yesterday by my colleague at the Minneapolis Foundation, Chanda Smith Baker. Having grown up and now raising a family as an African American in north Minneapolis, and leading Pillsbury United Communities for years, she has seen so many more of the consequences of our deep, endemic racism than I ever will. But as we surveyed the damage and pain in our community she said simply, and clearly: “We have no choice but to act.”
More at link.