Pressure from the Ground: Black Minnesotans on Survival and Strategy

An inside view of sustaining care amid violence, panic, and politics.

Before anything else, let me be clear.

Minneapolis is not a war zone. Minnesota is not a battlefield. These are neighborhoods of close-knit neighbors, families, elders, and children. When governmental bodies move through our communities with a war-time posture, that framing alone escalates danger. Treating civilians like combatants tightens nervous systems, heightens fear, and makes deadly outcomes more likely.

And let me be even clearer.
Do not be desensitized or manipulated into believing that state-inflicted deadly force is normal. Even when we expect it, it must never be treated as ordinary. Black Minnesotans have watched bodies die for raising an arm, for breathing wrong, for existing under the wrong authority. That expectation was learned through countless experiences. It does not make it acceptable. It will never be normal.

If you’ve been following Black organizers in Minnesota, you know these moments did not come out of nowhere. It does not feel sudden to us. The pressure has been building for years. Before 2020. After 2020. Long after the cameras moved on. Through repeated loss, constant vigilance, and the knowledge that violence can arrive without warning. We have been carrying this through our bodies, not just our politics.

So when our responses look paced, measured, or quiet, do not confuse that with disengagement. Many of us are currently deeply engaged, coordinating resources and care for families impacted, picking folks up from the detainments, showing up for daycare providers who’ve been threatened by false accusations. As a matter of fact, many of us (long before headlines) turned our careers into preventing and healing from state-organized tragedies — or from the collateral damage that follows — all while keeping our nervous systems continuously wired to respond.

That does not mean Black people don’t care. However, we are not required to always be the first ones to absorb the risk, the violence, or the aftermath in the way you or anyone expects. We are not here to be your rage pawns nor to perform outrage on demand so others can feel like something is being done. We specifically have to pace ourselves, because survival, strategy, and sustaining our work matters, generationally and in the name of all who’ve been taken from state-organized violence.

If you’re watching footage and noticing who is most visible right now, you’re not wrong. Many of the people on the frontlines are white Minnesotans — and that is not a failure of solidarity. In fact, it is solidarity in practice. What you’re seeing is them leveraging their privilege and strategies learned from Black Minnesota organizers over decades to respond and protect marginalized communities.

At the same time, this visibility reflects intentional organizing happening behind the scenes — decisions about who should be out there, when, and how. Don’t mistake this for a lack of care or attention from Black and brown communities. There is strategy happening in real time, and it is deliberate, thoughtful, and necessary.

Many of us are carrying more than one reality at the same time. For those of us (me) in homelessness prevention and social services, public outrage and claims that social services are entirely illegitimate or fraudulent are threatening supports that real community members rely on to survive. In December, a community member here died shortly after his services were disrupted because his provider came under state investigation — and there was no transitional care plan in place for him from the state. You won’t see that headlined of course. As winter deepens, children and elders are still exposed. This is what pressure looks like from the ground.

So we pace ourselves.
We have to pace ourselves.
Because we have to sustain.

I want to also make this clear: Rest in peace to Renée Good. I’m not going to dissect her tragedy, speculate, or turn her life into a political talking point. This is still raw, and she deserves dignity.

Renee Good’s murder was a tragedy that never should have happened. And the collective response — the grief, the organizing, the demand for accountability — is not disorder. It is a community refusing to let her life be reduced to a statistic or a headline. The ways people are showing up for her loved ones are actionary and resilient.

Right now, there is a push to collapse all of this complexity into a single story. That social services are the problem. That fraud outweighs need. That care is waste. And now, that Minnesotans are reckless or obstructive for refusing to quietly accept state violence, for demanding accountability, for disrupting “business as usual.”

Community grief is not chaos.
Refusing to normalize state organized murderers is not obstruction.

These narratives are dangerous. Oversight failures are real. So is the documented, record-high need for care. And resistance to violence is not the same thing as disorder.

Minnesota keeps showing up in the headlines not because we are uniquely broken, but because we actually try. We invest in prevention. We invest in harm reduction. We invest in people before they are fully abandoned. That work is imperfect. It is messy. It is visible. And visibility makes people uncomfortable; especially those who benefit from neglect.

Minnesota is known for being protective, resilient, and action-oriented. We build systems. We organize. We respond. Even when the work is flawed, it is people-centered by design. That is why it draws scrutiny. That is why it draws backlash. That is why it matters.

Black organizers here are not naïve. We are not new to this. Our communities have continued to bury people - often without cameras, without national outrage, without pause. We learned early that burning hot feels righteous, but it does not last. Sustaining movements requires strategy, restraint, and care for the nervous system.

We carry the work our ancestors began and the care our communities need. How we move may not always be visible, but it is deliberate, it is resilient, and it is unbroken. It is how we ensure that our communities endure.

Our ancestors had to envision a world that did not exist. They labored for futures they would never see so their children might live with more safety than they did.

I understand that inheritance intimately.

We have to sustain.
We have to sustain.

And we will continue to move in unity.

—
A Minnesotan