Read on Twitter
A thread capturing part of our conversation with former Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles-Belton. It's lengthy, but the context is crucial: "I grew up as a teenager right in that neighborhood where George Floyd was killed. I grew up at 40th and 4th Avenue. My first home I lived...
2/"...in was at 38th and Oakland, and I would walk on a regular basis to the corner of 38th and Chicago. I knew that corner like the back of my hand. I was the Council member representing that area in the early 80s...I watched and participated with my constituents in the...
3/"...transformation of Lake Street. Remember it was a corridor of adult book stores and pornography...and we ran all those businesses out of there and brought him a whole new Lake Street, Chicago and Lake, that burned (last month). This my neighborhood that I represented....
4/"...the area down by Hiawatha and Lake Street. This was a part of our plan as South Side representatives to rebuild that corridor. So much of the work that I did over the 18 years I was in City Hall I watched burn up in those two nights. And I will tell you I was furious....
5/"...I was so furious that I got on the phone and I called everybody that I could to say, 'Where is the city? Who's out here in front of the crowd and helping the crowd to know you can't do that here? Protest yes, but you cannot burn our community down.' I was angry...I was...
6/"...really upset about it. I've been in conversations with some of my old team members and we were asking ourselves the question: Who was running the emergency command center? We did a lot of scenario planning around all kinds of catastrophes. This was a major one but there...
7/"...should have been a game plan for how the city was gonna handle this, and I don't know if there was, and that disturbs me greatly. Everybody can make a mistake. I probably had a whole list of mistakes that can people can start challenging me on about my service...
8/"...to the city, but I thought our initial response was poor....I'm not gonna put that just on Jacob (Frey), but the city's response was inadequate....look at the wage of the damage. It's just horrific...they burned down an affordable housing unit that was under construction...
9/"...what sense does that make?....and this about this: This is all happening in an environment where we're suffering through a pandemic. We're already broke. We're already stressed out about having trouble making ends meet, and now we lose a significant part of the...
10/"...infrastructure to support it. This is a major tragedy. The other thing I'm gonna say: We are a resilient community and gave me much joy to be out there on Saturday and see thousands, literally thousands of people all across the Twin Cities out along Lake Street...
11/"...picking up debris...When we get through it all, we want to see a police department that respects us. We want to see solutions to the mentally ill, the chemically dependent, the poor and the ignored are being addressed and in incrementally, but in a significant...
12/"...and meaningful way, not with a band-aid but with a real solution. This is our time to push." The former Mayor, clearly still angered by the killing of George Floyd, closed with this: "Rhetoric is important in a moment, but it's time to set the rhetoric aside and...
13/"...actually do the hard work, to get the resolutions and solutions, the new visions, the reform that we want on the table. And i don't want to see the City Council try to jam down our throats dismantling the Police Department. You wanna talk about that kind of rhetoric...
14/"...tell me what your solution is, and don't break it down until you have a plan to build it up."
