"I grew up with Alex Pretti"

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theverge.com/policy/868567/alex-pretti-minneapolis-childhood-friend


The day Alex Pretti was shot 10 times in the street by federal agents, I was delivering a eulogy for my grandfather, who died the way we’re supposed to: old, asleep, surrounded by family. Because it’s my job to coordinate visuals for this website, I locked myself in a bathroom stall, watched a video of the shooting twice, and emailed a photographer, asking if he could get onto the streets and start documenting what was happening in Minneapolis.

As I reviewed photos of protesters and tear gas in the wake of his death, I didn’t realize, in the hours before his name was released to the public, that the man millions of people had seen lying facedown on the pavement from multiple angles of eyewitness video was my childhood best friend.

We have become familiar with being barraged by videos of people we do not know getting detained and ripped from their families and beaten by agents whose salaries we pay. As social media does its work putting bits and pieces together about each day of unfolding tragedy, more and more of us will realize that those pieces belong to someone we know.

Alex and I grew up across the street from each other in a quiet neighborhood in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a town maniacal about its football team and without much else to do. The street we lived on had recently been a field, now populated with a smattering of three-bedroom houses rapidly constructed in a treeless subdivision. I met Alex when he was three years old and I was four. Our family’s lives were exceedingly visible to each other, without fences or much foliage, and we knew the comings and goings of one another’s households.

*snip*

[SheltieLover]

1. Kick

[Upthevibe]

10. .....................

.....................R.I.P.

[Fla Dem]

2. Thanks for posting this. He was a "good guy" and did not deserve for his life to end like it did.

[BoomaofBandM]

3. My husband joined a march of over 1000 people on sunday in green bay.

It was definitely an anti ice protest. This area is not a big protest area for either party, so it was large for am impromptu gathering.

[MerryBlooms]

4. k&r Thank you for finding and posting this article.

This letter should be read by every talking head on every channel, at the top of every hour.

[2naSalit]

5. K&R

[Joinfortmill]

6. So very sad and unnecessary.

[herding cats]

7. That was deeply moving.

Thank you for sharing it.

[Nevilledog]

8. ...

[evolves]

9. A moving tribute to someone who

was clearly a kind and loving man.

What a loss.