“Oh man, I think we’re going to have to buy more meat,” activist Sarah Katherine said to Monet Auguston as she toiled away over a grill. Behind her sat an impressive array of food still waiting to be prepared, but the crowd at the far corner of Logan Park was growing quickly.
Protesters were gearing up to march from the homeless camp that recently sprang up in Logan Park to Mayor Jacob Frey’s condo a couple miles away. A list of demands was scrawled in the pages of a raggedy notebook, and the crowd planned to shout them up to Frey’s window, calling him out for inaction on campaign promises he made to combat homelessness in Minneapolis.
“When you get to that kid’s house, scream this at him, because he needs to listen,” a volunteer said to the assembled crowd when it was time to move. “The old ways are clearly not working! We need to change the way we treat people.”
Volunteers organized the pre-march cookout with a very short turnaround. They heard that the march was taking place and wanted to contribute, so they decided to provide food for the encampment and the demonstrators. They raised $2,800 for the supplies in three days, mostly via the Facebook group “We Love Northeast,” a group that splintered off from the similarly named “I Love Northeast.” Any supplies that weren’t used up by the cookout were donated to the Logan Park camp.
“I think this just shows how much people care,” said Auguston.
The people camped out at Logan have nowhere else to go. One volunteer, who asked only to go by Jim, said the city’s shelters are too overwhelmed, and there are too many to be accommodated by Elim Church’s shelter as well. They said the camp may be uncomfortable for the neighborhood, but it’s not there forever, they just need time to figure the situation out without being constantly pushed from park to park.
“We have to make them [the homeless] visible,” they said. “We have to bring them to the neighborhood, we have to show them what homelessness looks like.”
“People see it [the camp, or homelessness in general], and they get scared of it,” added Junail Freeman Anderson, president of homeless advocacy group Freedom From the Streets, and coordinator of the Logan Park encampment. “But it’s been this way for over 40 years.”
Anderson founded Freedom From the Streets to make sure that the homeless aren’t left behind or ignored. She said that many existing shelters are insufficient, overwhelmed, or unhelpful because they don’t listen to what their clients want.
“Nobody wants to go to the Salvation Army because they don’t listen, all they want to do is control you,” said Anderson, who has been homeless herself. If I had my own building, I can get staff that are comfortable with these people.”
Freedom From the Streets is saving to purchase a building to convert to their own shelter. The Logan Park camp has until September 15 to find other accommodations or disperse. In the meantime, volunteers at the camp are collecting signatures from people who live around the park on a petition that says it’s okay for them to stay until the September 15 deadline. There is a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the building here: gofundme.com/f/2316f8q46o
After a short march, Anderson and other protest leaders read their demands up to Frey’s window, though he did not present himself to the gathered demonstrators.
The demands made by protesters boiled down to a few key things: Homelessness is a systematic symptom of racism and affects more Black, indigenous, and people of color than other demographics, the current systems to address homelessness are ineffective and focus more on punishment than aid, and the city needs to invest in turning abandoned infrastructure into affordable permanent housing.
When running for mayor, Frey campaigned on promises to address homelessness, and protesters said that he has not only not followed through on his promises, but had made the issue worse in the past two years by kowtowing to expensive housing developments going up in poor neighborhoods, pushing out the people who could hardly afford to live there in the first place.
Alexis Kramer, Freedom From the Streets’ advocate to Child Protective Services, spoke briefly at the end of the march on one of the protesters’ demands: to decriminalize being a homeless parent. She herself is homeless; she lives in a hotel now, but when she lost her home, CPS took her children away from her. They’ve been separated for 16 months. She works with Freedom From the Streets to help other families fight to stay together.
“They take your children from you. They break the bond, and that is unacceptable. We need accountability!” she said.
Anderson closed out the march by asking the absent Frey a question: “You don’t want us in your parks. You don’t want us in your abandoned K-Marts. You don’t want us there, you don’t want us here, well where DO you want us?” she demanded. “I’m meeting with Frey on the 31st, and when I see him, I’m gonna ask him why he didn’t come out because you know that I’m out here, you know where I am!”
To learn more about the Logan Park encampment, click here to read the story.
Below: Protesters gathered at Logan Park, and marched to Mayor Jacob Frey’s home nearby. Their main route took Monroe Street before turning onto Central Avenue, headed towards downtown. Volunteers working for Junail Freeman Anderson wrote a hard copy of the protest’s demands before the march began. When the march arrived at Mayor Frey’s home, Alexis Kramer spoke to the assembly about her experience with homelessness, and losing her children to Child Protective Services. (Photos by Alex Schlee)