[151/366] Minneapolis

Woke up this morning to friends in Minneapolis worried that their homes might end up on fire. I stayed in bed for a while because it was still early, but I didn't go back to sleep.

The fires aren't part of protests or even riots any more; they're out-and-out white fash descending on the city from outstate and other states enitirely -- notoriously, St. Paul arrested a bunch of people yesterday and none of them were from Minnesota. Hearing about people from Missouri and Arkansas being arrested chilled my blood; the idea that people would decide to travel that far just to fuck shit up is sinister. THey were strategically setting fires at gas stations and then, as firefighters rightly flocked to contain that, systematically burning entire blocks of shops and homes nearby. No cops anywhere to be seen. People were trying to protect their buildings and manage fires themselves with their garden hoses and home fire extinguishers.

The social media takes have gotten particularly bad today too. My friends who live there have been fighting some noxious ideas: that this is just white people scared of the reality black people have been living (the affected neighborhoods are heavily POC, immigrant, and low-income). People are being scolded to blame the police and not the protesters as if they haven't been doing that all along -- even the mayor and governor have been saying that. Some people still seem to be cheering all the pictures of fires on social media, a burning low-income apartment building has been mislabeled as a police station. Corners of social media are mocking people afraid for their homes as coddled and white, white people are angry at having their own communities splained to them, and badly. Yes "Stonewall was a riot" but that doesn't mean all riots are Stonewall, and not all arson and looting is riots.

It's all just a mess, and it was poisoning my brain. Which is not what I need at the best of times, and today is not those: it's the halfway point in the week I have to do my Historical Syntax open-book exam, and I'm still at the point where I have no idea what two of the questions are asking of me. It's almost like not paying attention for half a semester has consequences! I've had a miserable time trying to make sense of what I'm being asked to do. Like last week, I'm putting in a lot of effort but finding out eventually that I'm not on the right track and can't use any of it.

diffrentcolours knew how much I was struggling to concentrate on anything rather than doomscrolling, so suggested he donate some money to a cause I could research and recommend to him, something that would materially help and maybe then also help me get all this out of my head a bit.

He had listened to me talk a lot about ordinary people having to try to protect their homes/businesses/community assets and wondered if there was anything we could throw money at to help in those efforts. But it's so ad-hoc, it seems to be so informal and very local; I haven't been able to find an existing organization that's coordinating such protective efforts and would let us give money online. I'm going to suggest this which will help repair the damage that has been done if we can't stop it from happening in the first place.

But just being able to look into this and not feel completely helpless really was good for my brain so I'm grateful for the opportunity to do that.