A coalition of Black Lives Matters activists, Catholic Workers, clergy, and people of faith disrupted the game after a weekend-long Faith and Resistance retreat. The group is bringing attention to the execution of Jamar Clark by the Minneapolis Police Department and Hennepin County Prosecutor Mike Freeman’s criminal non-indictment decision for Jamar’s murderers, Officers Dustin Schwarze and Mark Ringgenberg.
On March 30th, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman made public his decision to not charge Officers Dustin Schwarze and Mark Ringgenberg for the killing of Jamar Clark. Jamar Clark, an unarmed, 24 year old Black man, was shot and killed by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) while restrained this past November. His murder led to an 18-day occupation of MPD’s 4th precinct in North Minneapolis, where community came together to grieve the loss of Jamar, collectively expressing our pain, disappointment, and frustration with the police and government.
The City of Minneapolis has paid out nearly 20 million dollars to settle police misconduct cases over the last decade, and yet, there has not been any substantial change to interactions between police and communities of color. In the past 10 years 100% of people killed by MPD have been black or brown. There is a pervasive and insidious culture of violence within MPD, and repeatedly we see that law enforcement terrorizes people of color in North Minneapolis.
“We are a primarily white group of people of faith under the guidance of Black Lives Matter Minneapolis. We are shutting down the Twins home opener to call our fellow white Minnesotans into deeper understanding of the violent racial inequalities that plague our state, that ultimately killed Jamar Clark, and that have granted his killers impunity.” said Ruth Cole.
Minneapolis Catholic Worker Erica Sherwood says, “We urge white Minnesotans to understand that the privileges that we benefit from daily due to the color of our skin have a cost. The cost is the criminalization of black men. The cost is the way we white people and white police officers are conditioned to fear blackness. The cost is Jamar Clark’s life.”
“We believe that until we come to terms with the historical and systemic oppression heaped upon Black Americans and the way in which we white people benefit from that oppression, young men like Jamar will be killed with impunity in our streets. We are shutting down the Twin’s game because we believe it is our moral obligation to call our white brothers and sisters into deeper compassion and a fuller understanding of the complexities and pervasiveness of American anti-black racism,” said Amy Van Steenwyk of the Mennonite Worker in Minneapolis.
