Fighting the power / Riding high
Today: Myriam Gurba, founding editor of Tasteful Rude, and author of Creep, Mean, and Poppy State; and Tod Seelie, photographer and author of BRIGHT NIGHTS: Photographs of Another New York.
Issue No. 486
Lessons from Minneapolis
Myriam Gurba
Viva la bicicleta alta
Tod Seelie
Lessons from Minneapolis
by Myriam Gurba
Christina Nicholson was walking her dog Zinnia in Minneapolis’s Powderhorn neighborhood when two police cars raced past her.
“Oh!” she thought. “That’s not good.”
When Nicholson got home, she headed to her office to work. Within minutes, her wife knocked at the door and made a grim announcement.
“They killed somebody.”
The police cars that Nicholson had seen were responding to the shooting of legal observer Renee Macklin Good. Nicholson and her wife live just six blocks from the site where a federal agent killed their comrade in front of her wife, Becca Good. The couple also lives six blocks from George Floyd Square, the site where police officer Derek Chauvin lynched Floyd in 2020.
Nicholson exhales in a deep sigh.
“It’s been a long five years.”
Nicholson is one of two queer activists who spoke with me by phone about their work defending Minneapolis from two occupying forces, the Minneapolis Police Department and ICE. The other is Anika, a non-binary activist who also lives in the Powderhorn neighborhood. They too were working from home on the day of Good’s killing. After receiving a Facebook notification that a shooting had just happened on Portland Avenue, Anika went out to investigate. They found their nearby intersection blocked by MPD. ICE surrounded the area.
“It was crazy,” Anika says. “I had just read about it online and then I stepped out my front door and there it was.”
Both Anika and Nicholson moved to Minnesota from other states. Anika hails from New England and has lived in Minneapolis for three years. They’ve heard colleagues and comrades mention that the current moment feels like déjà vu—that it seems like the police learned nothing from the uprisings that took place after the murder of George Floyd. While the latest killing has compounded the trauma citywide, Anika emphasizes that Minneapolis’s tight-knit community shows up for each other; because the MPD can’t be trusted, the community has learned how to take responsibility for its own care.
Keep us breathing fire!
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