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WOKE DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. One of the most extraordinary stories to come out of the recent national unrest following the death of George Floyd came from a leafy neighborhood in Minneapolis called Powderhorn Park. After the Floyd incident, the residents, who are largely white progressives, decided that they would no longer call police if they needed help or if crime threatened them. “Doing so, they believed, would add to the pain that black residents of Minneapolis were feeling and could put them in danger,” the New York Times reported.
Word got around. Homeless people flooded into the neighborhood park — there are now about 300 living in tents. Some are mentally ill. Some are addicted to drugs or alcohol. “Their presence has drawn heavy car traffic into the neighborhood, some from drug dealers,” the Times reported. “At least two residents have overdosed in the encampment and had to be taken away in ambulances.”
That has made some of the residents a bit nervous. Of course they want to take a stand against the police — what progressive doesn’t these days? — but it really is a bit scary. So the new neighbors are not quite as welcome as they were just a week or two ago. “I’m not being judgmental,” one resident told the Times, explaining why she not longer let her children play alone in the park. “It’s not personal. It’s just not safe.”
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Some residents feel so conflicted about it that they are bursting into tears. They want to believe the best about their new neighbors — that their problems are the result of systematic oppression — but they’re still concerned for their safety and their children’s safety.
And then there was Mitchell Erickson. Last week, according to the Times, “two black teenagers who looked to be 15, at most, cornered him outside his home a block away from the park. One of the boys pointed a gun at Mr. Erickson’s chest, demanding his car keys.” Scared, Erickson handed over some keys, but they were the keys to his house, not his car. The boys headed off to steal somebody else’s car.
Here was Erickson’s dilemma: He called 911, but he felt terrible about doing it. He decided that “he would not cooperate with prosecutors in the case against the boys,” the Times said. And then he took a hard look at himself. Why had he called the cops? “I regret calling the police,” Erickson told the Times. “It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”
They pointed a gun at him, but he worries that he put them in danger? Could anything be more representative of the kind of thinking that the current atmosphere has produced?
MEANWHILE, ON THE MONUMENT DESTRUCTION WATCH: There are reports that the Trump administration has ordered U.S. Marshals to help protect national monuments in danger from violent mobs. Here’s one test: Protesters have vowed to tear down the Washington DC Emancipation Memorial. They’ve even set a time. “Thursday at 7:00 p.m., we’re tearing this motherf–ker down,” one organizer said.
The statue depicts Abraham Lincoln with an emancipated slave kneeling at his feet. It was dedicated in 1876 — Frederick Douglass spoke at the ceremony — and is a major landmark in Washington’s Lincoln Park. So now protesters say they will take it down, just like they have ripped down so many historic statues around the country. The statue is on federal land, and will have to be protected by the federal government; the Washington DC police cannot be depended on to do it. So what will happen Thursday at 7:00 p.m.?
