What’s happening in Minneapolis

Following the Jan. 7 killing of Renée Nicole Macklin Good by federal agents in Minneapolis, I wrote trying to understand something of Ms. Good’s life through a prize-winning poem she wrote as a student. On Jan. 24, a second Minneapolis resident, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was shot and killed by United States Border Patrol agents. Video footage shows that Mr. Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, stepped between a woman and an agent pepper spraying her and then was sprayed himself. The videos show him filming the interaction with a phone in one hand and holding nothing in the other hand. As agents restrained him, one appeared to take from Mr. Pretti’s waistband a holstered pistol which local authorities later confirmed he was legally carrying. Then agents opened fire, shooting Mr. Pretti at least ten times while he was restrained and after he lay motionless on the ground. Sworn testimony from two witnesses corroborates the video evidence.

As in Ms. Good’s case, state investigators were denied access to the shooting scene by the federal government. Following this refusal to share information, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension sued and U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud issued an order barring federal officials from destroying evidence in the case. Please read that again — in the face of a killing that appears to have been a state-sanctioned murder of an innocent person, it was necessary to issue a ruling barring the federal government from destroying evidence in the case.

Federal officials have attempted to turn causality and culpability upside down and blame the victims — both Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti — for their deaths. Stephen Miller, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, called Mr. Pretti a “would-be assassin” while the administration asserted with no evidence that he had committed an act of “domestic terrorism.”

Hoping to understand a little more, I contacted a Minneapolis friend and fellow musician in her mid-30s, whom I’ve known since her childhood and with whom I’ve had the good fortune to work performing music. Would she be willing to speak about the recent events? Here are excerpts from the letter she wrote to me.

“I woke up this morning grieving. It’s grief for people who have been shot and killed for no other reason than being in the way, grief for neighbors I don’t know personally, and grief for morals, humanity, and compassion that I don’t see whatsoever in the loud and powerful but do see palpably in my community. I feel love and warmth for my neighbors who have been beaten or killed, for my neighbors who want to live better lives, for my neighbors who may have made an uninformed decision in the past that they regret and want to change.

“I honestly really dislike politics. The people we’ve elected have forgotten about the people they represent. There are people in power who are greedy to the point that they will lie and cover up any reputation-damaging thing in an attempt to stay in power. But this is not about politics. It’s about what’s right and what’s wrong at the most basic human level.

“I’m not one to be on the front lines of these kinds of things. I typically stay back, donate when I can, and try to support my friends and close community. But this time I’m aware, as a transplant to Minnesota and as someone who didn’t fully realize the scope and horror of the atrocities going on in the last year until they came to my doorstep, that I need to share and spread awareness of what truly is happening here and provide resources to people in all corners of the country and the world (social media is good for something I guess). What truly is happening is we are being attacked for protecting our friends and neighbors. I’m using the collective we even though I am not directly impacted, because I feel the grief and fear through the videos I watch and the neighbors I talk to. We are being beaten, verbally assaulted, and killed for speaking up or documenting the lawless assault on our city and community. We are coming together peacefully but we are also incredibly angry and will yell as loud and proud as we can until someone hears us. We need everyone to hear us, to fear for and with us, and to step up with us to fight the wrong that powerful people are doing to us to break us apart.

“As a musician, I have seen how artists all over Minnesota have come together to oppose the bad and embrace the good in each other and our neighbors. There is no greed even though some live paycheck to paycheck or gig to gig. There is only love and respect and support for those hardworking community members who are scared to death.”

The letter closed with this: “I have a friend who had to grieve a fellow nurse and on that same day she gave birth with the help of her trusted nurse midwives to a bright light who knows nothing of the world around her yet. How tragically poetic is that? Sending my love.”