Here in Minneapolis, following the killing of 22-year-old Amir Locke by police in a no-knock SWAT raid, there have been ongoing demonstrations. A couple of nights ago in my neighborhood, a crowd of about 100 demonstrators marched while spray painting buildings and throwing trash in the street to protest Locke's death. It takes a special kind of dedication to do that in sub-zero windchill.
Also here in Minneapolis, there is a man, pictured above, who jogs laps around an abandoned police station while carrying a large, thin blue line flag. A friend snapped the above picture of him today. Again, the fact that this man is making such a statement in brutal Minnesota cold is impressive.
Throwing trash in the street seems unlikely to reduce the violence that our local police have become globally famous for. Waving a desecrated flag seems unlikely to attract additional community support for the MPD. Because Minneapolis politics are a dumpster fire of lies and broken promises, it's unsurprising that members of the public have been reduced to such ineffectual demonstrations. People are outraged, and that outrage simply has nowhere else to go.
At the same time, crime is rampant. Yesterday, I watched a young man take a bag full of expensive pre-made meals out of a nearby grocery store without paying. He didn't care at all that the store security guard caught him and followed him out to the parking lot, shouting. The thief just ignored the security guard, got into a car, and drove away while the security guard took pictures. This was the second time I've happened to witness such a scene this month.
The neighborhood next to mine is affluent enough to purchase additional police patrols through a program called 'buyback.' They're paying $107 per officer per hour for a level of police service that should just be standard. It boggles my mind that this is even a thing. Isn't every neighborhood entitled to equal protection under the law?
From my perspective, all of these things illustrate the deterioration of our social fabric, which has accelerated in recent years. This deterioration reveals the myth of the social contract to be only that. A myth. A story that falls apart upon even cursory examination. This leaves us with the thorny problem of how to do a society without a social contract.
Underneath whatever political veneers people place faith in, it's anarchism that governs the world. In Minneapolis, we have a mayor and a council and an enormous police budget, but our street-level reality is anarchy, and no amount of politicking will change that. Importantly, this anarchy is almost entirely peaceful. If it weren't, the city would be uninhabitable, and it's still a great place to live despite all of its problems.
What most concerns me is the moment when this anarchy stops being peaceful, as it did in 2020. I've no doubt that there are zealots on all 'sides' ready to leverage any future chaos for their own agendas. It doesn't take much to get a zealot out of the house and into the streets, causing trouble. All it takes is a pretext.
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