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Unrest Devastates a City's Landmark Street of Diversity

Associated Press

   Along the miles-long Minneapolis street where more than a century of
   migrants have found their American footholds - Germans, Swedes,
   Vietnamese, Somalis, Mexicans - a new history can be traced.

   There's the smoldering police station torched early Thursday morning by
   protesters enraged by the death of George Floyd while in custody.
   There's the Wells Fargo bank branch a couple of blocks away that mobs
   stormed through the next night, leaving behind a carpet of shattered
   glass and strewn paperwork. "Kill Bankers" reads the graffiti now
   spray-painted on an outside wall.

   Go further up Lake Street and there's more fresh history: the Somali
   restaurant with the broken windows, the empty hulk of a burned sneaker
   store, the boarded-up party supply store owned by a Mexican immigrant
   who had been praying for the coronavirus lockdown to end to so he could
   reopen.

   The protests that have roiled Minneapolis night after night didn't
   inflame just a single neighborhood: Much of the violence raged up Lake
   Street, an artery of commerce and culture that cuts across a broad
   swath of the city.

   For residents, for business people, for artists, the Lake Street
   corridor has long been a symbol of the city's complex history, a
   block-by-block study in immigration, economic revitalization and
   persistent inequality.

   On one end is a trendy district of bars and shopping. On the other are
   quiet neighborhoods atop the Mississippi River bluff. Between the two
   is a timeline that spans almost five miles marking each wave of
   arrivals, along with a tangle of languages spoken in each group's
   markets, restaurants, churches and community groups.

   The Lake Street businesses owned by Suad Hassan's family are now
   boarded up, bearing messages like "black owned -- solidarity." Each
   night, the family has stood guard, successfully begging the mobs to
   pass them by.

   The 35-year-old was born in Somalia, but her family fled the country to
   escape war when she was a child.

   "When I saw the fire two nights ago, it was like a trauma that was
   triggered again for me," she said. "I had put that away in my life a
   long, long time ago ... I told my mom 'This is a war zone.'"

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