A Year in Review or About to be Recreated?

I’ve warned you about long posts in the past, but this one is by far the longest.

To celebrate my birthday, some friends I met while in Bolivia came to visit. As you can imagine, whenever you have friends from one aspect of life step into another, it becomes surreal, and although we’ve visited each other a few times since our original evacuation, having them in my stomping grounds in Minneapolis was a very different experience.

It really hit at a birthday bonfire when my friends (both met abroad and locally alike) were making the classic “What was the best part of being 22?” jokes and then everybody exchanged that awkward eye contact as they all remember what the last ~365 days included for me.

“This girl,” Alyssa, my roommate in La Paz, finally jumped in to break the silence, “two evacuations, three militaries (in Bolivia, Peru, and in Minneapolis), riots that seem to follow her … I don’t know how you’ve done it, you poor thing,” and I felt the weight of that reality finally hit as she wrapped me in a hug. I was surrounded by people who loved me, supported me, cared for me, and for the first time I felt safe enough to take a deep breath and feel how hard the last year has been. I stopped myself from checking my privileges, I stopped the comparison games, and I just let myself sit in the sadness of everything the last year brought. I’m exhausted, I’ve been beaten down, and looking around that fire I was reminded that I’m not alone.

“What did you learn?” Alyssa finally adjusted the question, and the awkwardness passed and my gratefulness continued.

I was able to take a few days off of work to focus on my friends and while it was relaxing, it wasn’t all fun and games. We finally did the processing we hadn’t been able to do. Although I wish the uncertainty of being evacuated and then trapped by COVID on nobody, it was nice to be surrounded by others who understood the situation. And, even more unique to our situation, our “adventures” started surrounding an election in another country that seems eerily similar to the one coming up.

My flight landed in Bolivia last year about two months before they cast their ballots, and I was already hearing things from coworkers and friends about it. The closer the elections got, the greater the marches, the campaign materials, and the fear it would be a contested election. On election day, we watched the ballots being tallied. Our Bolivian friends shared stories of fraud they experienced. We watched the hearings the week that followed as they did a recount. We ran into protests when the results were hidden. We got tear gassed while outside on Halloween.

The processes were hidden from the people. The people demanded transparency. The demands for transparency demonstrated themselves in marches, protests, and chants all calling for democracy in Bolivia to be respected. There were dumpster fires to protect from the tear gas. There were night guards set up. Curfew was put in place. And we were evacuated.

As we sat reflecting on all of that in a Minneapolis diner, we prepared to go to George Floyd Square (GFS) to recognize Indigenous People’s Day. For those who don’t know, the intersection where George Floyd was killed has been held by community members who have placed barricades on the four streets leading to it and guard it on their own. They have meetings twice a day where they debrief events, have movie screenings, and share other updates. There is a list of 24 demands they have shared, skeptical they will be met, yet hopeful. I have gone a couple of nights to help hold space and join the community as they do their night watch from 9pm-12am. To me, the space has shifted from sad to hopeful. The more time I observe the ways the art at the square continuously grows and adapts as people add and create, the more I hear the heart behind what is being done there, and the more I see how they openly care for one another. The marches continue, the hurt is still there, but it is the safest space I have found since moving back to Minneapolis.

If anybody is in the area and would like someone to go with, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Leaving that space with my friends led to even more conversations. We reflected on the dynamics of how Indigenous Bolivians were treated in comparison to what we heard from the Indigenous folks at GFS. My friends asked a lot of questions, and I was able to share a bit about my experience and work in Minneapolis since my second evacuation.

The first story that came to mind was from a week prior when a canvasser came back from their shift helping register folks to vote with a video of a man harassing her.

“We were having good conversations with people, and then he came out of nowhere going off about how I’m working for Ilhan Omar and how he was going to take down my information, and if I didn’t give it to him he was going to call the police.”

And they were right. I watched in horror as this man yelled at the canvasser simply because she wore a hijab. I watched as he called the police on her. I can’t know 100% what fueled the anger I saw, but I have never received that for the cross necklace I wear or for the color of my skin. I never have to question what about my existence angers other people. The canvasser wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was walking in a parking lot with permission from the store owner. – Side note, we are a nonpartisan organization and do not promote any candidates.

When the canvassers were explaining more about what happened, my other ACER coworkers sat in the silence, not surprised by the news, waiting for me to respond as head of civic engagement. The police had been called the day before on another canvasser while he was waiting for his ride. A few days before that, they had been called on our team because a resident saw them door knocking and became uncomfortable. I’ve seen friends post about having the police called on them while they register voters too. I had the police respond to a call about a coworker and me when we were out collecting voter registration forms — something that is legal, nonpartisan, and protected under Minnesota Statute 201. The common thread I saw: white people using the police in response to discomfort caused by Black people.

I don’t experience blatant racism the way Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) do. When videos started going viral years ago, I scoffed assuming something small was being made into a big deal thanks to technology. Now, I see it daily in the experiences BIPOC folks share with me. Which, I want to make clear, is a privilege. They shouldn’t have to relive their negative experiences in order for me to listen to them, or for me to believe them, but when they do, I’m grateful.

I went on to share with my visiting friends about a protest I had gone to in response to Officer Chauvin’s release after posting bail. Speakers there shared sadness and stories of their family members being killed by police officers and knowing those officers still had their badges. Others shared stories of family members who had been wrongfully arrested, but were unable to post bail (or weren’t given the option) and had been waiting, incarcerated, for their trial for years.

The language was strong, skewed, portraying their emotion after learning about Chauvin’s history even before George Floyd died: “A mass murderer is walking the streets free right now, but my brother is stuck behind bars for looking like someone else.”

The research I’ve done around Chauvin doesn’t quite show a record that fits the objective description “mass murderer,” but George Floyd was not his first questionable or first lethal case.

Recently, a “Black Lives Matter” mural was painted near the city library where we work. Tell me how you would respond when your coworkers saw the backlash online and came into the office asking why their lives don’t matter to white people. They’ve asked why it’s a crime to exist while being Black and the police get called repeatedly on them for simply waiting on the sidewalk because someone else “didn’t like the way [they were] standing” (a direct quote from a woman who called the police on a canvasser).

My friends who were visiting know I’m not quiet about the fact I join the marches, believe #BlackLivesMatter, and am in favor of restructuring the criminal justice system in the United States. We don’t see things 100% the same, but we had many conversations comparing what we see here to what we saw in Bolivia (and other countries we’ve each lived in). We talked about language, how it can be hard to get behind the cause when it sounds so extreme. I often point out that people didn’t feel listened to when they used “nicer” language. This is not the first time people have called for police reform, and the reality is that many trainings have continued to fail. Impunity is still a concern to many. Remember that you are not jumping into this movement at the beginning. It might seem extreme, but it has grown to match the resistance it faces. Change is necessary.

When you hear the chant ACAB (all cops are bastards), reconsider that it might not be personal. It’s the belief that the United States has systems that underserve certain communities. It’s not looking at each officer and saying “you’re bad.” It is seeing that they are a part of a bigger structure that has allowed the mass incarceration of Black men, perpetuated poverty for communities of color, and now refused justice for the killings committed by police officers. They’re the offspring of a broken system, and unless they are actively working against it, they are seen as furthering it.

Officer Chauvin was able to post bail and leave jail. This is a whole other issue because there are people, currently incarcerated, waiting for their trial -which can take years- who didn’t do anything wrong. They haven’t even been convicted. Seems broken to me.

When you hear defund the police, remember we’ve seen the education system be defunded for years. Defund means to withdraw funding from. By withdrawing that money, it can be reallocated to affordable housing, mental health resources, crisis counselors, the education system and more.

I didn’t know I was Black until I moved to the United States.

-Multiple Youth Immigrants sharing at open mics

I explained further to my friends that one thing I heard over and over at open mic nights and events at GFS was “I didn’t know I was Black until I moved to the United States.” Story after story came out of Black folks who were taught to be ashamed of their skin color because of the climate of the country we live in. It’s not that they hadn’t seen themselves in mirrors when they lived elsewhere, it was that they were taught to see themselves differently here. A history they are not related to gets placed on their shoulders.

A friend once asked the question, “What if America isn’t the best country?” and as my visiting friends and I talked, we reflected on how great the United States is. However, we considered how it’s been great for us and how it hasn’t been great for everyone. We debated the difference between individual agency and the reality of tilted systems. At the end of our conversation, we decided it didn’t matter which country was “best.” For us, our primary identity was either in ourselves or our faiths. My faith reminds me that the only allegiance I really am pledging is to God, and while I can respect authority, I can also call out injustice.

Don’t let anything about our current climate encourage you to become apolitical. Allow it to open your eyes to the holes in our current government. To me, that looks like holding our law enforcement and elected officials accountable, listening to each other’s stories, and helping each other advocate for ourselves. Our identities shouldn’t crumble just because our understanding of the United States might need to shift a bit. Let us see the ways America has never been great for certain people and the ways we can make changes so that all people feel safe in “the land of the free.”

I’ll be blatant: I do not believe Trump has led our country well, nor do I think he is a good fit to be president any longer. I also see and hear people on both sides preparing to fight the results. I am getting flashbacks to October 20th, 2019 in La Paz and wondering what November 3-10th (absentee ballots are estimated to take more time to tally this year), 2020 will look like in Minneapolis.

But, on my birthday, surrounded in person (although distanced) by friends, and in spirit by family, I made a deal with myself that 23 would be my year. Regardless of what it throws at me, I am going to keep pulling on the strength that has gotten me this far. I’m going to keep searching to find myself, solidify my passions, pour into my creativity, and in doing so, create little taps of change in the external world.

I won’t be passive in this next season and I ask you to join me in taking action.

• Vote
• Vote Early
• Vote by Mail
• Find your polling place for Nov. 3
• Check in with your friends about their voting plans
• Check in with your friends about tracking their absentee ballots
• Research all positions on the ballot (this is not JUST a presidential election)
• Take care of yourself