Posted on 04/22/2021 11:09:55 AM PDT by george76
Minneapolis is my home. My happiest memories are here. It’s where I learned to ride a bike, had my first date, received my high school diploma.
But today, I’m too afraid to even walk in my neighborhood by myself.
The ACE Hardware down the street? The one that I used to bike to in the summer? Robbed twice in the past five days.
The Walgreens next to my elementary school? Molotov cocktail thrown into it.
The Lake Harriet Bandshell, where we spent countless Mother’s Days? Homeless encampment popped up next door.
These are the things you don’t read about in the news.
Ten minutes from my house, at 38th and Chicago, there is still an autonomous zone. Police are not allowed to enter. Residents have died because medical authorities couldn’t get through, and carjackers (of which there are MANY) will speed into the zone to escape officer pursuit.
My favorite dinner theater canceled its production of Cinderella because it was “too white.”
My church — my beloved, tiny, Lutheran church — organized social justice marches for our congregation while refusing to reinstate in-person services (they’re still virtual, by the way).
And how about the week of the 2020 riots?
We lived under a curfew for days while looters seemingly roamed freely. Friends fled their home at 3:30 a.m. because the auto parts store behind them was on fire. And then we watched in horror as our City Council members demanded that the city defund the police — as they hired armed security for themselves.
I no longer recognize Minneapolis. I no longer want to live here. We are done, and I am leaving.
I’ve spent the past year watching this city crumble. Burning it wasn’t enough, I guess. Every day, I watched another piece of sanity and stability fall to the hysterical, bloodthirsty, self-righteous mob.
You distinguish between rioters and protestors? Racist. You do not want Marxist-inspired racial justice theories to be promoted in schools? Racist. You thought that maybe “Justice for George Floyd” should be left to the courts, and not mob rule? Super, super racist.
And where were our leaders providing stability and calm and confidence in the system? Nowhere to be found. What we did find were crazed politicians spouting fire and brimstone (I’m looking at you, Maxine Waters and John Thompson) and leaving us to pay the price.
Let me be clear: this city’s demise wasn’t just violent protests and burning buildings, or crime skyrocketing and businesses fleeing. It was also political indoctrination, hypocritical leadership, and the suppression of oppositional thought.
Any condemnation of the violence was denounced as “racist.” Billboards stating simply “Support MN Police” were brutally vandalized. Schools supported BLM walkouts for their students, then shut down in-person classes for fear of violent riots.
And all of this happened against the backdrop of our illogical, inconsistent, overly oppressive COVID-19 restrictions.
It’s easy to look at (for lack of a better word) disaster zones like these and mentally distance yourself from them. Yeah, that’s awful, but those people choose to live there. They’re the ones electing these leaders. This is their problem.
Yeah, it is. It is our problem.
And I can’t help but look around and wonder, “What happened here? Where exactly did it all go wrong?”
Was it the liberal mob? Identity politics? The cries of “RACIST!” when someone disagreed with a particular reaction or policy?
Was it conservative silence as the loudest voices got more and more radical?
Was it our acceptance that “we live in a blue area, this is just the way things are?”
How did it all happen so fast?
Whatever it was, I’m leaving this dark, surreal, twisted version of Minneapolis on Friday. And I pray to God that I never have to come back.
There’s no place to escape the invaders now.
How did it all happen so fast?
It didn’t, the left has been working on this for a
hundred years.
I left Minnesota to become a Texan a long time ago. It seems like a better idea every year that goes by. The people built the society they deserve.
So...”They” win.
White Flight is a big reason why we are where we are.
And that cuts across all racial, demographic and socioeconomic groups, too.
They came up in the 60’s from Illinois mostly. They move around a lot from Milwaukee/Twin Cities/Chicago.
Worse now.
HA!! I live in NE OK....in the middle of NOWHERE...
Democrats have destroyed every city they rule, which is most of them. Those which haven’t been destroyed yet are in decline and will inevitably hit bottom.
You have my sympathy.
I hope you are moving to a blue (free) state.
Gee Grace, so you’re NOT “going to make it after all”?
We’ve lost this country due to “Conservative silence.”
The January 6th protest was the straw that broke our back. There was no coup, yet the “Conservatives “ denounced it. We should have owned it. We should have taken it further but we shrank back into silence.
It was once well-organized and safe, thanks to the culture of the Swedes. No more. It’s not Swedes any more whose presence determines the nature of the area. The city policies now give unfair advantage to new arrivals practicing a middle eastern religion, as shown by the city’s actions when one of their Somali cops killed an innocent Australian woman.
Like most American cities, it’s in decline. It’s supported by the people who actually go to work and pay taxes, and who are treated unfairly for their efforts. The productive people are declining and not reproducing themselves to make enough new little productive people. The non-productive ones hate the productive ones and blame them for their self-induced failures.
Crime rises, and it’s inevitably against the producers, by the non-producers. So the producers leave, and the city declines some more.
I don’t see any end to it. Cities that I knew as a kid were safe and enjoyable. That all changed in the mid 50s.
Demography is destiny, and it’s all there in the numbers, in black and white.
Funny that the same thing is happening in Sweden.
Lots of Somalis were imported by the Ruling Class, from Clinton to Present.
And will spread the infection.
Locally, they are trying like mad to ban school choice and limit your ability to move out of the district. Part of me understands.
no kidding.. watched it all before during forced busing. (somewhere down the road we have to take a stand on all this)
Experienced it. 1968 living with my grandmother in a melting pot Chicago housing project on the near\mid north side.
Cabrini Green blacks were trying to get away from there and moved into our projects.
My dad adiosed us to the far north side of Chicago.
Today, the Cabrini Green area is hotter than a pistol and the near\mid north projects are closed, under security guards, but still standing, subject to developers’ fights as it’s riverfront property.
The blacks came in and turned decent areas into spitholes and are now accusing whites of gentrification of those same areas...
Grace, may I suggest firearms and training, or would that be too much?
5.56mm
He is going now where. The author, Grace Bureau , is the pne leaving.
Our country is so wealthy that stupidity doesn’t clean the gene pool anymore.
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