Not calling 911 a hard call

A Minneapolis neighborhood’s vow to check its privilege already being tested

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The scores of police killings they have seen in the news in recent years were not one-off incidents but part of a systemic problem of the dehumanization of Black people by the police.

In the city where the movement began, residents are not surprised that it is being taken especially seriously in Powderhorn Park, just blocks from Floyd’s deadly encounter with the police. For decades, the community has been a refuge for scrappy workingclass activists with far-left politics. The biggest day of the year, locals often boast, is the May Day parade celebrating laborers.

Although it is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Minneapolis, with Black residents making up about 17% of the population, white people make up the largest group. About one-third of the population is Latino.

Since the camp appeared, the community has organized shifts for delivering warm meals, medical care and counseling to people living in the park. They persuaded officials to back off an eviction notice served shortly after the campers arrived.

But many in the neighborhood, who were already beleaguered from the financial stresses of the coronavirus, now say they are eager for the campers to move on to stable housing away from the park.

“I’m not being judgmental,” said Carrie Nightshade, 44, who explained that she no longer felt comfortable letting her children, 12 and 9, play in the park by themselves. “It’s not personal. It’s just not safe.”

On Friday, she sat in a shared backyard with four other women who live in neighboring houses. The women, four of whom are white, had called a meeting to vent about the camp. offer to bring him back to the hospital. He refused, so they kicked him out on a rainy night.”

The impulse many white feel uncomfortable, but also that of people living outside without protection. Cullumber agreed.

Some people of color in the neighborhood, however, said they were skeptical that the community would allow the encampment to stay.

“This thing is probably going to last two or three weeks,” said Aza Ochoa, a Mexican and Native American father who was walking through the park with his three children, 12, 11 and 6.

Several Spanish-speaking members of the community said they had not been able to take part in collective discussions about the camp because they were in English.

Akhmiri Sekhr-Ra, a Black woman who rented in Powderhorn Park for 10 years, said she was making plans to move back with her daughter. Though Sekhr-Ra said she has had a personal no-police policy for years, she questioned whether her white former neighbors would be able to stick to theirs.

“If something really goes down that makes people uncomfortable, I think they’re going to call,” she said.

JENN ACKERMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMES PHOTOS Homeless people — displaced during the unrest that gripped Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd — brought their tents and problems to the Powderhorn Park neighborhood.

The influx of outsiders worries Shari Albers even as she fears what police could do to minorities.

Sheldon Stately Sr., who grew up in the neighborhood, now lives at the homeless encampment in Powderhorn Park.

Joseph Menkevich believes he had no choice but to call 911 on the Black man passed out in the elevator of his building.