A Minneapolis native on the city’s history, verdict, and future

I traveled here for the start of Derek Chauvin’s trial last month and found that my hometown resembled an occupied state. Concrete barricades, armored military vehicles, and uniformed troops ringed the downtown courthouse, where jurors would hear the case against the former police officer accused of killing George Floyd. A pair of signs hanging side by side on a security fence offered mixed messages – “You Are Welcome Here” and “Restricted Area Do Not Enter” – befitting a city at war with itself.

Shadows cast by high-rises in the late-afternoon light slanted across almost barren sidewalks and streets. The stillness called to mind the uneasy quiet that greeted U.S. soldiers entering villages in Afghanistan when I reported from there a decade ago. Wooden boards covered first-floor windows of buildings near the courthouse, and reading the graffiti scrawled across the panels, I heard the silent chants of an invisible crowd: “Black Lives Matter,” “Hold Police Accountable,” “No Justice, No Peace.”