Small Home Gazette, Summer 2020
Letter From the Editor: Shaping Our Community
Dear Twin Cities Bungalow Club Members,
Now that the looting has ended and the fires are out in our Longfellow neighborhood, I want to check in. Are you OK? Do you feel safe after the civil unrest? Are you back to feeling comfortable? While I hope you are safe, please don’t get comfortable.
Riots ravaged my neighborhood after the murder of George Floyd on May 25, under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. My husband Pete and I live less than half a mile from the former Third Police Precinct and three blocks south from the looted and burned-out Walgreens drugstore on Lake Street. We love our walkable neighborhood where I once came across a street sign shortly after we moved here 17 years ago, proudly announcing Longfellow as “A Traditional Bungalow Community.”
Our neighborhood group calls itself “Wonderland,” a nod to the former Wonderland Amusement Park, which operated from 1905 to 1911 on this land before our homes were built. Wonderland came together, neighbor joining neighbor, to make sure we were safe. Now, we are working together to help our neighborhood rebuild and to make sure we don’t get comfortable.
We are no longer living in a war zone with the constant sound of either news station or National Guard Blackhawk helicopters flying overhead. We no longer schedule shifts among neighbors to ensure someone is watching each street and alley at all hours throughout the night, preventing harm and reporting suspicious activity.
The author, after standing guard all night at Longfellow Market, and then hosing down a house next to a burning Walgreens.
Thursday, May 28, Pete and I joined neighbors who kept an all-night vigil at Longfellow Market, the last unvandalized grocery store in our neighborhood. After two hours sleep the following morning, I saw billowing smoke and went toward it, finding a garden hose to spray water on the house next to the burning Walgreens to prevent it from catching fire until the firefighters arrived. I alternated between thinking, I hope I don’t cause water damage and why did you side with vinyl? It’s going to melt and put out toxic fumes.
Friday evening, I walked with a friend to witness the Lake Street devastation. Walking past a line of National Guard soldiers, we thanked them for helping to restore peace to the neighborhood. Two young women told us we shouldn’t thank them for bringing their military dominance and called us “gentrifiers.” That evening I stopped a protester cutting through my yard. The skinny young white boy was running from the protest after it turned violent. We talked about the goals of the protest and the devastation of my neighborhood until his dad came to bring him home to Coon Rapids.
Our night watches continued during the state mandated curfews throughout the weekend, as Longfellow was terrorized by people driving vehicles without license plates or with out-of-state plates who crept down our alleys or sped down our streets, looking to start fires or vandalize buildings.
Oh Wonderland, so much has changed here.
I cried that Monday when mail was first delivered to our home after our post office was burned down. I celebrated when buses were rerouted down our street and US Bank brought out a mobile banking unit, returning services to our neighborhood. I cried when a friend who is a finish carpenter called, asking who he could contact so he and his trade buddies could offer free construction services to rebuild Lake Street businesses.
If you were one of the helpers, thank you. Thousands of people showed up each morning after the riots with garbage bags and brooms to clean up Lake Street; donated food, supplies and money to people in need; and donated money or services to rebuild damaged businesses.
A bungalow in the Longfellow neighborhood.
If you were one of the thousands of people who showed up to peacefully protest injustice and police brutality, thank you. Some would say many of the white people who live here are just waking up to the long history of injustice toward people of color in this neighborhood. Others remind us this land was stolen from the Ojibwe people. Should we really be calling our blocks Wonderland? White people of privilege, like myself, for the first time in our lives have felt vulnerable and insecure. Violence surrounded us, and we were not supported. We felt trauma from aggressive behaviors. People of color have long had these experiences across centuries of systems designed to provide white people with power. Practices such as slavery; covenants that prevented non-whites from buying certain properties (Longfellow had the first racial covenant in Minneapolis and was one of the racial covenant hotspots); redlining—a practice that denies financial and other services based on race or ethnicity; and America’s War on Drugs.
Neighbors who joined together to protect our community during the riots have decided to keep coming together to rebuild Longfellow—re-establishing the business district and building a better community. We are learning that not being a racist isn’t enough. We need to be anti-racist. We need to actively engage with those who have been working to fight racism and intervene when we witness racism.
While our bungalows are comfortably snug, please don’t retreat into the comfort of yours. Join with the Longfellow community, as we work to be anti-racists. Let’s build a future where everyone has the equal opportunity to enjoy the Twin Cities’ bungalow communities.
Educational Resources
- “Are you racist? ‘No’ isn’t a good enough answer.” YouTube. tinyurl.com/jv9cegg
- “Guide to Antiracism.” Ibram X. Kendi on the solution for America’s “metastatic” racism. CBS This Morning. tinyurl.com/y9xkghdl
- How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendri. An e-book from Hennepin County Library.
- “Mapping Prejudice: Visualizing the hidden histories of race and privilege in the urban landscape.” University of Minnesota. tinyurl.com/y7mnp3xg
- “Minneapolis Police Use Force Against Black People at 7 Times the Rate of Whites.” The New York Times. tinyurl.com/yahzyfap
- “Redlining: The Jim Crow Laws of the North.” PBS. tinyurl.com/yag5sm5a
Donations
- Du Nord Riot Recovery Fund, tinyurl.com/y8wt8ye4
- Lake Street Council, welovelakestreet.com
- Longfellow Business Association, longfellowbusinessassociation.org
