The Dignity of the Streets

Thousands demonstrate in Minnesota and across US to protest ICE

Toni Morrison wrote, “"There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language." Language, really, is all I have now, the only avenue for heartbreak, for rage, and, in the end, for hope.

I lived in Minneapolis for ten years, the most remarkable years of my life. It was there that I met a woman who saw something in me that I could never have seen in myself, and with her love she stripped away the cynic and replaced him with that most dangerous of all creatures, an idealist, because when you’re loved by the perfect woman, what else could you be? She grew up there, and she knew the city so well. She showed it all to me – its neighborhoods, the quirky little stores and shops that sold clothes and books and friendships, restaurants that were world-class and restaurants that were tucked into the tiny, unseen corners of streets where the wealthy did not go, dive bars and jazz clubs. the festivals where the streets came alive with music and dancing and art.

It was there that we raised a son, who’s grown to brilliance, and it was there that I became a writer, where I summoned enough courage to start a novel that eventually led to other, better things. I look back on that work now with embarrassment, but I also know that, if I was not living in Minneapolis, it would likely never have been written and I would not be where I am now.

The city nourishes through its culture, and it comforts through its embrace. People care for one another without thinking about it, as a matter of course – sharing a typical Minnesota hotdish with a sick neighbor, shoveling one another’s driveways, stopping on a highway to help pull a total stranger’s car out of a drift or jumpstart a dead battery. Maybe it’s the cold that binds people, or maybe it’s the gentle summers when people can finally live their lives outside and see one another, a sense of survival that blends into community. I don’t know how it came about, this sense of belonging to one another. But of all the places I’ve lived Minneapolis is the warmest, even in the dead of winter.

And so it’s really been no surprise to me that when a tyrant acts with brutality, this city, this people, would respond as they did. We saw it with the George Floyd actions six years ago, and we see it now in vivid color. The collective urge to protect, to comfort, and, at the heart of it, to resist the injustices and violence that put their neighbors at risk, came naturally. This past week they marched, and they’ll march again until this madness, this terrorism ends. It’s all they can do. It’s what they must do.

But they’re not okay, and this confirmation of community, of mutual well-being, has exhausted them. I spent the past few days checking on my friends there. No, they’re tired, and a little bit scared. More than a little bit. None of them spoke of giving up, though, despite the fatigue and the fear. No one thought of leaving, or taking a vacation to someplace warmer. They’re in it for the fight. More reason to love them.

They’ll win in the end, of course. Something about the moral arc of the universe bending toward justice. This past week their voices grew louder and larger, steadier and more persistent, more people took notice, a few of the thugs backed down, and Bruce wrote a song that tied it all together and has the whole world singing it. In the end they’ll be okay, and Minneapolis will go back to doing what it does best, in all its quirky Midwestern ways. There’ll be snowball fights, and summer nights on the lake. There’ll once again be streets safe for all its citizens to walk.

It’s a hard journey, though, and it takes its toll. In 1984 the Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn wrote a song of rage about the killing of children in the Guatemalan civil war. Its last line got him into some trouble – “If I had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would die.” I pulled that song onto my playlist and sang it a few times myself this past week.

But maybe the rage is misplaced. Maybe that’s what the perpetrators of all this were expecting, and with it, a justification for their own escalation. Rage seems to be their currency.

Minneapolis has shown us a lesson too long unlearned, and with it, an unexpected dignity.

Maybe the way around all this isn’t to fight back with anger but to fight back with compassion by caring for one another and protecting each other as best we can. And by raising our voices, even the quiet ones, so that no one can ignore the fires that are burning.