Reconciling with Our Current Reality
I write this letter in the hope that by the end of it, I might better understand how I actually feel. As a lifelong resident of Minneapolis, part of me is proud of the way our community has shown up for one another—and continues to do so. Another part of me is deeply disappointed that we are here again, returned to the center of the news cycle. Once more positioned as the reluctant progenitors of a national, if not global, reckoning to protect predominantly Black and Brown lives from law enforcement officers who have again decided that we are undeserving of peace, dignity, of the simple right to live. That anyone who dares to empathize—to believe that such violence, and the systems that carry it out, should not exist—can be marked as deserving of irreparable harm, or even death.
Moments like this have led me to a belief I wish I could unlearn: that to live with your life and livelihood perpetually at risk is sadly the reality of the “American dream.” That it does not matter what causes you have devoted your life to, whether you reside in a so-called sanctuary city, or who you have elected into local or state office. When the powers that be decide you are expendable, elected officials and institutions alike (even those that proudly brand themselves as trusted community partners that claim to hold our shared values) will either fall silent or reveal their powerlessness.
The realization that, in the end, the only people we can truly rely on are our neighbors both haunts me and fills me with a quiet, aching pride. Because the one thing that cannot be seized from us is our humanity itself. Holding both abandonment and solidarity at once is difficult to reconcile, but I choose to center the latter—not because I’m willing to forgive those who borrow the language of justice only when it is safe, but because there is still too much work to be done to surrender to anything other than the love and sacrifice that the people of this city continue to offer.
