Morning Belz, July 19
Minneapolis.
I’m sitting at the Tea Street Cafe, a few feet from the corner of 38th and Chicago where George Floyd was killed. The cafe has been open for three weeks and business is not brisk. The intersection is open, but quiet. I parked a couple blocks away out of habit. I think I’ve seen one car go by on Chicago, in the narrow two-lane that weaves around the spot on the asphalt where Floyd died, still a shrine surrounded by flowers and murals.
I’m back in Minneapolis to try to make a video about the whole “defund the police” snafu. Ten city council members stood on a podium at a nearby park a few days after Floyd’s murder and pledged to “defund” the police. The imprecise terminology, not too wild by the standards of Minneapolis politics in general, became a national punch line. Taken literally, of course, it’s an idea that enjoys no real support among Americans of any race or ethnicity. For instance, a national Gallup survey last summer found that 81% of Black Americans want either the same amount of police, or more police, in their neighborhood. White people and Latinos expressed a similar view.
I can tell you from my travels in the South that not everyone realizes Minneapolis never defunded the police. But it didn’t happen. The mayor ended up blocking even a small reduction in the force, although the council did manage to shift $8 million from the $179 million police budget to non-cop forms of public safety efforts, and reportedly around 200 of the city’s 800-some cops have quit in the last year anyway.
The ironic thing is that in Minneapolis, some of the council members who pushed to “defund” the police are in political trouble. One of the most vocal, Jeremiah Ellison (the son of Keith Ellison and in my experience reporting on City Hall a few years ago, a very decent person), faces a stiff challenge from Victor Martinez, an evangelical pastor whose website is very clear: “Our city is in a very dangerous place right now. We need more law enforcement more then (sic) ever before. Ward 5 by and large rejects calls to abolish or defund our police.”
Martinez outdid Ellison 58% to 39% in the race for the local Democratic party’s endorsement. Martinez fell 2 points short of endorsement, so neither candidate was endorsed, but if the the clear advantage in the party’s virtual convention is any indication, he has a good shot of winning in November. I’m planning to interview Martinez tomorrow morning and hope to interview Ellison too, although I haven’t been able to nail that down. I’ll also interview a bunch of other people, mostly in Ward 5 or near George Floyd square and Uptown.
Really happy to be back here. Still feels like home. Caught the USA-Canada game at Black Hart St. Paul, a University Avenue bar owned by my friend Wes Burdine. Then over to my old neighbors’ Dan and Hoa for the night in Standish. Dan and I walked their dogs down to Lake Hiawatha in the mild evening and sat and watched the planes angle down from the west across the still water.
South Minneapolis still feels like it’s in recovery mode, though. I stopped at two coffee shops that weren’t open (at 9:30 a.m. on a Monday) before I found Tea Street. Over by the corner of Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue, the Wendy’s and the Target are back, but the sites of Minnehaha Liquors and Ghandi Mahal are just vegetation. Apologies for the lack of communication last week. Was in Iowa at a family reunion, and couldn’t get it done.
Quote
“Sitting with my gin or whisky afterwards I would often manage to get into conversation with some lonely man or other – usually an exile like myself – and the talk would be about the world, air-routes and shipping-lines, drinking-places thousands of miles away. Then I felt happy, felt I had come home, because home to people like me is not a place but all places, all places except the one we happen to be in at the moment.” — Anthony Burgess, 1960
About: I send this email most weekdays in an effort to stay informed and in touch. I was a newspaper reporter for 14 years, most recently at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I explained why my family left Minneapolis here. Now we live just outside Chattanooga and I work on Scuffed News. Please share this newsletter with anyone you think might enjoy it. And please consider supporting this work with your money on Patreon.