‘Our city has become a warzone’

KATIE MCMAHON IS LIVING IN SOUTH MINNEAPOLIS, JUST A FEW BLOCKS FROM WHERE GEORGE FLOYD LOST HIS LIFE

FOR Katie McMahon, seeing her adopted city of Minneapolis, Minnesota – where she lives just a few blocks from where George Floyd died last week – being engulfed in flames and destroyed by night after night of looting has been a “terrifying” experience.

Katie is a Dublin woman by birth but wears her strong Kerry connections – her parents have lived in Ballinskelligs for the past 30 years and she herself spent every summer as a child in the area – proudly on her sleeve.

Speaking to The Kerryman from her home – where she lives with her husband and two children – Katie said that the mood in the city is one of sadness at what happened to George Floyd and unbridled anger at the man accused of killing him.

That man is the now-former police officer Derek Chauvin – seen on video footage kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck – and he has since been arrested on murder and manslaughter charges.

“Many of us have attended peaceful protests,” she said.

“I have to admit that I was nervous about attending, because we are very much still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic here and also because my town felt like a tinderbox that was ready to explode,” Katie added.

“Luckily a small protest popped up right across the road from where I live, and I was able to protest there and express my solidarity with George Floyd,” she continued.

Most of us have undoubtedly seen the images on our TVs over the last few days of damage to buildings, destroyed shop fronts and huge crowds of rioters on the streets of cities right across America, but for Katie, living through this and experiencing it first hand has been terrifying and surreal.

“Now though, we have been through an entirely different and new experience – that of our city becoming a warzone, which has been terrifying. We are on our fourth night of curfew, and every night you can hear distant helicopters, and when the fires were at their worst, we had chunks of ash in our garden the next day. Some of my friends have even lost their small businesses in the chaos,” she said.

“Every day we have wonderful peaceful protests, but then at night some of the young peaceful protesters ignore the curfew, and I wish they wouldn’t because it’s harder for the police to distinguish peaceful protesters from violent people.

“The last two nights have been quiet with no fires, thank God,” she said.

Katie finished by saying that the lack of trust towards police officers is now at an all-time high and that the riots, combined with what she called the “nastiness” of President Trump’s “terrible” leadership and the ongoing stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said that America is on its knees and she hopes that this is not the ultimate downfall of it as we know it.

Personally, I am exhausted, sad, angry and afraid. This is not the same country that I moved to 20 years ago.

Some of the scenes from the riots that have taken place in Minneapolis over the last week following the death of George Floyd. Katie McMahon is living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.