Just for Today, Too Tired to Care

I’m walking home, just a few blocks away from the Blue Garden. I hear shouting from several blocks away—it sounds rhythmic, like a girl’s jump rope ditty. But there’s also a thumping bass. Then honking—multiple cars—beep beep beep--one after the other. I peer down the street. There’s a hubbub at the intersection of Snelling and Minnehaha, more cars than usual stopped at the traffic light with their headlights on, though it’s four in the afternoon.

I cross Minnehaha and walk a block or so on Albert but now the chants and horns and thumping are growing louder. I turn around and see a stream of cars heading east on Minnehaha. Police on bikes, in fluorescent orange vests, stop to block the adjoining streets and motion the parade of cars forward. A woman with a bullhorn emerges from the open roof of a car. She is white and tattooed all down her arms and shouting. A black teenager hangs out a passenger window with a cardboard sign: Defund Police—so now I know what it’s all about. White women come out of their homes and clap and cheer and the people in the cars raise their fists and I just don’t care about any of it.

I’m no longer young. I don’t believe that raising my fist and shouting a slogan will help. I don’t believe we can simply do away with policing without descending into chaos. I’m not fired up or outraged or upset—just exhausted.