A Taste of Anarchy

I wrote this on Thursday and Friday. My perspective has changed radically today, Saturday, as the riots have grown. I'm in a much more sober, scared mood. But I think this is still worth posting as a look into one mindset behind the unrest.

My employer shut down its construction operations Thursday afternoon because of the riots. I was working out in Hugo, a small town well north of St. Paul. I hadn’t been following the news closely, so I only had a vague sense of how extensive the looting and arson were. We took off at 2pm, so I probably got home around 2:30.

I live in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, about a mile from the Third Precinct, the epicenter of the uprising sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Everything seemed tranquil. I tried to catch up with the news at my apartment.

When I saw the reports that looting had spread to St. Paul, I thought anarchy must be engulfing the Twin Cities. The police had secured Maplewood Mall and Rosedale (another mall). It reminded me of The Simpsons episode when Helen Lovejoy keeps crying, “Won’t someone please think of the children?!” Won’t someone please think of the malls?!

My roommate Kenny showed up with his bike in tow. He said he’d been to the Third Precinct and that the scene was crazy. I decided to have a look for myself. My anxiety was piqued, but I thought staying home just thinking about the riots would be worse.

I started by biking to 38th and Chicago. I didn’t even know that was where George Floyd had died. I just knew it was a locus of protest. I crossed Lake Street to get there, which I expected to be a war zone from all the reports I’d seen that day, but it looked normal to me. It was busy, but that’s typical for 4pm on a weekday.

The Midtown Global Market and a warehouse towered overhead. I headed south of Lake, down a residential street. There was a guy just mowing his lawn, as normal as could be. I thought the MSM had seriously exaggerated the threat. I didn’t see the protest until I was 3 blocks away, and I got no sense of menace from it.

There were a few cars parked in the middle of the road in all 4 directions to block off the intersection. Maybe a few hundred people were gathered to listen to a Black woman on a mic with a PA. There were some tables set up on the sidewalk behind her with water bottles and other things I couldn't identify.

The crowd was racially diverse: Whites, Blacks, Latinx, etc. There were some White girls with dyed-pink dreds standing in front of me. Almost everybody had a mask on, which I’ve come to think of as a political signifier as much as a safety measure. I put my mask on when I got there.

It was an open mic, the woman said, so they had other people speak, all of them Black for the half-hour I was there. One lady had us raise our arms, lean back and face the sun (which was at our backs) and then bend over to touch our toes. It was like a sun salutation in yoga. Then we put our right hand on our heart. It was like doing the Pledge of Allegiance except the opposite, because we were trying to get our country to pledge allegiance to us.

Another Black lady exhorted Black people to get their GED and go to college. She wanted them to put down their phone and pick up a book. The one man who spoke had on a shirt with the Wu-Tang Clan “W” that said “Wakanda.” He had us raise our right fist in the air. I joined in for that, but I was wary of letting go of my bike. It’s just some middle-class suburban paranoia, but it’s hard to shake.

I was trying to let down my defenses. But it’s not easy to do that while wearing a mask. It enhances my sense of social distance from others. If they can’t see me at least try to smile, then how can I put them at ease? Somebody told me last year that I have a “mean stare.” I don’t want that to be all people can see of my face. That’s the main reason I don’t always wear a mask in public. The mask also makes me anxious, reminding me of the seriousness of our situation. These aren’t excuses, just explanations.

At 4:40 pm, I moved on, kinda disappointed that I seemed to have missed the excitement. After a few blocks of mask-less biking, I realized that the Third Precinct wasn’t at 38th and Chicago. I looked it up on my phone and discovered it was next to my local Target and Cub Foods, my primary grocery store. I’d planned to check it out anyway, having heard about the looting there.

I got on the Greenway and headed east. The Midtown Greenway is a block north of Lake Street and occupies a former rail line. It’s in a trench dug out for the railroad over a century ago, so you get to bike under bridges in a grassy little valley. It’s very nice. I passed a collection of tents some houseless people were living in. That’s a new development to me. I’ve only seen that this year on the Greenway.

I took a bike and pedestrian bridge over Hiawatha (a highway) to the strip mall where my Target and Cub are located. I couldn’t see anything from the bridge, but that’s where I found all the excitement. That’s what all the hubbub was about.

I came around the back of the mall. There was some graffiti, but nothing serious. When I turned the corner into the parking lot, then I understood what Kenny and the MSM had been talking about. There were people walking toward and past me, some carrying clothes and other wares. 

Slowly, it dawned on me. Oh, wait. These are looters. But they weren’t the evil, greedy people I’d been told about (a label that, ironically, far more accurately applies to the people doing the labeling and trying to maintain the status quo). They were just regular folks, basically the same people I saw shopping at that Target and Cub on a normal day.

They weren’t the scum of the earth. Many of them were smiling, not maniacally, but in a dizzy, giddy glee at this momentary upturning of the System. I felt it too, but it scared me at first. They had violated the sacred code of Private Property. As a middle-class, straight, White, cis-gender male, when push comes to shove, I’ll often cling to the System for protection. To see it overthrown like this was terrifying, dizzying and exhilarating.

I saw the steaming ruins of the Auto Zone across the street from the Target parking lot. It gave the scene the look of a war zone. I wasn’t sure if I’d be safe, if someone would push me off my bike and abscond with it, maybe beat me up. But that didn’t seem to be happening to anyone else, so I kept biking through the parking lot.

There was a line of cars slowly moving toward the Target entrance. I passed through them. A car with teenagers hanging out the windows and whooping it up, hootering and hollering, drove over a median in the lot, but in a surprisingly careful manner. So, yes, there were some hijinks, some unfettered hurly-burly, but not the unrestrained bacchanalia one might expect.

I kept biking to the intersection between the strip mall and the precinct. There was a truck broadcasting a message from a disembodied man. I couldn’t tell if he was on the scene, in the truck or in some remote location. It said something like “Mad Dads” on the side. Many of the hundreds gathered in the intersection were listening.

When I got to the intersection, I put my mask back on. There wasn’t a lot of social distancing going on, but a lot of people were wearing masks. I hope I didn’t get the ‘Rona there. That would suck.

I got off my bike and walked over to the precinct. A crush of people stood vigil opposite a line of silent, motionless police officers. It looked like the cops were in riot gear and had clubs at the ready. The people keeping the police at bay all seemed to be wearing black. I could’ve sworn someone was playing NWA’s “Fuck tha Police.”

The racial mix was just as diverse as at the other protest site. There was a White gutterpunk guy walking around, carrying those little milk cartons they have at schools and offering them to people. There was a table with young women offering free stuff, mainly water. I saw gallon jugs of milk under the table, behind the “Free Stuff” sign. A young woman in the crowd took a picture of the police with her middle finger in the foreground.

The man speaking through the truck said this was our community and we shouldn’t be burning down buildings. That got a round of applause. He encouraged us to help the people picking up litter. The truckman’s words were then accompanied by Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” I saw an orange peel on the street, picked it up and put it in the trash bag held by a Black man in his 20’s or 30’s, thanking him.

I took a picture of the Auto Zone’s smoking remains. There are suspicions that the arsonists might’ve been undercover cops. Given the history of police in this country, it wouldn’t surprise me. They haven’t exactly bathed themselves in glory, especially in recent decades.

Then I biked toward the Cub Foods 2 blocks away. Along the way was another burned-out shell of a building. I think it had been an apartment complex still under construction. I’m not surprised if protesters set that one on fire. I’ve certainly resented how apartment buildings have shot up like weeds in Minneapolis for the last 15 years while rents have shot up almost as fast.

On the berm at the end of the Target parking lot, someone was lying on the ground having an emergency of some kind as people gathered around trying to help them. A woman in a hijab driving a minivan was filming the scene on her phone as she glacially turned through an intersection. Her attention was fixed on her phone and not at all on the road. The weird part was the cars behind her didn’t honk at her to hurry up.

I got to the Cub and took pictures of the graffiti and shattered windows. A young woman said “sorry” for walking in front of my picture. Bemused, I said, “No prob.” There was a group of people near the Cub exit. The entrance was blocked by shopping carts and hastily-posted police tape. The windows were all smashed. A few people were coming out of the store.

The parking lot had some parked cars and people milling about. I biked over to the Target entrance. Cars slowly drove through the lot. It wasn’t the kind of chaos you would expect in a “riot.” (Frankly, I think riots get a bad name. The Clash were pro-riot, as illustrated by their song, “White Riot.” “Riot” doesn’t have to be pejorative. Embrace it!) Someone was playing Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.”

Honestly, I couldn’t tell if people were actually playing these songs or if I was hallucinating them, because they were all the exact kind of songs I would expect to hear in a riot. (I’m surprised I didn’t imagine someone playing Rage Against the Machine.)

There was a guy in a delivery van who pulled up to the Cub entrance and was taking pictures with his phone. I saw a young woman lazily drive by. She appeared to be smoking marijuana. I think she was just digging the scene. I couldn’t blame her. It was intoxicating, addictive.

The Target façade was covered in graffiti. The inside was dark. People were walking in and out of the entrance. I saw exactly one person run during my half-hour in this free-for-all. Everyone else was moving at a leisurely pace.

I walked up to a window with a group of people standing in front of it. The glass was gone. We were all taking pictures and video as people went in and out the window. A group of 3 White guys in their 20’s came out with some clothes and the top half of a mannequin. A guy outside exclaimed, “You got a mannequin!” The looter responded, “I’m takin’ this baby home!” They were smiling.

 

There was a shallow layer of water on the floor and cellophane-sealed sandwiches strewn about. It was smoky inside for some reason, but there was enough light to see a few people walking around. (I can’t stress this enough: NO ONE WAS RUNNING! So get that looter stereotype out of your heads, my fellow bourgeoisie!)

I walked my bike along the sidewalk with the people leaving Target. A steady stream of folks was still flowing past us, toward the entrance, as well as that line of cars I’d encountered when I first arrived on the scene. The employee entrance was open, around which lay a pool of water and clothes. A guy grabbed a push broom and started sweeping the clothes away (or was it toward?) the door. I have no idea what he was trying to accomplish.

Then I turned the corner and was heading back out the way I came. As if on cue, police sirens sounded in the distance, and that’s when people started running. But there were still smiles all around, even from the guys trying to convince the girls they were with to jump in their car.

I headed back up the bike trail, north on Hiawatha to my apartment. The back of the strip mall was all I could see now. Whatever hasty retreat might’ve been unfolding was out of view. But I’d gotten my fill of anarchy. It gave me a strong feeling of freedom, and I knew that, in time, I’d want more.

The Powers That Be had better hope we don’t develop a taste for this kind of anarchy. In the absence of Law and Order, there was no descent into barbarism that I could see. I’m not saying that situation would’ve lasted forever, but it was a powerful lesson, even for just a half-hour.

It’s also a dangerous lesson, because it teaches people that the rules that are supposed to protect them are actually holding them back. The same System that has protected me has also forced me to collaborate in a ruthless, heartless empire (which is redundant, because all empires are ruthless and heartless). As I (and the empire) get older, the costs of that bargain grow while the benefits shrink.

Before the riots, I spent a lot of time at that strip mall, going to Cub and Target, but I was never comfortable there. There was always a sense of poverty and despair. I sat in the Starbucks in that Target a few times, and the tables were mainly occupied by poor people. Some would be chatting, but most of them would just sit there alone, looking forlorn. My shock isn’t that they finally rose up and destroyed this arrangement (even if only temporarily), but that they waited this long.

My familiarity with the area also gave me a sense of the possibilities of revolution. (That surely also contributed to my sense of disorientation.) Before, it was just my usual grocery store and the nearest Target. Now it’s a scene of civil unrest, where the police have been defeated.

Earlier that day, I’d heard one of our U.S. senators, Tina Smith, condemn the violence on MPR (Minnesota Public Radio). After seeing the riot firsthand, I have no patience with her pleading. She’s done more damage with a single vote (for the CARES Act, for the USMCA, for the take-your-pick-of-bills) than the rest of us could do in a lifetime.

And she sees no problem with exporting violence to other countries. Do you not see the inconsistency, Senator Smith? Do you not understand why we ignore you? Why you don’t have a moral leg to stand on?

The riots are a predictable outcome of a culture that values profit over people. The violence we wage across the globe (for profit and power, not peace) has boomeranged on us. We thought if we fought them over there, we wouldn't have to fight them here. But the war zone was here all along. The only difference is that now the resistance has decided to strike back against the empire in the only language the empire understands: force.