from the series Peace House Community Journal…
By MARTI MALTBY
I disagree with Mayor Jacob Frey on many topics, but I agreed with what he said during his press conference following the shooting of Renee Good. There’s so much to say about the current situation, but the part I want to focus on is Frey’s call for a peaceful response. We can debate if that’s the most important thing to worry about, but it’s uppermost in my mind as I write this.
Frey was right that we need a peaceful response. But peaceful doesn’t mean passive. We don’t need to accept how our neighbors are being terrorized, but we don’t need to resort to terror in our response either. And, thankfully, Minneapolis seems perfectly willing to be peaceful without being passive. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Twin Cities residents have protested peacefully since the shooting, but they haven’t been passive. They’ve done all they can to protect neighbors and hold the federal government accountable for its actions.
Minneapolis still bears the scars of the George Floyd riots. We’ll never know how much of the damage was caused by locals and how much by outsiders who were outraged, or who just liked seeing things burn. This time is different. Residents of Minneapolis and the rest of the Metro Area have taken control of the narrative and shown that things aren’t out of control, that the portrayal of this area as a dangerous, crime-ridden mess just isn’t true. Neighbors are caring for each other. The community is helping each other. When heavily armed masked men show up in a neighborhood, the responses are whistles and cameras, not bricks and firebombs. We are being peaceful. But we are not being doormats.
When I hear government officials talk about the domestic terrorism that’s going on in Minneapolis, I can’t help but see the irony of the statement. The church I attend rents space to a Hispanic congregation. That congregation hasn’t met for two months because they’re afraid ICE will target their members. Schools are having trouble teaching students because families won’t send their kids. People who are homeless in the winter aren’t coming to places like Peace House Community because they are worried about what will happen to them if ICE shows up. Yes, people in Minneapolis are scared, but it isn’t just the immigrants. American citizens of many ancestries are scared too. And it isn’t because of organized crime and foreign drug cartels. It’s because of the government. If the government wants a strong immigration system and secure borders, fine. Go ahead. There are ways of doing that without terrorizing citizens, legal residents, immigrants, or whatever other group you want to mention. There are ways of peacefully but not passively enforcing immigration law. What we are seeing now is not that.
Minneapolis has opted for a forceful, peaceful response. Let us pray that this continues.
(I am writing this article on January 11, but will not be published until the end of the month. I am hopeful that nothing happens between now and then to change what I have written about the peaceful but not passive response.)
