zlacker

>>pera+(OP)
Native Minnesotan here — living in Minneapolis — that has lived on both coasts:

With all that's happening the last few days, please don't generally associate Minnesotans with the violent riots that have captured the attention of everyone. The peacefulness of the protests and gatherings has been overshadowed by the violence. There are countless examples of Minnesotans standing up to those who choose to loot and destroy the innocent. Those images are being overlooked.

What happened is awful. These violent riots, and the violent images aren't reflective of Minnesotans at large. The violence doesn't reflect how genuinely upset people in Minnesota feel about what happened and greater the movement at large. There will always be edge-cases as there is with any situation in any context. But for everyone that I've known, for everyone I've met and encountered with in Minnesota, when I look back at my time spent on either coast I always have found the people in Minnesota to be most great.

I have friends and colleagues asking me "what's going on with everyone in Minnesota?" and I have to explain to them that these images aren't representative of the place I call home and my neighbors I call my friends.

There are businesses that didn't do anything wrong which have have been effectively `rm -rf` because of a small group of bad actors. The Target on Lake Street didn't do anything. Banadir Pharmacy didn't do anything. Seward Pharmacy didn't do anything. The pawn shop didn't do anything. The WIC office didn't do anything. The liquor stores didn't do anything. MoneyGram didn't do anything. The tobacco store didn't do anything. Disrupting those businesses and the livelihoods of their employees and owners doesn't prove a point.

But burning down the precinct? Yeah, I can get behind that.

>>joshmn+Db
> With all that's happening the last few days, please don't associate Minnesotans with the riots that have captured the attention of everyone.

I understand what you're going for, but this is a bad approach. People aren't rioting because they want to destroy things, they're rioting because they don't feel like they're being heard. What you're saying here reads as "don't listen to them, they don't represent us" which is ... exactly the point.

We need to collectively shut the hell up for 5 minutes and just listen. Maybe if we actually did that, these riots wouldn't be happening.

>>daeken+xe
> People aren't rioting because they want to destroy things, they're rioting because they don't feel like they're being heard.

That's not why people are looting liquor stores and target. Some people are just destroying things, there's always those groups of people in every riot. Sometimes people even travel to the riot just for the chance at destroying things.

>>dx87+lf
Word on the ground is target only started getting looted after it tried to close its doors to protestors looking to buy water and medical supplies.

>>komali+Om
Unlikely, were they on their way to church also?

>>golf3+In
Who knows, but the protests were noore violent than when white militiamen stormed the statehouse two weeks ago.. and yet the cops shot tear gas plastic bullets into the crowd anyway.

>>komali+Fq
Did they loot the place while they were there?