A bit about myself, I have lived in Minneapolis for over three years.  The riots are taking place in my neighborhood, as did George Floyd’s murder.

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Like many others I am on edge tonight watching the events across Minneapolis and St. Paul unfold. However, regardless of the tension I feel there is also an overwhelming sense of catharsis and pride. In many ways it's a relief to see people rising up and finally doing something. It fills me with hope. The government has proven time and time again that it doesn’t listen to people’s complaints on social media. The government entity does not hear when people wave signs, walk through streets and then go home in a day. This nation with its ever flashpan level attention span will consume itself, moving onto the next outrage in a blink of an eye, in a day, in an hour.

I can’t help but smile as I see people of color, youths of this nation, people of many backgrounds marching beside one another. They are celebrating in the streets, the streets that their tax dollars pay for. There is a playful, childlike joy in watching them dismantle buildings, remove pieces off of structures, build bonfires under traffic lights, dance, cheer and drink their spoils. There is something beautiful about watching fireworks erupt in the sky over a burning precinct that housed these murderers.

Property is replaceable, lives are not. And the only ones destroying lives are the police this group is attempting to hold accountable for blatant murder. Without due process, without fair incarceration, America is nothing less than tyrannical.

I marched on day one from the place of George Floyd’s murder to the Third Precinct. The only fear I felt was towards the officers. The feeling on the ground among these heroic voices is one of unity, sanctity and companionship. People are dowsing strangers' eyes with milk when the tear gas hits them. I’ve seen them carry those injured and convulsing away who were shot by canisters or rubber bullets. They are embracing, rapping, calling out warnings to one another.

We live in a nation that does not think we are entitled to our own lives, to our own health or the care of it. Black people are systematically oppressed and disproportionately targeted time and time again. Capitalistic entities tilt our elections and our so-called representatives in their favor. They are the greatest polluters of our world and in many ways the greatest oppressors. I do not mourn their brief financial inconvenience at the hand of those truly traumatized and in grief.

These are the American people. This is the composition of this nation. Not one percent of the population who have gorged themselves on enterprise and hoarded the wealth from their hands. Not the CEOs of them which are consistently white men.

This IS America. Outnumbered, out financed, out gunned but finally saying we will be treated as human beings or we will burn an infrastructure that has cultivated our demise to the ground. We will not go silently into that good night. We will no longer bow to bureaucracy. Until black lives matter, no lives matter. These are what modern day patriots look like.