Laura Jean

This is raw. You'll just have to deal with it, as we are living in extraordinary times here.

My brother came out to Minneapolis this past week from his home just outside New York City, as he does every couple months or so to see my 97-year old mother. The two of us went out for breakfast on Saturday morning. He asked me what it has been like.

I told him.

The two things I think that have shocked my naive white lady ass the most, I told him, is that we are under attack from our own federal government.

And that they are LYING so shamelessly and contemptuously about everything going on.

You think I would know better by now. I remember how everyone on the staff for my employer (the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) gathered in 2016 to listen to the verdict for the trial of the killing of Philandro Castile on the radio, and how shocked I was that Yanez was acquitted. And how even more shocked I felt when my Black co-worker said, "I'm not surprised in the least."

And in the years that followed, I started to better understand what she meant. When George Floyd was killed, I saw that cops lie about everything. I dove even harder into doing the work of deconstructing my own inner racism, which I had already started under the direction of my employer. I started to get a glimmer of what it might be like, from listening to Black activists in that aftermath, to live in a society where the government is absolutely not here to help or support you. They are here to attack and oppress you, and they will cut you down if you stand in their way.

But it is only the past couple of months that I have started to experience what it is like when the government's malevolence is turned on people exactly like me personally.

ICE vehicles race up and down the streets in my neighborhood, blowing through stop signs and red lights. Helicopters and drones hover in the sky over me. There are smashed cars all around me. And there are signs tacked on trees and fences reading, "Our neighbor was kidnapped here." One of those sites is a mere block away from me. Businesses I've frequented and loved for years are closing, unable to stay open in the face of the government's determination to kidnap their employees and ruin them.

When I went home after that breakfast with my brother, I learned of the death of Alex Pretti. I went by the corner where he was killed every time I went to work, just as I went by the place where Renee Good was killed.

That night, answering the call that went out on social media, my neighbors and I gathered on corners throughout South Minneapolis, carrying candles. I was a little late to join, as I was driving home, and I passed corner after corner where people were gathering. It was honestly so incredibly moving to see all those lights in the darkness held by people mourning and bearing witness. Hundreds of them.

I brought the candle that was lit at Rob's funeral. This was on Saturday, January 24. The eighth anniversary of Rob's death was on Monday, January 26.

God, I wish he were here with me, that I didn't have to go through this living alone.

I'm doing what I can. I won't say what specifically because we are at that point where we have to keep even constitutionally protected actions hidden from the government.

Sometimes I think that the only thing that keeps me going is knowing that the government (my own government) wants me to feel powerless and helpless and afraid. So I'm not going to be out of sheer spite.

My card this week is just one image, because sometimes one image says it all.

A woman bundled up in a winter coat stands on a street corner at night, holding a candle in a glass chimney.

Mourning



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