Can Minneapolis Recover? [Updated]

Some months ago, I saw a shocking video: someone rode a bicycle down a sidewalk in Los Angeles, filming as he went, for something like a half hour. The entire time, he passed tent encampments or cities on both sides of the sidewalk. They seemed to go on forever and had an appearance of permanence.

Yesterday a friend sent me a similar video, on a smaller scale, which was filmed by a resident of South Minneapolis. It shows Minnehaha Park, near the famous Minnehaha Falls. The tent city that has sprung up there is replicated in many other Minneapolis parks. These encampments are the result, I believe, of an executive order by Governor Tim Walz that decreed all 38 parks within the city of Minneapolis to be open for occupancy by tent squatters. I assume this order ostensibly has something to do with the governor’s emergency powers based on the COVID epidemic, but how the two are related I can’t tell you. Basically, we are living under martial law.

Here is the video:

Minneapolis, once a nice city, is crumbling as a result of decades of bad governance. It has one advantage over Los Angeles, however. It is not possible to live in a tent in Minnesota in January. At some point, the residents of Minneapolis’s parks will decamp, at least temporarily, for warmer climes.

UPDATE: Check out this tweet by “Hennepin County Police and Fire Monitoring,” which I take it is just a (liberal) person. She quotes a Minneapolis resident who is appalled at the depths the city has fallen to, and responds unsympathetically:


Well, that’s one way to achieve equality, I guess.

A comment on the post:

My guess is that’s true.

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