Map of Minneapolis<\/a><\/p>\nEach evening, the block glows with candlelight and blooms with the amalgamated fragrance of dozens of candles \u2013 prayer lights and Dixie Scents and old Bed Bath & Beyond classics dug out from the backs of neighbors\u2019 closets.<\/p>\n
Each night, there is a different sort of performance or dedication. On Monday, Brass Solidarity \u2013 a band founded in 2021 in response to the murder of George Floyd \u2013 played a blaring rendition of Stand by Me as a crowd sang along. On Tuesday, Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli, a Mexica-Nahua cultural group based in St Paul, performed several dances in solidarity and remembrance. On Wednesday, hundreds arrived for a vigil organized by Pretti\u2019s fellow nurses.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven throughout the day, you\u2019ll find people here who start singing,\u201d said Aisha Chughtai, a local city council member, as she stood across the street, facing the memorial.<\/p>\n
Chughtai was home on Saturday when she found out that Pretti had been killed, and like many of her neighbors, immediately ran outside. \u201cI just wanted to bear witness,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I was trying to help my neighbors who were getting hit with irritants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dozens of federal agents soon flooded into the street, she said, deploying teargas and projectiles at neighbors and demonstrators who had gathered as reports of the killing spread.<\/p>\n
Martinka and her husband, by that afternoon, had rushed with their five-month-old baby to her mother\u2019s house in downtown. On the TV, they saw the camera pan over the bike lane outside their home \u2013 the one where they had imagined their daughter would one day learn to cycle. It was engulfed in chemical smoke.<\/p>\n
From the window of her mother\u2019s apartment, she could see Nicollet Avenue and the fumes clouding over the whole street \u2013 an ominous gray cloud.<\/p>\n
She worried about her neighbors, many of whom also had small children or babies, and how most of them probably weren\u2019t able to escape. Many had avoided going out for weeks because they didn\u2019t want to be profiled or arrested by immigration agents.<\/p>\n
She thought about all the children breathing in those chemicals, which were inevitably seeping through the poorly sealed doors and windows of the neighborhood\u2019s century-old homes.<\/p>\n
Aisha Chughtai, a local city council member, across the street from a memorial for Alex Pretti, on 24 January.<\/p>\n
Pretti\u2019s killing was a heartbreak that came after weeks of heartbreak, said Chughtai. She had seen neighbors, constituents \u2013 including legal residents and refugees \u2013 violently arrested by federal agents.<\/p>\n
Here in Whittier, many locals were either hunkering down inside because they feared arrest, or spending their free time outside, delivering groceries to neighbors, patrolling the street corners while wearing bright red and orange whistles, ready to blow an alert each time they spotted an immigration agent.<\/p>\n
Chughtai had checked on the families of refugees who were arrested despite having a valid legal status, and tried to connect immigrant families with legal aid groups. She had joined other council members in calling for an eviction moratorium for constituents who couldn\u2019t work, and thus couldn\u2019t afford rent. On 21 January, federal agents had handcuffed and detained 15- and 16-year-old siblings outside a Whittier clinic, deployed teargas and projectiles, and arrested two bystanders.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day, I go through waves of grief and anger,\u201d Chughtai said.<\/p>\n
Chughtai embraces fellow community member Deb Falenschek, inside Glam Doll Donuts. To many locals, the neighborhood has felt like a war zone, Chughtai said.<\/p>\n
After Pretti was killed, the Trump administration demoted the border patrol commander Gregory Bovino \u2013 the \u201ccommander at large\u201d who had been the public face of the militarized operation in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a testament to the power of people that we were able to whistle Bovino out of Minneapolis,\u201d Chughtai said. \u201cBut this cruelty did not start with Greg Bovino and it certainly will not end with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, after border czar Tom Homan came to Minneapolis and delivered a speech committing to reduce the federal presence in the city, Chughtai was alerted that several agents had violently arrested another man, in a neighborhood just north of here. They had also deployed mace against several bystanders, she said: \u201cIt\u2019s bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n
A wall in Minneapolis honoring Alex Pretti and Renee Good.<\/p>\n
What happened to Pretti \u2013 \u201can execution,\u201d Chughai said \u2013 and the subsequent show of force by federal agents against demonstrators was a turning point. To many locals, it looked like a war zone outside their doorsteps.<\/p>\n
Martinka and Chughtai \u2013 who are good friends and former roommates \u2013 must have eaten at Peninsula Malaysian Cuisine, the dusty orange edifice right behind the memorial site, dozens or hundreds of times, Martinka said. \u201cIt\u2019s always been like, our comfort food.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martinka has spent a good deal of time next door as well, at the Cheapo Records, with her husband, leisurely flipping through stacks of records, VHS tapes and cassettes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will never be able to walk by this corner again without thinking about this really horrible time for our neighborhood and our city,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Jeff Cowmeadow, proprietor of the Prodigal Public House, just off Nicollet, had walked over to the memorial and was having a smoke. \u201cPeople come to this neighborhood for happiness: We have the art institute [Minneapolis Institute of Art], ethnic restaurants, massage, thrift store, record store,\u201d he said before trailing off.<\/p>\n
Cowmeadow was a pastor at the nearby Calvary church for 38 years before he retired to focus full-time on running the pub. Both jobs, he said, were essentially about building community.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of Pretti\u2019s killing, Cowmeadow\u2019s daughter rushed out to open up the bar to neighbors who were injured by the teargas and projectiles that federal agents launched against the crowd. Chughtai was there, helping people wash chemical irritants out of their eyes.<\/p>\n
Many other restaurants and businesses along Nicollet did the same.<\/p>\n
People have been gathering daily at the memorial for Pretti, singing, dancing and honoring his memory.<\/p>\n
Asha, a healthcare worker who has been volunteering as a street medic over the past few weeks, rushed over with her medical kit as soon as she heard what was happening. The Guardian is not using her full name because she fears her work as a street medic could compromise her employment.<\/p>\n
At first, she made laps around the site of the shooting, which federal agents had cordoned off. Periodically, the agents unleashed clouds of chemical irritants and projectiles toward a crowd of demonstrators, she said; they\u2019d advance, arrest one or two people, drag them into their perimeter, and retreat. \u201cIt was back and forth, push and pull like this for hours,\u201d she said. Eventually, she ducked into My Huong Kitchen.<\/p>\n
The restaurant\u2019s owner, Tracy Wong, was there ushering in protesters and press, some of whom were vomiting from exposure to the irritants. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry, I\u2019m so sorry,\u201d she told them as they ducked inside.<\/p>\n
Asha posted up there \u2013 along with several other medics \u2013 and was able to properly inspect the injured and help them rinse out their eyes in the restaurant\u2019s restroom.<\/p>\n
At one point, Wong, a petite woman with gold-streaked black hair whom several locals described as \u201cthe neighborhood auntie\u201d, brought in piles of egg rolls from the kitchen and began distributing them. \u201cI have been there a number of times before \u2013 they have really good pho,\u201d said Asha, who used to live in the neighborhood. It was surreal, she said, seeing it transformed into a makeshift emergency medical center.<\/p>\n
Samie Solina, a reporter for the local TV news station KARE-11, had run into My Huong Kitchen after nearly collapsing with exposure to irritants along with a colleague. After she posted a video about Wong\u2019s kindness, customers came back that week in droves, leaving big tips and thank-you notes. \u201cI don\u2019t know \u2013 I am like, famous overnight!\u201d said Wong, laughing.<\/p>\n
Crowds from all over Minneapolis had booked out many of the restaurants along the avenue, which for weeks had been hurting for business. Many are owned and staffed by immigrants who had been unable to report to work due to the constant, overwhelming presence of immigration agents in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Owner Tracy Wong at My Huong Kitchen, a block away from the memorial for Alex Pretti. Photograph: Paola Chapdelaine\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
The Copper Hen Cakery & Kitchen, a farmhouse restaurant that also transformed into a makeshift field hospital, once again filled with brunchers. Glam Doll Donuts, behind the bright pink edifice across from where Pretti was killed, reopened to long lines.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200b\u200bThe way that our community comes together in crisis \u2013 it\u2019s a coming together, not a hunkering down,\u201d Martinka said.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Wong had styled her hair down. She had closed down the restaurant for the general strike, but was cooking up massive quantities of pho to give away. She had tasked a younger person to help her spread the word on Instagram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nothing is quite as it used to be along Nicollet Avenue. The spot where Alex Pretti was gunned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-441410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}