Until We Find Them (2021) is a short documentary film directed by Hunter Johnson that premiered at the 40th Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. At first glance, it is an intimate portrait of the affective and working relationship between two journalists residing in Guadalajara, Jalisco. But as we look into the lives of Darwin Franco and Dalia Souza, reporters for ZonaDocs, we experience the way in which the journalists interact daily with the universe of disappearances in México, which, in the context of The War against Drugs, has generated more than 80,000 disappearances. 

As Darwin expresses, “In México, no one disappears. In México, people are disappeared.” Thus, his mission and his job are to make sure these events are never forgotten and that the fight of those who protest against the disappearances doesn’t go unnoticed. Johnson’s documentary, by focusing on the portrayal of Dalia and Darwin, also chases this purpose. Through the use of space, music, sound, testimonies, and intertextuality, Until We Find Them presents the spectator with two vast stages of the disappearance phenomenon.

The first stage is crude desolation; the documentary, through the testimonies of Dalia, Darwin, and the mothers of disappeared individuals, tries to explain the possible causes and consequences of the disappearances in México. In this landscape, for example, mothers explain how the criminalization of the victims has been used as a strategy by the government to justify the country’s militarization and silence the families of those who have disappeared. 

In the same manner, Dalia expresses the difficulty of finding justice in a sea of high impunity levels and a multiplicity of perpetrators (mainly organized crime and agents of the state) that act either independently or collude to execute these crimes against humanity. And, finally, through the presentation of the spaces of the Servicio Médico Forense (Medical Forensic Service, SEMEFO) and the cemetery, Darwin gives an account of another crisis that sprouted from the violence of The War: a forensic crisis with the flooding of 40,000 unidentified bodies in which the state is accused of disappearing the disappeared twice, by incinerating unidentified bodies that were not even DNA tested. Visually profound, Johnson’s creeping camera movements and voice-over testimonies create an emotional atmosphere that echoes the gravity of the words that are being said by the participants.

The second stage presented by Until We Find Them also comes from the disappearance phenomenon, but it provides the spectator with a different look. It proves as Darwin mentions, that “as journalists, we have to be able to acknowledge the horror of the war, but we also have to be able to acknowledge how hope and love grow even in the darkest of places.” This stage is led by the families of the disappeared and the networks of support that are built around the victims of disappearances in México. 

Through his lens, Johnson not only portrays these people and their daily struggle but through subtle yet precise close-ups, he emphasizes the importance of looking into the face of the families of the disappeared. He documents how mourning is shared through a hug, through contact with one another, and in the case of Darwin and Dalia, through journalistic articles that call for justice.

To understand how these support networks are created, the documentary makes heavy use of intertextuality. For example, by incorporating other perspectives the spectator gets to know one of Jalisco’s anti-monuments: The Glorieta de las y los desaparecidos (Roundabout for the Disappeared). The spectator also joins the mothers of the victims at the moment in which they, through their searches, find a bittersweet treasure: a person’s body. 

Undoubtedly, the main contribution is that through these testimonies and scenes, Until We Find Them shouts a message for the Mexican and foreign spectator to hear, so that the disappearance phenomenon in México may change, as Dalia words it: “What needs to change is the meaning we, as people…give to the life, the dignity, and the integrity of the other. We have to understand that if something happens to her, to him, to you, to them, to whomever, it is also happening to me.” 

If you wish to learn more about Until We Find Them or schedule a screening, visit: https://www.untilwefindthem.com/.

Olga Salazar Pozos is a Ph.D. Candidate of Hispanic Literature and Culture from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota. She has collaborated with the Observatory on Disappearances and Impunity in Mexico, a research project of the Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota And, currently, Salazar is working on her dissertation, which is titled: “Between the Erasure of Violence and the Political Force of Collective Mourning: Artistic Representations of Mexico’s War on Drugs.”

On April 28^th, 2021, a strike against a tax reform started in Colombia, and almost two months later it is still ongoing. As of June 21^st, official reports confirm that at least 72 people have been killed by the police or paramilitary groups and the number is growing every day. On June 8^th, the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights visited the country to clarify the situation, and a formal statement is expected soon. 

In this context of extreme violence, it is important to analyze alternatives for resolving the current crisis. Since the first day of the strike, the presence of the Indigenous movement has been salient. The Misak and the Nasa from the Cauca region, one of the most violent provinces of Colombia, have been particularly visible because of their approach to strike using non-violent actions. This article analyses the strategies of these two Indigenous groups and why their participation in the strike is key for the short- and long-term resolution of the crisis.

History of indigenous groups in Colombia

Indigenous groups in Latin America resisted a bloody process of conquest by the Spanish. After independence, Indigenous people were officially recognized as citizens in many countries, yet the expansion of agrarian capitalism and the modernization of the economy did not bring benefits for them. Numerous Indigenous communities lost their land and were forced to perform dependent jobs on large haciendas. 

In Colombia, during the colonial period, native groups were congregated, located in specific territories and paid their taxes together. They were discriminated against, and considered inferior, but that at least implied the recognition of their existence and their differences. In contrast, the new republic of Colombia was constituted under liberal ideas, in the name of progress and equality and based on individual citizens. There was no place for collective lands; hence, Indigenous people were excluded from equal economic, social and political participation. Moreover, the Indigenous population was relatively low compared with other countries, and the mestizaje process was very strong. In the new republic, all people should be “civilized,” a homogenous group of individual citizens, free and mestizo. Therefore, equality implied the suppression of differences.

The 1991 constitution recognized the multicultural reality of the country and grants special rights for Indigenous and afro descent ancestral territories and authorities. These groups could finally live under their own customs and authorities, as long as they do so in their own assigned territories. The implementation of these rights, however, has been eclipsed by the constant violence and conflicts in the country. Consequently, the lack of a real integration and interaction with the broader society. Furthermore, the violence in the country puts Indigenous communities at a big risk of stigmatization, racism, and genocide.

Misak people re-signifying history during the strike

Sebastián de Belalcázar arrived in Cauca in 1537, claimed the territory for the Spanish crown and founded the city of Popayán, as he did with other cities in Colombia, like Cali. These settlements implied the subjugation of the Indigenous population and were essential for the Spanish to establish control over newly conquered territories. In 1937, the mayor of Popayán commissioned the construction of the Belalcázar monument in commemoration of the quadricentennial anniversary of the founding of Popayán. The monument was placed at the Morro de Tulcán, a ceremonial center of the Pubeneses, a confederation of Indigenous groups that inhabited the territory when the Spanish arrived. During the inauguration of the statue, the poet Rafael Maya claimed that the statue symbolized Popayán’s best “a heroic race, wisdom, beauty, holiness, poetry and song.” Therefore, it is considered that the statue symbolizes the Hispanidad, an Iberian and Catholic identity.

In September 2020, the Indigenous authorities of the Misak from the southwest of Colombia (AISO) knocked down the statue of Sebastian de Belalcázar from the Morro de Tulcán. Prior to this, the Misak conducted a trial using a range of legal tools from the Special Indigenous Jurisdiction and the 169 ILO Convention. The official communication stated:

Today, September 16^th, 2020, the year in which 55 massacres have accumulated in Colombia and when terror, lies, deception and power deepen their fascist and racist war from the Wall Mapu to Chiapas and beyond. Today, finally, from the hand of the daughters and sons of the Misak people, that is, of the earth; today Sebastián the murderer has fallen and with him, right now, those who have exercised the power of terror for more than 500 years are also coming down.

Belalcázar was accused of genocide, dispossession, land grabbing as well as physical and cultural disappearance of the peoples that were part of the Pubense Confederation (from which the Misak are considered the direct descendants). The punishment was that Belalcázar should be remembered as a murderer and the genocide, instead of being remembered as a “hero.” 

By the sunrise of the 28^th of April, 2021, the city of Cali in the southwestern part of the country woke up without one of its most iconic statues: Sebastian de Belalcázar. The statue was knocked down by the AISO in a continuation of the trial of 2020.

Since then, the list of statues that have fallen across the country has been increasing throughout the strike. Five more statues have fallen in different cities. Most of these statues were constructed by local governments after independence as icons of a postcolonial society that aimed to foster a sense of patriotism and strengthen the history of the nation. 

On the 9^th of June, they also tried to knock down the statues of Christopher Columbus and Isabella the Catholic in Bogotá, but the police stopped them. The next day, however, the Ministry of Culture removed the statues and a consultation table was established. This initiative seeks to listen to ethnic communities, historians and other actors about the meaning of monuments and to define whether these statues will be erected again or if they will be sent to a museum. This was celebrated by Misak people.

Indigenous Misak actions invite Colombian people to reflect on their colonial past and heroes. Misak people call for a broad historical perspective, which includes Indigenous history. Moreover, these actions show that Indigenous people and young protesters are tired of a ruling class that glorifies a bloody past and identifies with Spanish and European history more than its own.

This shows that at least part of the population is seeking new symbols and icons that represent them. A pluralistic perspective of history is becoming a necessity, as a nation based on one single history runs the risk of becoming a totalitarian society. As Hannah Arendt warns, totalitarian nations are based on the premise of a supposed law of history in which certain groups are on their way to extinction. This colonist perspective considers indigenous cultures as part of the past.

The Nasa people and their Guardia Indígena

The Nasa people from northern Cauca are part of the Cauca Regional Indigenous Council – CRIC, the biggest and oldest indigenous organization in the country. The Nasa are known around the world for their Guardia Indígena – GI (Indigenous Guard), a network for community protection of women, men, boys and girls who voluntarily and non-violently defend indigenous territories. The GI responds to a process of historical resignification of the ancient struggles and to a practical need for territorial control in Indigenous lands overwhelmed by armed conflict. The GI won the Front Line Defenders recognition in 2020 for their actions and contribution to peacebuilding. It is a non-violent initiative where its members are unarmed and use only symbolic weapons, such as a bastón (walking stick), symbolizing power bestowed on them by their community to claim territorial control. 

On May 3^rd, the Minga (an Indigenous political meeting) from Cauca arrived in Cali to join the national strike. The GI joined the barricades that were created in different marginalized neighborhoods and their presence inspired young people of the “Front Line.”

On May 9^th, civilians armed with handguns attacked a group of guards that were on their way to provide food and supplies to the Minga in Cali. The videos easily remind us of the battles between the Indigenous and the Spanish, the former with darker skin and without weapons whereas the latter had whiter skin and sophisticated weapons. The attack against the Minga was carefully planned but the GI, completely unarmed, followed the gunmen to try to capture them. As a result, eight indigenous people were injured and two days later, on May 11^th, the Minga went back to the indigenous territories in Cauca.

The GI has become a symbol of nonviolent resistance and it is a very attractive icon among the youth. The current strike has been led and carried by young people, who do not see any future for themselves, hence, initiatives like the GI provide an alternative for young individuals who are searching for their place in this country.

Conclusions

One of the main issues during the strike has been the excessive use of force by official security forces and hate speech used by many members of the government party, the Centro Democrático (CD). Mainly using social media, CD party members are pushing a narrative to justify the violation of human rights in Colombia by framing civil protesters as being part of terrorist organizations. In this context of violence and stigmatization, dialogues and negotiations are very difficult. 

Both strategies, those of the Misak and the GI, and the reactions from some sectors of Colombian society, show us that colonialism continues to be a contemporary tension. A process that inhabits people in everyday life and, for this reason, what is at stake in the symbolic actions described above is not only Colombia’s past but also its present. The ultimate goal of the Indigenous people’s strategies is that their actions, knowledge, beliefs and struggles become part of the democratic conversation, so they can contribute to resolving the complex problems of the modern world, and their contribution can be recognized and acknowledged. 

Nancy Paola Chaves has a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from Wageningen University in The Netherlands.  She is currently a Lecturer of Political Studies at Universidad del Valle in Colombia and a Gender and Social Inclusion consultant. Learn more about her via: http://www.linkedin.com/in/paola-chaves-gender-social-inclusion-conflict.

*Editors Note: This piece was originally posted by MinnPost.

During Pride Month, the University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies grapples with the complicated legacy of remembering and memorializing LGBTQIA+ individuals, who for too long remained absent from collective memory of the Holocaust and other acts of genocide or mass violence. As I worked to compile resources for K-12 and university educators teaching about these topics, certain patterns became clear. It is true that homosexual men are the subjects of existing Holocaust historiography, as men engaging in homosexuality were sent to concentration camps in large numbers, and they faced incredibly brutal treatment during and after the Nazi period. However, Nazis’ strictly prescribed roles for gender and sexuality also meant that others fell victim to state violence and persecution and post-war, queerphobic, collective amnesia.

Furthermore, Holocaust testimonies rarely mention homosexuality in a positive light, which continues to lead to additional elisions among the organizations and institutions tasked with preserving this past. If queerphobia continues to serve as a means of ostracization and exclusion, queering the past and histories of genocide is an ongoing and a multidirectional task. Queer activists, students, and scholars past and present self-critically continue to recover, complicate, and amend certain orthodoxies when studying genocide and mass violence; the resonances across time and space among various groups are profound. Gender and sexuality remain (among many topics) understudied within genocide studies more broadly. Where, then, does a larger, more inclusive understanding of the past enter into K-12 and university curricula? With a discerning eye, the past begins to circulate anew, and more inclusive histories emerge in unexpected ways.

As I made my way through Sarah Schulman’s extraordinary “Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, 1987-1993,” subtle (and not-so-subtle) reverberations with both our present moment and our collective past became apparent. While we are globally still battling the COVID-19 pandemic, the story of AIDS activism certainly touches on another recent example of governments’ in/action, public backlash and ignorance around deadly diseases, and the disparities around race, gender, and socioeconomics in health care around the world. But within this book, one that critics have coined “part sociology, part oral history, part memoir, part call to arms,” the resulting story of AIDS activism also illuminates other focal points beyond the lack of government intervention and public apathy; Schulman also stresses the central role of imagery and words (i.e., symbolism) from the past for ACT UP’s (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power’s) messaging.

The importance of (rehashed) symbols and slogans for political activism is nothing new, and it was not what solely made ACT UP a revolutionary protest movement. Nevertheless, in a post-Stonewall world, ACT UP consisted of many prominent artists and advertisers in its ranks, and they created polished campaigns that effectively circulated memorable language and images to combat the lack of action around HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, many of the activists themselves were HIV+, and either queer, from marginalized groups, or a combination of intersectional identities.

It was ACT UP that spurred public awareness surrounding the persecution of sexual minorities and the policing of gender under the Nazis (at least in the Anglophone world) post-Stonewall. Many of the movement’s activists were also Jewish, and often had familial ties to the Holocaust. One such intersection of queer and Jewish history occurred at a protest at the World Trade Center. ACT UP activists dressed as office workers, wore masks that said FACELESS BUREAUCRATS, and carried lunch board signs that read, “IT’S NOT MY FAULT, I DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT. NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT THE OVENS.” A common defense among Nazi war criminals, collaborators and ordinary citizens alike, this common adage satirically used by ACT UP exposed the societal complicity in mass death of PWAs (People with AIDS). When the response from public officials ranged from apathy to scapegoating, it did not take much to link these non-responses to other iterations of state-sponsored violence and public apathy.

The success of ACT UP’s images lay in a larger politicization of aesthetics that reverberated for years. One of ACT UP’s most successful campaigns was Silence = Death / Silencio=Muerte, which utilized the pink triangle used in Nazi concentration camps to identify homosexuals. Instead of the triangle being upside down (the way in which it was used by the Nazis), the triangle was placed right-side up. This not only subverted and departed from the Nazi usage, it also effectively conjured up the memory of past persecution of sexual minorities without reducing minoritized groups to victimization.

The imagery was so successful that the ways in which these mediated images and symbols took on a life of their own. Silence = Death circulated within the Klezmer revival movement, where many of its musicians and activists were queer and/or Jewish, and were revitalizing Yiddish language, music, and culture after its decimation in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. The most notable example was with the Klezmatics, who used the Yiddish translation, שװײַגן איז טױט (transliteration: Shvaygn iz toyt) for their debut album in 1989. On the album cover, the text appears in both Yiddish orthography and transliteration, surrounding a photo of the band members, at least one of whom, Lorin Sklamberg (who identifies as gay) is wearing a pink triangle.

Echoes of the past appear in unexpected places, not always directly connected to the acts of mass violence in question, but surface in a myriad of ways within a larger culture and are equally worthy of critical study and examination. How does Yiddish music in the late 20th century not only grapple with the genocide of Eastern European Jewry, but how can it place itself in dialogue with a larger community of cultural and political activists? How can the memory of genocide serve not to re/traumatize, but to instead work through the myriad ways targeted groups survive mass violence, even if justice is never served on their behalf? As a gay Yiddishist myself, who teaches university and community-education students in multiple languages (including English, German, and Yiddish), these are central questions when studying these topics.

These two examples of ACT UP that incorporate Holocaust memory also demonstrate that queering history in this way (and especially the histories of the Holocaust and other acts of genocide and mass vioence) would not be possible today without the protest and political movements that made LGBTQIA+ visiblity possible. Knowing that a genocide took place is not enough. Yes, engaging with culture(s) destroyed by fascism in a nuanced way is a next step, but so is learning of cultural revival and continuation in spite of a violent past. The same approach holds true for the myriad of queer histories we are obligated to study and complicate. It is an approach that serves as a reminder: Singular histories fail to grapple with the events in question, as the events resonate differently across time, space, and among affected groups.

Educational resources for Pride Month:

K-12 Resources

• From the USC Shoah Foundation: Clips of testimonies of LGBTQIA+ victims of the Nazis

From USHMM :

• Gay Men under the Nazi Regime 
• Gays and Lesbians – A bibliography (based on the museum’s library holdings)

A recent interview with Professor Alisa Solomon on Eve Adams, a radical queer Jewish feminist, who was deported by the United States to Poland and later murdered by the Nazis. A new book about her can be found here:

University of Minnesota’s Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collections in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies 

Meyer Weinshel is a Ph.D. candidate in Germanic studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where he is the educational outreach and special collections coordinator for the UMN Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In addition to being an instructor of German studies, he has also taught Yiddish coursework with Minneapolis-based Jewish Community Action and at the Ohio State University.

When Joe Biden recently redecorated the Oval Office with paintings he had a lot to choose from:  45 presidents, a collection of founding fathers and countless political figures that have accumulated during 245 years of United States history. There are, of course, some questionable characters among them due to events like the Civil War, Watergate and the last administration. But the number of individuals with clearance to stare down from White House walls is still astonishingly high.

Not too long ago and as an unpleasant surprise to many, particularly within the Native American community, Andrew Jackson was seen hanging in the Oval Office again, trying to make the point that he was still salonfähig. This is one of those German words that give Merriam Webster a headache.

“Socially acceptable” is the official translation, but it really means “can be brought to a highbrow cocktail party of notables such as literary figures, artists or statesmen without ruining everyone’s evening.” Well, Biden didn’t want Jackson to ruin any of his parties, so he got rid of his portrait and put up one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Although FDR’s legacy regarding the Holocaust remains controversial, he is still one of the most revered US Presidents with undiminished Salonfähigkeit.

Germany’s equivalent to the White House and Oval Office is the Chancellery in Berlin with the office that since 2005 has been occupied by Angela Merkel. As a scientist by training Merkel is dispassionate about many things including the arts. When she entered office, she played it safe — as she typically does — and put up a portrait of Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first chancellor after WWII. A stuffy conservative and at his time often criticized for mixing religion and politics, he is today the unchallenged father figure of the Federal German Republic just as George Washington is for the United States.

To her excuse, Angela Merkel had a more limited number of predecessor portraits to choose from than Joe Biden. This is due to the lack of term limits in the Basic Law and, consequently, several semi-eternal chancellorships between 1949 and today (including her own). Also, finding someone salonfähig before 1949 gets tricky in German history.

The First Reich lasted one thousand years and had many emperors but no chancellors. The Second Reich had fewer emperors and more chancellors — Bismarck being one of them — but none with any democratic credentials. And the Third Reich’s only chancellor promised one thousand years of Paradise that turned out to be twelve years of hell and Holocaust. The only other period in German history outside the Federal Republic that gets occasionally mined for portraits of ex-chancellors is the short-lived, interwar Weimar Republic. Out of that group the award for remaining most salonfähig today regularly goes to Gustav Stresemann who was chancellor for only three months but won the Nobel Peace Prize for his achievements as foreign minister in the 1920s.

So, picking Adenauer’s portrait was OK although certainly the least bold and most boring choice. For someone like Angela Merkel who came of age in East Germany in the early seventies, chancellor Willy Brandt and his Ostpolitik must have been more inspiring than Adenauer’s pontificating about godless communists from two decades earlier.

Another wall in Merkel’s Oval Office remains blank for now. It was actually reserved for a painting by famous German expressionist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Schmidt-Rottluff, however, was recently reported to have parroted the anti-Semitic war propaganda of the Kaiser’s government in his letters towards the end of WWI. Which is what many, if not the majority of Germans did at that time, including Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school and, after emigrating to the US, leading architect of the International Style.

Clearly no excuse, but it is noteworthy that in contrast to fellow expressionist and Hitler enthusiast Emil Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff distanced himself from the Nazis and later worked with and befriended Jewish colleagues in the art scene. It would have been nice if the German chancellor had at least made an effort to contextualize and differentiate instead of simply leaving the wall blank and avoiding any discussion. I don’t think that this is how Vergangenheitsbewältigung or working through the past should be done, not even by a dispassionate physicist who, ironically, never skips the annual Richard Wagner Music Festival in Bayreuth.

Is Karl Schmidt-Rottluff still salonfähig? Well, if Franklin Delano Roosevelt is, then Karl Schmidt-Rottluff should at least be given a hearing.

Henning Schroeder is a former vice provost and dean of graduate education at the University of Minnesota and currently teaches in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch. His email address is schro601@umn.edu and his Twitter handle is @HenningSchroed1.

As the academic year draws to a close at the Center and a clear route forward out of the pandemic has come into view, two popular Spanish refrains come to mind: “No hay mal que dure cien años” and “No hay mal que por bien no venga.” These adages roughly translate to: “there is no evil that lasts a hundred years,” and “there’s nothing bad through which good doesn’t come.”  

If anything, the advent of the pandemic made us more resourceful and agile as we pushed forward with unprecedented experiments with technology that connected CHGS with students, educators, advocates, and scholars across the country and the globe.  

The lockdown also forced many of us to explore in detail the brave new world of online teaching where we discovered that digital learning platforms can offer extraordinary tools to enhance collaboration, dialogue, and creative forms of instruction.  

Despite being unable to meet on campus, CHGS affiliated faculty worked closely together to provide engaging, unique learning opportunities for UMN students, connecting them with experts from other institutions of higher education throughout the world.  

Thanks to the hard work and tireless efforts of Jennifer Hammer and Meyer Weinshel we also continued developing the Center’s digital collections and making these more relevant and accessible for use in research and teaching.

Above all, we have learned that the digital, which previously seemed to isolate people, allowed us to stay together, bridge distances, and make us stronger.

Thus, the new academic year will not be “back to normal” (or merely a return to the old settled ways). We will build upon these experiences, where traditional in-person learning embraces innovative methods of outreach and dissemination to uphold the Center’s mission.

This piece was originally published by Scatterplot on May 24th, 2021.

Tomorrow marks one year since the murder of George Floyd at 38th and Chicago in South Minneapolis, sparking a rebellion that burned a police precinct and much of a nearby commercial strip. In the days that followed, a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council declared their intention to “dismantle” the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). This declaration seemed to place the city at the forefront of a national conversation to reimagine public safety and redress racialized police violence. And yet, although the people of Minneapolis largely agree about the need for systematic changes in policing, residents, activists, and policymakers continue to disagree about the nature and scope of those transformations. These political struggles have complicated efforts to dismantle the MPD.

As I wrote on scatterplot last summer, periods of upheavalrarely produce total abandonment of the status quo, but political leaders, activists, and community members can use such openings to shift the direction of policies, practices, and institutional and cultural arrangements. Those words ring even truer today. Nearly a year following the declaration, the MPD remains standing, but changed, as the city continues to struggle over how to create “safety for all” in a starkly unequal society. Fights over public safety are central to the upcoming election, where city residents will vote on a new charter amendment to replace the MPD with a Department of Public Safety and re-elect or vote out of office the council members who have fought for (or resisted) these changes and the Mayor who has rebuffed calls to dismantle the MPD.

I started writing this post several weeks ago, trying to map out the many developments in public safety over the past year. But the details soon grew too long for the format, threatening to turn a blog post into the book I’m currently writing on policing in Minneapolis. Instead, here I’ll provide several links to local reporting on these issues and then focus on the charter amendment. 

These changes include:

• Police reforms led by the Mayor and MPD’s Chief, in part through a court order imposed by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. These include a ban on chokeholds, a new “duty to intervene” requirement for officers, and ongoing reforms to training and misconduct policies and practices.
• Expanded violence interruption teams, including community patrols during the unrest, the Chauvin trial, and spikes in gun violence.
• A 5% cut to the MPD’s 2021 budget to fund violence prevention programs and a new mobile mental health crisis response program.
• The ousting of MPD from the city’s public schools and their replacement with civilian safety specialists (some of whom have a law enforcement background).
• The torching of the third precinct and successful resistanceto resiting the precinct within the ward.
• The “autonomous” George Floyd Square, which is still barricaded and managed by community members opposed to police presence in the neighborhood.
• State-level police reforms passed in 2020, which banned chokeholds (in most cases) and strengthened community involvement in Minnesota’s law enforcement licencing board. A new package of bills is currently under consideration in Minnesota (though is being blocked by Senate Republicans), which would eliminate most pretext vehicle stops by police and require the state licencing board to regulate officer support for white supremacist groups.

In addition, the events of this summer have pushed a cultural shift–prompting citizens, community leaders, and law enforcement to change. Residents have been increasingly drawn into the political struggles over public safety. Images of George Floyd and signs for “Justice for George” are ubiquitous across the city, even as residents and city leaders who support the MPD in the city have grown more organized. Officers have also left the force in record numbers, citing trauma from the unrest and frustration with elected officials, reducing the MPD’s size by 20% without any change in the charter. Indeed, it is this shrinking of the police force through attrition (not policy change) that has brought the number of MPD officers below the staffing levels required in the current city charter–opening the city up to a lawsuit filed by some community members who argue that the city has not adequately protected them. These safety concerns have been particularly acute in North Minneapolis, home to many Black residents, where gun violence has spiked since the start of the pandemic,* with community leaders demanding the city address these pressing safety concerns.

The city also agreed to  a record-breaking $27 million civil settlement for George Floyd’s family, announced just weeks before Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder. (The city and state also spent millions rebuilding from the unrest and fortifying downtown during the trial.) State and federal criminal cases against both Chauvin and the three other involved officers continue. In addition, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are both continuing civil rights investigations into the MPD’s policies and practices. Both investigations could lead to additional consent decrees forcing the city to further reform the MPD. In some cities, DOJ consent decrees have mandated cities spend more on police training and staffing, changes that may contradict the proposed charter amendment.

Last summer, after the June declaration by a majority of Minneapolis City Councilmembers, the council put forward an initiative to replace the MPD in the city charter with a Community Safety and Violence Prevention department. This charter amendment represented the most concrete effort to dismantle the MPD in the wake of the June 2020 declaration, though not all the councilmembers who took to the stage emblazoned with “DEFUND POLICE” supported the proposal. By city governance rules, any changes to the charter must be reviewed by the city’s Charter Commission, an appointed board tasked with providing a recommendation to the city council. In August, the city’s charter commission ran out the clock on their review of the proposal, effectively blocking its appearance on the 2020 ballot.

This initiative, however, was re-proposed in 2021, supported by both several city council members and a popular ballot initiative organized by Yes 4 Minneapolis. In November, Minneapolis voters will decide whether they want to replace the MPD in the city charter with a new Department of Public Safety, an initiative that has so far polled favorably but remains deeply contested. The new department would include alternative first responders alongside law enforcement, though it is unclear what the numerical balance will be between the different units. (Under the language of the Yes 4 Minneapolis amendment, the department will include “licensed peace officers if necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of the department.” State law requires the city to have police, making them “necessary” according to the language of the proposal.) It is also unclear how the shift from MPD to the new Public Safety department would impact ongoing negotiations with the police officers’ federation, with officers (and their contract) presumably shifting automatically to the new department if it passes. The amendment would also move power over the department from the Mayor to the City Council, a shift long supported by some councilmembers.

Supporters argue that the charter is the first step in reimagining policing and creating a structure for the city to develop holistic public safety interventions. The Mayor and many of his allies (including business leaders and some community leaders), however, have pushed back on these calls, arguing that it would defund (with the goal of ultimately abolishing) the MPD. They argue such moves would endanger public safety in a time of rising crime. The charter amendment also faces resistance from other activist groups, who argue that it may worsen the accountabilityproblem by shifting power to the council. One group of critics is working to propose an alternative charter amendment for community control of the police.

These divides–between more status-quo reform and radical transformations and among groups calling for radical changes vs. abolition–are part of a broader struggle in left-leaning cities in the U.S. Since the summer, a split has more publicly emerged between those who support police reform (or efforts to minimize certain kinds of police violence, particularly lethal killings of civilians, through policy and practice reforms), and abolitionists, who want to literally abolish the police (and, for many, abolish capitalism), reducing police violence by shrinking the number of police-civilian interactions. Even among activists who identify police abolition or radical transformations in public safety as the ultimate end-goal, however, tensions about how to start the journey toward that horizon remain.

Largely due to these struggles over public safety, the Mayor and the President of the City Council are no longer on speaking terms. The Mayor recently held a press conference about a spate of gun violence in North Minneapolis, which critically injured two children and killed 6-year-old Aniya Allen. Standing behind him were several of the community leaders and city councilmembers who have supported the Mayor’s plans; he did not invite the two Northside representatives who have championed the new models of violence prevention co-opted in the Mayor’s new safety plan. In November, Minneapolis residents will decide the fate of the public safety amendment, select a new Mayor or re-elect the incumbent, Jacob Frey, and vote for the full slate of city councilmembers (including one who will become the new City Council President). Residents will also vote on another charter amendment–the “strong mayor” proposal–which would give the Mayor more control over the operations of city departments (akin to the control he currently wields over the MPD).

In short, public safety in Minneapolis is changing quickly and in multiple, and at times contradictory, directions. It will likely shift even more after November and the conclusion of the DOJ investigation. While the June declaration to dismantle the MPD didn’t immediately “end” the MPD, it has dramatically altered local politics. It is unsurprising that crime–and gun violence in particular–has become a wedge issue in this struggle. Police represent, alternatively, the ideal of state protection and the threat of state violence, often to the same people, a tension legal scholar Monica Bell describes as the conundrum of Black security. Community members in the neighborhoods most impacted by over policing and under-protection often describe wanting both deep structural transformations in policing and more protection from exposure to violence in the community. While calls for more policing are a common response to rising violence, law enforcement is often a poor mechanism for producing the broader social fabric needed to prevent victimization. This means that “safety for all” cannot end with police reform–or even public safety transformations–but rather requires redressing the vastly unequal social conditions of residents in Minneapolis and across the country.

*Rises in some kinds of violent crime, including shootings, in 2021 and 2021 have often been attributed to changes in policing or criminal justice policies in the media. But police (and courts) are just one piece of a much bigger puzzle in society that drives crime up or down. There are lots of reasons to think that the pandemic, which disrupted so many parts of life, had a causal impact on crime. The pandemic pushed kids out of school buildings and adults out of employment and daily life on streets across the country. Abolitionists also note that the definition of crime is itself socially constructed and largely focuses on the kinds of harm committed by the least privileged in society. This framework argues we ought to treat deaths from preventable sickness (including COVID-19) and other kinds of structural violence with the same importance and urgency as homicides.

Thanks to Josh Page, Amber Joy Powell, and Christopher Robertson for their insightful suggestions.

Michelle Phelps is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her research is in the sociology of punishment, focusing on mass probation, criminal justice transformation, and policing.

The genocide committed against Indigenous groups in America has been described as a topic of the past, however, this is a practice which has not paused since the arrival of the Europeans to this territory which we today call the American continent. 

The recent government actions against indigenous populations demonstrate this, as it occurs in countries like Brazil and Colombia. At the same time, people look to claim their rights and resist through a diverse set of strategies that range from direct protest in the streets to the defense of their culture and thought via quotidian acts, pedagogical, and performative acts on Western culture.

The indigenous people of the territory referred to as Latin America face daily structural obstacles which limit their full social and economic inclusion in each of the countries in which they live.  This is not novel information, on the contrary, it contains the normalization of a social group that is excluded as a result of state actions and that justifies itself through economic structural causes that perpetuate colonial differences, now more than 200 years after the end of the colonial process.

On top of a lack of State guarantees for access to resources, there have been systematic assassinations of individuals belonging to indigenous communities, which have occurred throughout history and continue to occur in various countries of Latin America in an ever-growing count of bleeding droplets emanating from the community.  

There are multiple examples to mention: until just a few decades ago, Colombia permitted hunting indigenous people to populate their lands; in Argentina, the existence of indigenous people has been largely denied; and under the Fujimori government in Peru, illicit hysterectomies and vasectomies were conducted on the indigenous population, among many other acts of extermination which have been done in this region. 

Similarly, another way of sponsoring genocide of indigenous populations is to make them invisible; and states have minimized their existence via inaccurate census counts, by the absence of questions for self-identification, exaggerated error margins, or their very absence. Each of these are mechanisms that result in one not knowing the full extent of the number of indigenous populations, and therefore the necessary policies are not developed to respond to their needs.

This type of treatment towards indigenous peoples is framed in discourses of hate sponsored by governments or political leaders that present stigmatized information. Those discourses of hate are the corallary of epistemic violence (or epistemicides as Boaventura de Sousa has said), as the attacks and assassinations are of physical violence. 

Both kinds of violence form the basis of the “modern subjective ideal” according to the philosopher Nelson Maldonado-Torres. This means that in order to arrive at the processes of bleeding, forgetting, and inattention to the indigenous people, there has been a sustained racist and classist mental paradigm built as the ontological foundation in current societies.  That is why these types of violence can be committed by different actors that feel that they are backed by society and that they are maintaining the status quo.

An example of this have been the events in recent years against the indigenous people of Colombia that conform the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC). Since 2009, via the declaration of T-25 auto 004, the Colombian Constitutional Court declared that 32 of the 102 Indigenous Peoples of the country are in danger of extinction.  Furthermore, the court stated that the State should take measures to stop this. Nonetheless, the violation of the rights of Indigenous Peoples has not improved since then. 

Quite the contrary, they are among the poorest in the country, and many do not have access to basic services, health, and have low levels of nutrition according to reports from the Ministry of Health.  Furthermore, the physical violence that they are subjected to makes chilling statistics.  Between January 2016 and March 2021, more than 280 Indigenous People have been assassinated, according to data by the Institute for the Defense of Peace (Indepaz).   These assassinations have flared up following the signing of the Peace Accord, and the majority are committed in Valle del Cauca, a place disputed by different armed drug dealing groups.

These statistics are a genocide by droplets, but additionally, there is no State protection to the community from these acts, and in some cases, the communities indicate that the perpetrators are themselves government forces, as communicated via organizations like Dejusticia, Indepaz or international entities like Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, among others.

It is precisely this which is happening these days in Colombia.  Since the 28^th of April 2021, the country has been subsumed in protests against the current government’s decisions.  In this context, ONIC has organized an indigenous minga (a meeting where tasks and activities are developed and worked on together) to make demands to State representatives for action to protect them, and a response to the assassination of Indigenous and other Social Leaders. On this occasion, the minga took over and blocked public spaces in different parts of Cali, one of the country’s cities most affected by poverty, and consequently a key focal point for the national protests.   

Among its actions, the minga disarmed police infiltrators, removed their weapons and judged them according to their customs, and turned them over to the Ombudsman and the United Nations (UN). This peaceful act was responded to by armed civil society groups, supported by groups of police officers (as has been shown by many videos shared via social media), shooting at indigenous people that were in the minga in different parts of the city. A total of nine people have been hurt by the shots; some are in grave health situations.  Of this writing, there has not yet been one prosecution, investigation, or other response from the government.

These attacks were further accompanied by shouting at the minga, “Go away Indian!” coming from people who, according to the video footage, were with and supporting the armed individuals.

What can be done to resist and not give up in the face of this genocide by droplets? Confronting these constant attacks, the Indigenous Peoples of Colombia undertake actions of direct protest and develop judicial, penal, and cultural performative actions, such as knocking down the monuments of conquerors across the country. The Misak people, who are part of ONIC, have pulled down three of them.  

The first and second were of Sebastián de Belalcazar in September 2020 in Popayán, and on the 28^th of April in Cali, the third was of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, the 9^th of May, 2021 in Bogotá. Both individuals are considered “founders” of the capitals by much of traditional history. Their names and their acts, by contrast, were genocidal, as the Indigenous people indicate.  The tearing down of these statues comes accompanied by symbolic “judgments” in which they have been sentenced to crimes such as genocidal dispossession and land hoarding, physical and cultural disappearance, and torture. Acts that are well known in history, and meanwhile national monuments to these individuals continue to be considered. This is also what the indigenous people wish to tear down, and therein lies the radical strength of their act.

Knocking down these statues are acts of resilience, full of decolonizing symbolism. It is not vandalism, as some sectors of society have described it, but acts of revindication of Indigenous culture in Colombia. The Indigenous groups that lead these acts demonstrate a proposal to raise awareness in general society via disruptive acts – whether via the shock or sympathy that they generate. These acts of Indigenous resistance are simple, yet powerful.  They call attention to the way in which history is written, the position that Indigenous groups hold in society, and how different paths can be built in a country that has a deep debt in terms of recognizing the rights and diversity of Indigenous People.

Giovanna Aldana has a Ph.D. in Social Science Research from FLASCO in Mexico.  She currently has a postdoctoral position in the Institute of Anthropological Research at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She has been a university instructor in Perú and Colombia and a social consultant for various organizations.  Her research has focused on topics related to the multiple expressions of Indigenous Resistance, and the quotidian forms of resistance, and those indirectly through culture.  Learn more about Giovanna via her LinkedIn or Academia pages.

To read this article in Spanish please click here.

In 2015, I was in a taxi in Medellin on my way to the airport. Upon hearing the news about the peace process between the Colombian government and the FARC, the taxi driver vehemently complained that the authorities were negotiating with people who perpetrated atrocities.

I jumped in and pointed out that Colombian paramilitaries also committed atrocities, yet the government negotiated their demobilization a decade earlier and rightly did it so. The taxi driver paused for a moment in silence and then replied: “You’re right. At the beginning, paramilitaries only eliminated drug addicts, prostitutes, gays, and communists. Then, they started to do drug-trafficking, and that is when they went bad.” 

In Cali these days, and in other parts of Colombia, this is exactly the kind of mindset at work as we witness white SUVs running into the protesters at roadblocks and shooting at them. In an intercepted communication that Colombian media recently circulated, a vigilante laid out his modus operandi. “We go to the police officer in charge of the area and tell him – we tell him, we do not ask for permission – that we will approach the protesters and try to convince them to remove the roadblocks. And if they don’t get convinced, then we go back and take care of them” – with lead. 

In a country in which a part of society thinks that way at all levels of the social pyramid, the democratic process has little incentive to converge onto the center and support more encompassing and more moderate arrangements that isolate the extremes. There will always be people who will be ready to turn to their own guns if they do not get what they want. And the party that is willing and able to apply the greatest force will be the one that will ultimately have the upper hand. A race to the bottom will ensue: “When they go low, we will go so much lower.” 

For over a decade during my time in Colombia, I have devoted my sociology to identify channels that might help expand the horizon of civil interactions across a variety of social and institutional scenarios and have attempted to convince the parties on one side and on the other that this was the only path to sustainable gains for all. 

There comes a time in life, though, when one needs to acknowledge one’s own limits and accept that there are actors within society that will play the civil game only till it serves their own interests and that when it does not, or no longer, then they will opt for violent confrontation and for a war of attrition. 

Before this bitter realization, one is confronted with a question that is hard to elude: “And now, what?” One option is to leave my sociology and do something else in life. Paraphrasing Adorno, to do sociology of the civil sphere in certain contexts is almost like writing poetry after Auschwitz.

It is not barbarianism, but one is left powerless and without teeth in the face of barbarianism. It is a bit like writing sermons of hope in Germany or Italy in 1941 or in East Berlin in 1965.

Carlo Tognato is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Change, Institutions and Policy (SCIP) of the Schar the School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

To hear Carlo discuss his newest work, please click here.

Editor’s note: April 24th marked the 106th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. That Saturday, President Biden formally recognized the event as genocide, the culmination of efforts by the Armenian community, nearly all of which are the descendants of genocide survivors. We asked Lou Ann Matossian, a local community historian, to reflect on the Armenian community’s connection to Minnesota.

By the fall of 1915, when the Ottoman Turkish extermination campaign was making headlines across Minnesota, the Armenian  Genocide had been underway for six months. Closest to the story were two groups of Minnesotans—ethnic Armenians and Protestant missionaries. 

Since 1899, when Oriental rug merchant Bedros Keljik arrived in St. Paul, the  Twin Cities community had grown to about 200 Armenian immigrants and their  American-born children. In May, 1915, as the genocide was unfolding in their homeland, Armenians appealed to President Wilson at a mass meeting in downtown St. Paul. At least 37 Twin Cities Armenians—a sizeable proportion of the community’s military-age men—left that summer to volunteer against the  Turkish army. 

Also in the danger zone were Protestant missionary-educators. Charlotte Willard and Frances Gage, who had met at Carleton College, rescued 41 Armenian women. Carmelite Christie protected Armenian students, distributed aid, and chronicled the destruction around her. Sophie Holt brought her wartime experiences home to Duluth. After the war, returning missionaries took part in national efforts to assist survivors of the Armenian Genocide.  

The largest such effort, Near East Relief, received strong support in Minnesota.  “They Shall Not Perish,” a striking NER poster, was created by Douglas Volk, a  founder of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.  Beginning in 1920, refugees such as Vartanoush Karagheusian, sister of Dayton’s  Oriental rug buyer John Karagheusian, found safe haven in Minnesota. Survivor  Oksent (“Mike”) Ousdigian would lead the Public Employees Retirement Association for more than 40 years. Today, Minnesota Armenians continue to play a vital, productive role in community life. 

We remember and demand.

Lou Ann Matossian, Ph.D., Community Historian

Nearly five years ago, the Center published two blog articles, Another Genocide Declaration: This One Matters, and Berlin’s Message to Ankara, detailing the importance of Germany’s recognition of the Armenian genocide. Then, Germany had just become the thirteenth country to formally declare the targeted destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire as genocide. To many scholars, Germany’s recognition of the genocide was the most important official recognition, not only because of Germany’s support for the Ottoman military but also because the Armenian genocide paved the way for the horrors of the Holocaust just over two decades later. 

Beyond that, back in 2016, it was nearly inconceivable for the United States to recognize the Armenian genocide in any meaningful sense. Several Presidential candidates campaigned on the promise of recognition, only for the idea to be eschewed by the realities of contemporary geopolitics. Finally, in October 2019, the House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution formally acknowledging the genocide. In December, the Senate followed suit. Praising the vote, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz tweeted, “the Armenian Genocide is historical fact, and the denial of that fact is a continuation of the genocide.”

Now, two years later, a sitting President has publicly recognized the mass murder of the Armenian people as genocide. It’s a momentous occasion and caps decades of advocacy and awareness building by Armenian-Americans, nearly all of which are in some way connected to victims and survivors of the genocide. 

When the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies was founded nearly 25 years ago, it was among the first university centers in the country to do research and actively advocate for education and recognition of the Armenian genocide, to such an extent that the Center was sued by Turkish nationalists attempting to stifle our work. The Center’s founder, Dr. Stephen Feinstein, enjoyed a strong partnership with the Twin Cities Armenian community, something we’re fortunate to count on to this day. 

Now with President Biden’s remarks, the United States joins the nearly three-dozen nations in affirming the historical veracity of the Armenian genocide. For decades now, the Center has stood arm-in-arm with the Armenian-American community, but today we celebrate their accomplishment and applaud their tireless efforts to ensure its victims are never forgotten.