The temperature dropped to 5 below zero by 7 pm last Saturday night, January 24. Less than twelve hours had passed since the shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents on a busy street in Minneapolis; it had been a terrible day following terrible weeks.
There was movement in the night streets. Minnesotans bundling up and stepping out of their homes in their heaviest winter gear. Parkas, furry hoods, double mittens, scarves over faces, gravitating toward others, walking toward friends and strangers, treading heavily in winter boots. We walked the sidewalks in our neighborhoods, and stood on corners and on overpasses, sometimes heading toward what had become our regular places of protest, sometimes just to the end of our blocks. We gathered in places of worship and in parks, in groups of two or three or two hundred. Many carried lit candles. Porches and front windows held candles, too, against the winter dark. Often two, one for Mr. Pretti and one for Renee Good, killed just seventeen days before. Poems were read. Tears were shed. People spoke to each other and to the gatherings, less in anger than in profound sadness and resolve. Comfort was given, and taken.
We didn’t want to be alone. The vigils were everywhere on Saturday, answering the call of compassion and community; we had our choice of large or small, public or private. What must it have looked like from above…the cities lit with candles, and wreathed in the collective breath of the people, exhaled warm into the dark and the bitter cold, and rising up toward the sky.
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Photo by the author, of a neighborhood vigil in Mears Park, Saint Paul.
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