The George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests and police conduct

Yesterday was perhaps the weirdest day of my life. I'm safe and don't expect anything noteworthy to happen in my neighborhood (about 3-4 miles West of northern Minneapolis city limits), but the series of events still has me in disbelief. 

I awoke to the news of the Wednesday night riots, not aware of just how out-of-hand things had gotten. I assumed the whole thing was exaggerated but the footage on my phone kept piling up. On my way to work I stopped at "ground zero" and walked around in complete awe of the wreckage. I described the scene to my friends/family as a bomb falling on the city - literally everything was destroyed, except the police station. There was debris everywhere you looked, multiple active fires, news crews, helicopters overhead, etc. I think the weirdest thing I saw was a pile of like 30-40 bunches of bananas completely torched.

I get to work and the entire day is spent talking about what had happened, and then glued to the news in disbelief of more full scale riots breaking out in a seemingly random part of St Paul in broad daylight. My office is just a mile North of St Paul city limits and as a precaution we closed and went home early. In my two years of living in Minnesota I've now missed work due to riots and a pandemic, but not snow. A funny observation but It's truly been a weird time.

Then after watching the news for a few more hours at home, my wife and I decided to go visit the riot scene. I would describe the mood as one giant party. I really have a hard time painting the mob as angry. It's as if all the young people decided they were fed up with quarantine life and threw the biggest block party imaginable. Lots of music and fireworks. I truly didn't feel like I was in any danger whatsoever even though we were directly outside a police station (and several other buildings) burning to the ground. Obviously anger got us to this situation, but it seems most are just looking to enjoy the chaos.

Out of curiosity, I did pop my head in the side door of the Target which happened to be a break room. It was of course trashed. There was probably a quarter inch of standing water filling the room. I saw a pop machine and random break room furniture knocked over...and I wound up taking a scuffed up stool home with me as a memento. I guess I can say that I have now looted.

I'm still processing the entire situation here, but one thing I am certain of is that it's very depressing to see the place you call home descend into utter chaos. My heart goes out to the small business owners. I've worked several shifts at the Minnehaha Lake liquor store directly across from the police station (I work part-time for a brewery) and always enjoyed the staff and how they treated me. Now it's gone. The employees are out of work, the owners have a near hopeless situation on their hands, and the community no longer has that sweet establishment shining for them on a prominent intersection. I spent far more time watching the liquor store going down than the police station last night. It just didn't need to happen and lives are being drastically altered because of it.

I guess my final thought is that most won't agree with the methods of the crowds, but it leaves no doubt that everyone now knows damn well what that officer was filmed doing. We didn't discuss Floyd's murder at work even once on Tuesday or Wednesday. Everyone was very eager to give their two cents on Thursday.

 
The Dude said:
What did Target do to be targeted?
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I've heard that before there was any destruction at all the protesters at the police station went across the street to Target to buy milk, which apparently soothes you if you've been teargassed. Target refused to sell it to them and people got mad.

I'm surely missing some details but that's the gist of it.

 
I think with Omaha it may just be because Target found out there would be a protest on 72nd and Dodge, which is where Target is. Maybe they were just being cautious after what happened in Minneapolis.

 
One thing to keep in mind to help understand but not condone what's happening right now is just like...

imagine how amazing and cathartic it must feel to have a blood-pumping social solidarity of a public protest after 75 days of lockdown/quarantine/no social interaction/depression/boring existence

 
Just saw a friend's snapchat story here in Des Moines showing a target that boarded itself up. Don't know which specific location it was or if it was said they're all doing that due to current circumstances. For all I know this one could've been already shutting down for good before all of this. Just relaying what I saw

 
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https://www.britannica.com/event/Stonewall-riots

Stonewall riots, also called Stonewall uprising, series of violent confrontations that began in the early hours of June 28, 1969, between police and gay rights activists outside the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. As the riots progressed, an international gay rights movement was born.
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This time the people milling outside the bar did not retreat or scatter as they almost always had in the past. Their anger was apparent and vocal as they watched bar patrons being forced into a police van. They began to jeer at and jostle the police and then threw bottles and debris. Accustomed to more passive behaviour, even from larger gay groups, the policemen called for reinforcements and barricaded themselves inside the bar while some 400 people rioted. The police barricade was repeatedly breached, and the bar was set on fire. Police reinforcements arrived in time to extinguish the flames, and they eventually dispersed the crowd.
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The event sparked the formation of scores of gay rights organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, OutRage! (U.K.-based), GLAAD (formerly Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), PFLAG (formerly Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), and Queer Nation. In 1999 the U.S. National Park Service placed the Stonewall Inn on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2016 Pres. Barack Obama designated the site of the Stonewall uprising a national monument. 
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