There are cities that live in you long after you leave them. Minneapolis is one of those places for me, especially as state violence intensifies there. When I heard where Renée and Alex were killed, I did not need a map. I could see it. I know where George Floyd was killed. These killings did not arrive as distant news; they arrived as a rupture in a place that shaped my life.

There is a particular pain I feel now — not because of the victims’ race or citizenship status, but because of where this happened. I know these streets. I know the institutions. I taught at the law school when the state’s Attorney General was a student there. I know many of the judges. I had personal relationships with a former mayor and with police chiefs. My son went to school with their children.

For nearly a decade, Minneapolis was home. Despite its struggles — and despite the brutal winters — it was a place I cared for deeply. Indeed a place I love. I still know the neighborhoods by heart. I know how the cold sharpens everything, including grief. As state violence intensifies, I know the blocks where people gather, protest, and mourn. I know the places where state violence has already marked the ground. And it is especially hard to watch the people of your home suffer.

There are moments when a society must pause — not to look away, but to look more carefully. Moments when we are asked not simply to react, but to reflect. To ask what kind of people we are becoming, and what kind of world we are quietly consenting to build.

When state violence intensifies and a person is killed by the state, and that killing is met with silence — or worse, with justification — we are standing in such a moment. There are so many heartbreaking events now that it can be hard to keep up, hard not to become numb, hard not to turn away. But we cannot turn away from these painful acts of violence and killing without turning away from ourselves.

There have been too many killings.

Read the full article about belonging amidst intensifying state violence by John A. Powell at Othering & Belonging Institute.