It is unfortunate that there is a history of more fulsome street confrontations that involve a variety of actors, some opportunists that are simply criminal rather than political, others who in the past, took advantage of civil unrest to attempt to “get away with murder”.
This is happening even as the area is fraught with the fairly obvious killing of a black man in custody by a white, now ex-police officer. Recall that people as diverse as Jacob Wohl have used Minneapolis — St Paul Minnesota as a staging site for a variety of political motives to incite interracial violence.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey declared a local emergency, which runs until Sunday evening but can be extended by the City Council. The declaration gives him the ability to declare a curfew — he hadn’t as of Thursday evening — and is designed to make it easier to ask for help from other government agencies.
St. Paul, too, erupts
But by afternoon, rioting and looting had spread across the Mississippi River to St. Paul. One man was spotted smashing a boulder into an ATM at Big Top Liquors on W. University Avenue. And around 1:35 p.m., about a block from Minnesota United’s Allianz Field, Deryck Miller of St. Paul witnessed a shooting.
Today and tonight there has been looting and a variety of reports ranging from AG Ellison describing outside actors like a guy in black with an umbrella (perhaps mimicking the Hong Kong demonstrators), to people trying to demonstrate peacefully.
St. Paul Minnesota Police Scanner: Jeep Black in color driving west bound at high rate of speed. Occupants carrying guns with lasers
Update (May 28, 2020 | 7:47 CDT)
Looters are reportedly attempting to set fire to Gordon Parks High School in St. Paul. Close by, Police are requesting permission from command to drop CS canisters on a ground rowdy protestors; request was approved. Use is imminent.
Update (May 28, 2020 | 7:47 CDT)
Police units are forming a defensive perimeter around EMS and Firefighters in the St. Paul area.
When civility leads to death, revolting is the only logical reaction.
— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) May 28, 2020
The cries for peace will rain down, and when they do, they will land on deaf ears, because your violence has brought this resistance.
We have the right to fight back!
Rest in Power George Floyd
Video appears to show armed citizens protecting businesses in St. Paul after businesses have reportedly been looted and burned down during riots over George Floyd's death in Minnesota.
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 29, 2020
🎥: @ZoomerClips pic.twitter.com/iungft5uvF
“All the bombing and the burning that was done to us..nobody really cared about it….but let something be burned by a Black man and my God..”—Fannie Lou Hamer
As long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.-MLK in 1967
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