Neighborhood barriers

Sunlight streams through the screened windows of the updated 1910 bungalow.

Traffic sounds drift past. Three young children sit quietly reading books as their mom perches on a piano bench and dad sits in an armchair sipping coffee. The domestic scene belies what’s been going on outside the walls of their home for almost a year.

Keith and Bethany Beyer live with their children in a corner house that stands directly behind one of 12 barricades the city of Minneapolis erected the week George Floyd died a block from their home last May. The city originally intended the barricades to protect pedestrians who flocked to the site to lay flowers down or attend gatherings, prayer vigils, or press conferences or who simply came out of curiosity. But since their placement in June, violence has skyrocketed behind them, even after a jury convicted former police Officer Derek Chauvin of murder in Floyd’s death.

The Beyers, who are white, say most people here are weary of living in what feels like limbo or being held hostage. Like others whose homes, restaurants, and shops happen to be in the off-limits area, they worry about recurring violence, especially after dark.

Most residents and businesses want the barricades removed: A survey the city of Minneapolis conducted in April showed 81 percent of local residents say streets should reopen along with a Floyd memorial that won’t interfere with traffic. The police rarely cross the barricades into what residents call the “autonomous” or “no-go” zone, cautious not to provoke more ill-will from protesters who insist barricades will stay until the city meets their 24 demands for justice. The concrete barriers have come to embody the other barriers standing in the way of the neighborhood functioning as normal again: rampant crime, divergent views on the best way to move forward, and the city of Minneapolis’ inaction.

NINE YEARS AGO, the Beyers moved to this multiracial neighborhood. Until the riots started last summer, they’d always felt relatively safe, despite local gang activity.

When the unrest began, with near-nightly gunfire, the Beyers moved their children, ages 8, 6, and 4, into a basement bedroom, concerned bullets might pierce upstairs walls. The kids eventually moved back into their own rooms, but on the same day the jury convicted Chauvin, a gunfight broke out on the street again, interrupting the neighborhood’s celebration over the verdict. Gang members fired more than 50 shots, taking cover behind the stucco and brick house across from the Beyers. They wounded two men, then hid in the zone. The Beyers’ next-door neighbor, Phillip Brassfield, called 911 but says officers never arrived (the police department wouldn’t answer my questions about this).

Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo and Mayor Jacob Frey in March reported huge crime increases here in the last year: 378 percent more assaults and 240 percent more robberies. The MPD recently began partnering with federal agencies to reduce crime throughout the city.

Residents of varying races want police back. “Police would provide a calming presence to gang activity and crime,” Beyer said. Out of caution, he has stopped walking to George Floyd Square and won’t let his kids play in the front yard. A few weeks ago, a drunk driver crashed over his retaining wall, narrowly missing their front steps. Tire tread marks still imprint the grass just past the crumpled wall.

Last summer, Beyer talked with two black police officers walking down the alley behind their home who’d been looking for stolen cars. At least one protester threw eggs at them. “It just about made me weep to see how these people, trying to serve, were treated,” Beyer said.

On another street, a single mom, Kamyia Whitehead, sat on a rattan bench outside her stone-arched doorway. She talked about the time police offered to take her home after she reported a family altercation. But they wouldn’t pass the barricades, so she had to walk several blocks in the dark. “I felt safer when I lived in Chicago,” said Whitehead, who is black. “It’s like a war zone here many nights. I’m afraid for my children.” She feels no safer since the Chauvin verdict.

In the square, signs and spray-painted slogans cover walls and pavement. Portraits of black men who’ve been killed around the country sit amid flowers surrounding the raised fist monument in the square’s center. Billboards displaying Floyd’s face tower above Cup Foods, the store outside which he died. A now-closed Speedway gas station’s sign now reads “Peoplesway.”

Owners of five businesses I spoke with here want the police back. Although they also want police reform and some kind of memorial for Floyd, they say the neighborhood needs protection and streets must reopen. At least five shops in the barricaded zone are shuttered. Dwight Alexander and his wife Ivy own Smoke in the Pit restaurant. They’ve thrived here for eight years, but since barricades went up business is down 75 percent, they said. Other businesses have suffered similarly.

A small building between shops houses Agape Movement, a nonprofit trying to bridge law enforcement and the community. Agape workers, many of whom are former gang members, act as security patrols under contract with the city to help keep peace. They are not opposed to police (and are not aligned with protesters’ demands to dismantle the whole system) but prefer police respond only for life-threatening situations. Mostly, they encourage young men to leave gangs, providing solutions like faith, mental health training, employment, and life skills.

Agape senior adviser Steve Floyd (no relation to George Floyd) stands on Agape’s front steps. He says police are in a difficult spot: Every time a shooting occurs between a black person and police anywhere in the nation, officers grow more wary of entering the neighborhood, concerned their presence may provoke more violence. Agape meets weekly with Police Chief Arradondo to talk about promoting peace.

PERCEPTIONS ABOUT what’s going on among police, residents, and protesters vary widely, especially over whether police can easily enter the zone. The city declares no autonomous zone exists, yet barricades and protesters remain. A walk through the neighborhood shows lawns and walls displaying signs with slogans such as “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards), “F12” (F-bomb the police), and “No Justice No Streets,” the activists’ rallying cry. Many properties show no slurs or slogans.

Police spokesman John Elder says police and first responders do enter the area, but protesters interfere. He mentioned a recent incident when activists tried to disrupt an EMS responder who was helping an injured man. Because citywide crime is up and staffing is down, response times have lagged. Residents, though, say police rarely come after 911 calls, or sometimes instruct them to meet outside the barricades.

A local Minneapolis radio station recently published audio from police radios during a domestic assault victim’s 911 call in late April: “Is it possible to have her move at least a block away maybe 38th and 10th?” “Copy, she is bleeding and cut everywhere, but we’ll call her back and ask her to move a block away.”

In March, by Cup Foods, a gang member from the local Rolling 30s Bloods shot a former member, Imez Wright, who had left the gang and was mentoring young black men with a nonprofit, Change Inc. When police responded, protesters interfered, says Elder. Others had already taken Wright to a local hospital, where he died.

Residents I spoke with, who are afraid to speak publicly, say onlookers disturbed the Wright crime scene, pocketing shell casings to thwart police. Surveillance video captured the shooting, and police later arrested a suspect in a northern suburb.

Brassfield, the Beyers’ neighbor, says he was at a meeting where a young girl spoke openly about removing bullet casings from the murder scene of Dameon Chambers, a black man killed here last summer during the Juneteenth holiday. That crime remains unsolved, a point of contention with activists who say police delayed emergency workers. The city says emergency workers couldn’t get to Chambers, and police had to pull him to a waiting ambulance.

Protest spokeswoman Marcia Howard is a local resident on leave from teaching English in a public high school. She contends police can cross barricades but often don’t because they want to make protesters look bad.

The protesters hold meetings twice daily. Howard maintains everyone is welcome, but Beyer says when he attended and brought up safety issues, they quickly started chanting “No justice, no peace.” That chant has morphed to “No justice, no streets.” He says last summer some protesters asked, “How do we get rid of all the evangelicals?” referring to church groups that came to share their faith or hand out food. Howard told me she sees churches as part of a “segregated system.”

When Brassfield raised concerns, he says, protesters called him a white supremacist. He stopped attending meetings, fearing for his safety. He says other residents share his fear: “We talked about banding together to speak up and I tried starting a texting group, but it gets to a point where you’re afraid to say anything, even to neighbors.”

Brassfield is convinced many activists moved in after the riots started so they could be part of the movement. He says when residents in the apartments next door left, new ones moved in whom he now sees with activists. He, Beyer, and Floyd say most protesters, other than the leaders, are white. Howard insists only residents are in the movement, but avoids saying how long they’ve lived here.

Two young white men manning the plywood shack at the blockade by the Beyers’ house repeat “No justice, no streets” when I ask why they are there. One, a 27-year-old self-described unemployed resident, twirls a batonlike staff and cheerfully talks about how he enjoys living for a higher purpose.

Beyer describes the beliefs of activists he’s talked with or observed as anti-capitalist and polarizing: “If you’re not completely on board with everything they want, you’re racist. They want to tear the entire system down and start over.”

Protest spokeswoman Howard claims the group has no leaders. She repeatedly asserts “the powers that be” are the problem, and when asked whom she means, tells me “the whole entire country, systemic racism, white supremacy.” As to what should replace the current system, she says, “That’s what you have to figure out. … How do you replace disenfranchisement?” She identifies her only worldview as “black” and talks about plantation politics and colonialism ruining the country.

The protesters have posted their 24 demands on whiteboards at the barricades, periodically checking off demands they believe the city has met. Demands have included firing the Hennepin County attorney, ending qualified immunity for police officers, declaring a moratorium on property tax increases for residents of George Floyd Square for two years, and keeping the site closed until trials for all four police officers present during George Floyd’s death are complete. Howard maintains she and other activists won’t budge on them, but later says they might negotiate. When asked what she and the occupiers will do if the city doesn’t have the authority or funds to satisfy all demands—some require state, federal, and even voter action—she replies, “No justice, no streets.”

MEANWHILE, the Minneapolis City Council and the mayor are arguing about who should have more control over police and city decisions. The mayor wants to reassert his executive power as the 14-member council continues its infighting, often over defunding the police. Both the mayor and the council may put their own proposals on a November ballot. Neither the mayor’s office nor council members responded to my numerous calls for comment.

Residents I talked with in the community don’t want to wait for the city to make police funding and reform decisions before the streets open, which the city has promised to do since August.

In mid-May, residents met with the mayor’s assistant at the home of Monica Nilsson to express concerns about continued crime and to push for reopening streets. Nilsson runs a housing shelter and has become an advocate for neighbors who want streets opened and a police presence. She says the assistant confirmed the mayor wants streets opened but has revealed no plan for working with demonstrators.

One idea Nilsson and other residents support: turn the former Speedway gas station into a center for racial reconciliation, moving the George Floyd memorial out of traffic patterns while still recognizing the site.

Meanwhile, Curtis Farrar, a black pastor whose church sits near where Floyd died, says he’s not political and isn’t taking sides. Instead, he’ll keep preaching, saying Jesus is the only one who can heal the city. For 39 years Farrar has pastored Worldwide Outreach for Christ and leads gang members to claim Christ as their new identity.

A recent Saturday found Farrar and his wife, Pam, along with the church’s multiracial worship band, leading a time of praise and prayer, serving food, and handing out groceries in the church parking lot. At one point, he called for attendees to join hands, making a huge circle to join him in prayer. As he had told me earlier, “God made us all from the same blood.”

—WORLD has updated this story to correct the spelling of Keith and Bethany Beyer’s last name.