Paul Cantrell
Tomorrow are city council elections in Minneapolis, and I needed to get something off my chest, so I wrote an essay. A screed, really.
THE GHOST OF UPRISINGS YET TO COME
(Long thread follows. Apologies in advance. I really need to start a blog. But that’s for later, and this is for now.)
1/
Paul Cantrell
I do not want my neighborhood to burn again. In Mpls politics, that is the cloud that hangs over every election.
Don’t get me wrong: I can’t really muster sympathy about the police building burning. The police reaped what they sowed with their violence.
But the burning of beloved neighborhood businesses? Apartments? Affordable housing, on the brink of opening? Magical spaces like Midori’s and Gandhi Mahal, the restaurant that catered my wedding, now gone forever?
2/
Paul Cantrell
Refugee business owners, who fled violence only to have violence re-find them, who were so afraid of losing everything after neighboring businesses burned that they started sleeping inside their own businesses every night for years afterwards? My neighbors and me taking turns keeping vigil through the dead of night, watching and wondering if the fire would come for us next? There is nothing good or just about any of that. I do not want it to happen again.
How then do we make sure it doesn’t?
3/
Paul Cantrell
First we need to remember why it happened.
My neighborhood burned because the Minneapolis Police brutally murdered George Floyd, a human being, in cold blood, in broad daylight — and because that murder was just one in a long chain of police racism and police cruelty and police violence and police murders that stretches back decades.
4/
Paul Cantrell
Decades! It didn’t all happen because of Derek Chauvin. It happened because we, the city of Minneapolis, allowed a police force to exist where Chauvin and hundreds of others like him could be employed and remain employed, and could keep murdering people again and again and again and again.
The uprising happened because we failed to stop the Minneapolis Police from becoming a hotbed of white supremacist violence. That is the simple, ugly fact. The next uprising happens if we continue to fail.
5/
Paul Cantrell
What, then, does the next uprising look like right now? It doesn’t look like chanting activists, and it doesn’t look like white hoods and red caps either.
In this moment, the next uprising looks like Luther Ranheim, a city council candidate in my ward.
Luther’s a nice guy. I’m sure he doesn’t want our police to be a hotbed of white supremacist violence. He also doesn’t want to upset the apple cart.
6/
Paul Cantrell
We white people love progress, but hate change. And that means we’re really good at creating processes that look busy while moving in endless circles.
This is written all over Luther’s policy proposals. We should show police officers Powerpoints about not murdering! We should have them talk to each other in a firm voice whenever they beat people up for no reason! (That’s all internally, of course; the violence has to remain secret or it might upset people.)
7/
Paul Cantrell
We should “rehabilitate” police officers, whatever that means!
(What does that mean? It’s one of the more bizarre things I’ve seen on a campaign flyer. I’m all for helping people learn and let go of violence and become their best selves, but I’m not for leaving them with the power to commit racist violence with impunity while they work on that. Or after.)
8/
Paul Cantrell
Everything in this policy menu says, “Doing things! Making progress!” And nothing in it leads to violent officers actually getting fired en masse, let alone prosecuted.
There’s talk of Bad Apples in the Minneapolis Police. Well, as the saying goes, this whole barrel is spoiled. Looking at any police policy proposal, ask yourself this: Would it lead to violent, racist police officers getting kicked out fast, and in large numbers? That one question cuts through a whole lot of the noise.
9/
Paul Cantrell
Right now, we’re doing the opposite. Oh yes, some police have left the force, sure. Remember those officers who hopped in an unmarked van, said “F*** ’em up,” and shot bullets at random people who were doing nothing wrong? Know what happened to them? At least some of them are enjoying six-figure early retirements at Minneapolis taxpayer expense. (Yes, really: https://minnesotareformer.com/2023/09/29/minneapolis-poised-to-give-145k-settlement-to-mpd-officer-involved-in-beating/)
10/
Paul Cantrell
Our city’s policy is a giant billboard:
“Come to Minneapolis, where you can beat up dark-skinned people with impunity until we finally relent and pay you huge amounts of money to do nothing instead!”
Guess what kind of people that attracts?
It’s the fast track to the next George Floyd, the next uprising, the next cycle. We’re on it. We’ve always been on it. We’re going to stay on it unless we do something drastically different from what we’ve been doing for the last century in this town.
11/
Paul Cantrell
Luther’s campaign materials say he’s not here to advance an ideology, but he is.
It’s the ideology of comfort. It’s the ideology of conflict aversion, of change avoidance, of an almost religious faith in the power of •not making too much of a fuss•.
It’s an ideology of white people maintaining our own feeling of comfort even if it takes us on yet another turn around the same grim cycle of violence. It’s an ideology that says, “Black lives matter, but not •that• much. Be reasonable.”
12/
Paul Cantrell
That’s harsh. I know that’s harsh. Consider it from Luther’s perspective:
You don’t like police murdering people, and what happened to George Floyd was wrong. But that doesn’t justify a violent response. Things got out of hand. People just need to be more reasonable. We all need to calm down. We all need to come together and find solutions. And •you• know how to calm down! •You• know how to bring people together!
13/
Paul Cantrell
And other people who also know how to be calm are talking about police policy ideas. Reasonable ideas. Powerpoints. Internal oversight. Coaching. We can do that.
You like those ideas. You like those people. And they like it when you talk about those ideas. And some of those people are the movers and shakers, the powerful people.
Some of them are the very same people with money whom you were always courting when you did all that charitable fundraising work…
14/
Paul Cantrell
…and now they’re listening to •you•, they’re supporting •you•, they’re the ones fundraising for •you•, pumping gobs of money into •your• campaign — and that feels like success. Real success! Finally.
And before you know it, you’re yet another white man working day and night to undermine a far more qualified woman of color.
15/
Paul Cantrell
And it gets a little uncomfortable when All of Minneapolis, the local “big money status quo” PAC, carpet bombs the neighborhood with flyers that run a full-on McCarthyist Red Scare about your opponent. That’s not calm.
But that’s politics, right? That’s just the campaign people, not you. •You• are calm.
16/
Paul Cantrell
And you win, because advertising works and scare tactics work and money talks. And you get in City Hall. And you bring people together, and form reasonable plans that go in circles, retreading new versions of failed old ideas, carefully avoiding anything that would upend the power structure that got you elected. And it feels good. It feels like success.
17/
Paul Cantrell
And the Minneapolis police keep being racist, and keep being violent, and keep murdering people, again and again and again and again. But you did what you could. You made progress around the endless circle. You did your part. And you fail upward into bigger and better things.
18/
Paul Cantrell
And years from now, the police finally murder one person two many, and everything explodes again, and buildings burn again, and it all starts over again. But you’re far away.
Nobody, not even you, remembers that it’s your fault.
19/
Paul Cantrell
Nobody, nobody except a few cranky people who are not calm at all, thinks back and remembers that in 2023, what the next uprising looked like was you.
You were the ghost of uprisings yet to come, but nobody saw you, and now the uprising is nobody’s fault.
You’re a phantom, and you’ve vanished.
/end
Paul Cantrell
@Upsilupsi This divide is •the• divide in Minneapolis, and it’s close. I’m hopeful, nervous, despairing, exhausted.
Upsilupsi 🌰 🐿
@inthehands Things have to change quickly... good luck and best wishes to Minneapolis and it's civity!
Paul Cantrell
@fulanigirl Thank you. I’d rather be out there knocking doors, but child care comes first, so writing is what I could do.
fulanigirl
@inthehands The screed is well done.
Paul Cantrell
@fulanigirl
Thanks, I believe that, but sometimes I still need to hear it. 🙏
fulanigirl
@inthehands We all must do what we can. Every piece helps the whole.
Paul Cantrell
UPDATE:
Aurin Chowdhury (the good one!) won comfortably. Ranheim lost.
Hooray! And phew.
Paul Cantrell
@riotmuffin
What a smug, didactic, empathy-free, tone-deaf turd of a response. Shitting on Gandhi Mahal and the neighborhood like that is an instant block. Ruhel made his sacrifice for justice, not so you could shit on the memory of what he created.
Shoulda Paid Us EnMuff to Live
@inthehands yikes on bikes - so much revisionist history here. That building was only “affordable housing” in the way big developers use the term. Nobody was out targeting apartment buildings. The owner of Gandhi Mahal, you may recall, said “let my building burn if that’s what needs to happen” (and yes, it was the fires that allowed the precinct to fall) (oh, and did you ever even try their new place?). Sorry not sorry about whatever businesses you stanned.
It’s going to take a lot more than another lefty council person getting elected to quell another uprising, if that’s your main concern…. Especially if those lefties keep twiddling their thumbs while the city keeps tryna hoodwink us about “police reform” this and “community safety” that.
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