Can Minneapolis Recover?
3rd August 2020
Some months ago, I saw a shocking video: someone rode a bicycle down a sidewalk in Los Angeles, filming as he went, for something like a half hour. The entire time, he passed tent encampments or cities on both sides of the sidewalk. They seemed to go on forever and had an appearance of permanence.
Yesterday a friend sent me a similar video, on a smaller scale, which was filmed by a resident of South Minneapolis. It shows Minnehaha Park, near the famous Minnehaha Falls. The tent city that has sprung up there is replicated in many other Minneapolis parks. These encampments are the result, I believe, of an executive order by Governor Tim Walz that decreed all 38 parks within the city of Minneapolis to be open for occupancy by tent squatters. I assume this order ostensibly has something to do with the governor’s emergency powers based on the COVID epidemic, but how the two are related I can’t tell you. Basically, we are living under martial law.