Nothing is quite as it used to be along Nicollet Avenue.
The spot where Alex Pretti was gunned down by federal agents has been cordoned off by orange stakes and caution tape, appearing like a giant gash along the block between 26th and 27th streets.
“It’s almost like a loss of innocence for a part of the neighborhood that was just pure joy before,” said Aldona Martinka, a healthcare worker who has lived in the area for more than a decade.
The Jamaican restaurant and the thrift store along this stretch of Minneapolis’s Whittier neighborhood have transformed into community gathering spaces, open to mourners who have come from near and far. All along the corridor, also known as “Eat Street” due to the preponderance of restaurants and bars featuring global cuisines, restaurants are offering free food and handwarmers.
Each day, neighbors have come to Pretti’s memorial to refresh the flowers, re-arrange the handwritten cards and messages, and sprinkle salt along its edges to prevent the pavement from icing over.
Each evening, the block glows with candlelight and blooms with the amalgamated fragrance of dozens of candles – prayer lights and Dixie Scents and old Bed Bath & Beyond classics dug out from the backs of neighbors’ closets.
Each night, there is a different sort of performance or dedication. On Monday, Brass Solidarity – a band founded in 2021 in response to the murder of George Floyd – played a blaring rendition of Stand by Me as a crowd sang along. On Tuesday, Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli, a Mexica-Nahua cultural group based in St Paul, performed several dances in solidarity and remembrance. On Wednesday, hundreds arrived for a vigil organized by Pretti’s fellow nurses.
“Even throughout the day, you’ll find people here who start singing,” said Aisha Chughtai, a local city council member, as she stood across the street, facing the memorial.
Chughtai was home on Saturday when she found out that Pretti had been killed, and like many of her neighbors, immediately ran outside. “I just wanted to bear witness,” she said. “And I was trying to help my neighbors who were getting hit with irritants.”
Dozens of federal agents soon flooded into the street, she said, deploying teargas and projectiles at neighbors and demonstrators who had gathered as reports of the killing spread.
Martinka and her husband, by that afternoon, had rushed with their five-month-old baby to her mother’s house in downtown. On the TV, they saw the camera pan over the bike lane outside their home – the one where they had imagined their daughter would one day learn to cycle. It was engulfed in chemical smoke.
From the window of her mother’s apartment, she could see Nicollet Avenue and the fumes clouding over the whole street – an ominous gray cloud.
She worried about her neighbors, many of whom also had small children or babies, and how most of them probably weren’t able to escape. Many had avoided going out for weeks because they didn’t want to be profiled or arrested by immigration agents.
She thought about all the children breathing in those chemicals, which were inevitably seeping through the poorly sealed doors and windows of the neighborhood’s century-old homes.
Pretti’s killing was a heartbreak that came after weeks of heartbreak, said Chughtai. She had seen neighbors, constituents – including legal residents and refugees – violently arrested by federal agents.
Here in Whittier, many locals were either hunkering down inside because they feared arrest, or spending their free time outside, delivering groceries to neighbors, patrolling the street corners while wearing bright red and orange whistles, ready to blow an alert each time they spotted an immigration agent.
Chughtai had checked on the families of refugees who were arrested despite having a valid legal status, and tried to connect immigrant families with legal aid groups. She had joined other council members in calling for an eviction moratorium for constituents who couldn’t work, and thus couldn’t afford rent. On 21 January, federal agents had handcuffed and detained 15- and 16-year-old siblings outside a Whittier clinic, deployed teargas and projectiles, and arrested two bystanders.
“Every day, I go through waves of grief and anger,” Chughtai said.
After Pretti was killed, the Trump administration demoted the border patrol commander Gregory Bovino – the “commander at large” who had been the public face of the militarized operation in Minneapolis.
“It’s a testament to the power of people that we were able to whistle Bovino out of Minneapolis,” Chughtai said. “But this cruelty did not start with Greg Bovino and it certainly will not end with him.”
On Thursday, after border czar Tom Homan came to Minneapolis and delivered a speech committing to reduce the federal presence in the city, Chughtai was alerted that several agents had violently arrested another man, in a neighborhood just north of here. They had also deployed mace against several bystanders, she said: “It’s bullshit.”
What happened to Pretti – “an execution,” Chughai said – and the subsequent show of force by federal agents against demonstrators was a turning point. To many locals, it looked like a war zone outside their doorsteps.
Martinka and Chughtai – who are good friends and former roommates – must have eaten at Peninsula Malaysian Cuisine, the dusty orange edifice right behind the memorial site, dozens or hundreds of times, Martinka said. “It’s always been like, our comfort food.”
Martinka has spent a good deal of time next door as well, at the Cheapo Records, with her husband, leisurely flipping through stacks of records, VHS tapes and cassettes.
“I will never be able to walk by this corner again without thinking about this really horrible time for our neighborhood and our city,” she said.
Jeff Cowmeadow, proprietor of the Prodigal Public House, just off Nicollet, had walked over to the memorial and was having a smoke. “People come to this neighborhood for happiness: We have the art institute [Minneapolis Institute of Art], ethnic restaurants, massage, thrift store, record store,” he said before trailing off.
Cowmeadow was a pastor at the nearby Calvary church for 38 years before he retired to focus full-time on running the pub. Both jobs, he said, were essentially about building community.
In the aftermath of Pretti’s killing, Cowmeadow’s daughter rushed out to open up the bar to neighbors who were injured by the teargas and projectiles that federal agents launched against the crowd. Chughtai was there, helping people wash chemical irritants out of their eyes.
Many other restaurants and businesses along Nicollet did the same.
Asha, a healthcare worker who has been volunteering as a street medic over the past few weeks, rushed over with her medical kit as soon as she heard what was happening. The Guardian is not using her full name because she fears her work as a street medic could compromise her employment.
At first, she made laps around the site of the shooting, which federal agents had cordoned off. Periodically, the agents unleashed clouds of chemical irritants and projectiles toward a crowd of demonstrators, she said; they’d advance, arrest one or two people, drag them into their perimeter, and retreat. “It was back and forth, push and pull like this for hours,” she said. Eventually, she ducked into My Huong Kitchen.
The restaurant’s owner, Tracy Wong, was there ushering in protesters and press, some of whom were vomiting from exposure to the irritants. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she told them as they ducked inside.
Asha posted up there – along with several other medics – and was able to properly inspect the injured and help them rinse out their eyes in the restaurant’s restroom.
At one point, Wong, a petite woman with gold-streaked black hair whom several locals described as “the neighborhood auntie”, brought in piles of egg rolls from the kitchen and began distributing them. “I have been there a number of times before – they have really good pho,” said Asha, who used to live in the neighborhood. It was surreal, she said, seeing it transformed into a makeshift emergency medical center.
Samie Solina, a reporter for the local TV news station KARE-11, had run into My Huong Kitchen after nearly collapsing with exposure to irritants along with a colleague. After she posted a video about Wong’s kindness, customers came back that week in droves, leaving big tips and thank-you notes. “I don’t know – I am like, famous overnight!” said Wong, laughing.
Crowds from all over Minneapolis had booked out many of the restaurants along the avenue, which for weeks had been hurting for business. Many are owned and staffed by immigrants who had been unable to report to work due to the constant, overwhelming presence of immigration agents in the neighborhood.
The Copper Hen Cakery & Kitchen, a farmhouse restaurant that also transformed into a makeshift field hospital, once again filled with brunchers. Glam Doll Donuts, behind the bright pink edifice across from where Pretti was killed, reopened to long lines.
“The way that our community comes together in crisis – it’s a coming together, not a hunkering down,” Martinka said.
On Friday, Wong had styled her hair down. She had closed down the restaurant for the general strike, but was cooking up massive quantities of pho to give away. She had tasked a younger person to help her spread the word on Instagram.
