Fireworks or gunshots? Every night, when the booms start echoing through South Minneapolis, this is the question my neighbors and I ask ourselves.
People of color, and Black people in particular, are far more likely to be victims of gun violence in Minnesota and elsewhere, thanks in large part to patterns and policies designed to ensure inequality and systemic racism.
I am not very good at discerning either sound. The rattling pops that often begin just as the sun goes down always seem like gunshots to me. But if I wait a bit, I will sometimes hear a reassuring shimmery sound, as if someone is shaking a rain stick nearby.
Then I know it is fireworks being shot into the sky, and not another round of bullets.
Too often, though, it is gunfire. At least thirty-two people have been shot to death in Minneapolis this year—twice the number who had been killed by this time last year. The victims’ stories are gut-wrenching.
Here are a few of them.
An Indigenous woman named Arionna Buckanaga was shot and killed in early May, just two months before her nineteenth birthday. She was the mother of a little boy and had been busy finishing up her last year of high school while planning a birthday party for her child.
Buckanaga was driving in South Minneapolis when someone shot into her car, apparently aiming at her male companion. She was struck by a bullet, which caused her to veer off the road and hit a tree. Days later, her family had her removed from life support when it became clear she wasn’t going to recover.
Leneesha Helen Columbus was also shot and killed in South Minneapolis on July 5. She was pregnant. Doctors were able to deliver her baby, who reportedly remains in critical condition.
Columbus, twenty-seven, was murdered in her car by the father of her child, who was recently arrested for the crime in Chicago. The shooting took place just one block from the George Floyd memorial site during what local news sources said was a “night of violence” in Minneapolis, with multiple victims and at least two other fatalities.
Minnesota Safe Streets, a local anti-violence coalition, held a press conference after Columbus’s death. At the event, community leader Al Flowers said there have been more than two hundred people shot in the Twin Cities area since George Floyd’s murder in late May.
George Floyd memorial in South Minneapolis
Flowers argued that gun violence is ravaging the Black community in particular, and that the chaos and upheaval that followed Floyd’s death—including subsequent calls to defund or abolish the Minneapolis police—has left this community more vulnerable than ever.
This point of view was amplified for some on July 11, when a young mother was shot and killed on the city’s historically Black north side while riding in a car. Her three-year-old child was in the backseat and had to receive emergency care after being cut by shattered glass.
Another fatal shooting involved a seventeen-year-old boy in north Minneapolis. Several children have also been fired upon lately. A seven-year-old walking out of a store with his dad was shot in the foot.
Just days later, a twelve-year-old boy was shot while riding home from a trip to Dairy Queen with his family. His injuries were not life-threatening, but I am sure they will be life-altering.
Incidents like this have prompted the violence awareness group Enough MPLS to declare that “We are in a state of emergency.”
People of color, and Black people in particular, are far more likely to be victims of gun violence in Minnesota and elsewhere, thanks in large part to patterns and policies designed to ensure inequality and systemic racism. If reparations are ever going to happen in the United States, now would be a great time.
But it doesn’t look like outside help will be coming any time soon. Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, recently requested federal disaster funds to help rebuild Minneapolis in the wake of the fires and destruction that took place in response to Floyd’s murder.
The answer was no.
A representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency told reporters that the feds had determined that repairing the damage was something state and local authorities could handle.
The money, which the Walz administration can still pursue through an appeal, would have helped in addressing the hundreds of millions of dollars in damage that was done here, mostly in neighborhoods full of immigrants and racial minorities.
This funding would not have directly addressed the scourge of gun violence currently rattling this city. But a substantial dose of financial investment and support from the government to the people in these neighborhoods would tell them that their lives do in fact matter.