Larry Fitzgerald Jr.: This Is Not the Minneapolis of My Youth

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Larry Darnell Fitzgerald Jr. is an American football wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League. He played college football at Pittsburgh, where he earned unanimous All-America honors. He was drafted by the Cardinals third overall in the 2004 NFL Draft.

The city of Minneapolis taught me about love.

I was baptized at New Beginnings Baptist Tabernacle Church, learned to catch a football at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park, and instilled with values by a loving family and a supportive community.

My mother and father raised us in this beautiful city full of life and diversity. Minneapolis is home to diverse people from all over the world; Somali and Ethiopian refugees forging new lives, Hmong families building successful businesses, and a thriving arts community that attracts talented performers from around the globe.

What you’re seeing on the news is not the hometown of my youth. The businesses you see ablaze used to receive the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the newspaper my father writes for, on their front steps. He’s been a journalist in the city for over 40 years. The streets you see in chaos now are the same streets I walked with my mother as she taught me about being active in the community. We would spend hours downtown and in nearby neighborhoods passing out educational materials on family planning and healthy lifestyles. Those same neighborhoods have literally been on fire the last few days — fires that in some ways symbolize decades of disappointment, anger and frustration.

For as long as I have known it, Minneapolis has been a city of peace, family and contentment.

But not right now.

The events of the last several days have turned Minneapolis, and our nation, upside down. Injustice, death, destruction, pain, violence, protests, and riots have made it clear — we as a nation are not OK. We are not healthy. The violent death of George Floyd in police custody is yet another example of a systemic problem we have yet to solve. A cancer we are failing to cut out. People and communities are suffering, lives are being lost and futures are being destroyed

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/larry-fitzgerald-jr-this-is-not-the-minneapolis-of-my-youth/ar-BB159eCv?li=BBnb7Kz