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Literary Hub – Letter From Minnesota: Finding Reverence in the Face of Brutality

Letter From Minnesota: Finding Reverence in the Face of Brutality

E. Bok Lee on the Courage the of Alex Pretti and His Fellow Minnesotans

By Ed Bok Lee, January 29, 2026

So far this year, in Minneapolis, there have been three homicides, two of them by ICE.

Eat Street in the Whittier neighborhood, where Alex Pretti was gunned down Saturday morning, is historically the closest thing to a “Chinatown” in the city, though really, it’s much more diverse. Mexican, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Jamaican, Greek, German, Irish, East African, Mediterranean, Malaysian, Tibetan, etc. restaurants, grocers, and other businesses reflect some of the best aspects of Minneapolis, on many levels of community—the rawness of its arts, music, and culture; the diversity and hungry American bustle; the high number of transitional housing units, shelters, churches, non-profit agencies.

As one the most diverse neighborhoods in Minneapolis, Whittier is home to some 25 languages from 30 countries. For a good decade, I lived, worked, and had a writing office all right on Eat Street (Nicollet Avenue).

If one word had to describe the feeling on this first night of the new year’s second killing by ICE in South Minneapolis, it would be this: Reverence.

You could say the future lives in Whittier. Literally, aside from being one of the most racially and economically diverse, it’s a Midwestern neighborhood with one of the highest populations of folks 18 to 34 in the city. On the night after Alex Pretti’s brutal and brutalizing killing, long into night, amid -9 F cold (with a -20 F windchill), many hundreds of folks (coming and going), mostly zillennials, kept vigil late into the night, setting up tables for hot soup and coffee, chanting, holding space for Mr. Pretti’s and one another’s spirits, and keeping shops open. Resale, a women-owned, LGBTQ-friendly curated secondhand clothing boutique, stayed open so the vigil keepers could sit and thaw, or get a free, extra pair of tube socks, or hand warmers, or bottles of water. Meanwhile, next door at Glam Doll Donuts, right across the street from the scene of the killing, mourners warmed up with free coffee and hot chocolate.

For the hour I could lay a flower down and pay my respects at the memorial site on the sidewalk in front of New American Development Center before my toes in my heavy boots went numb, our call and response never ceased:

“Say his name!”/“Alex Pretti!”/“Say his name!”/“Alex Pretti!”

Near the memorial site of hundreds of flower bouquets and candles, a few controlled fires raged, warming fingers, noses, and lips. The mood was somber, glowing, and peaceful. But if one word had to describe the feeling on this first night of the new year’s second killing by ICE in South Minneapolis, it would be this: Reverence. Reverence for Mr. Pretti’s intentions and actions. Reverence for all the others in recent—and distant—memory gunned down by the law, or, in one recent murder of the state’s DFL Speaker of the House of Representatives, Melissa Hortman and her husband, gunned down in their pajamas this past summer by someone impersonating the law.

Amid the call and response on Eat Street last night, many names began to mix in my head.

“Say his name!”/“Alex Pretti!”
“Say her name!”/“Renee Good!”
“Say her name!”/“Melissa Hortman!”
“Say his name!”/“George Floyd!”
“Say his name!”/“Amir Locke!”
“Say his name!”/“Daunte Wright!”
“Say his name!”/“Philando Castile!”
“Say his name!”/“Jamar Clark!”
“Say his name!”/“Fong Lee!”

And the list goes on.

Yes, it’s true. Minnesota, and especially Minneapolis—in recent years, the nation’s epicenter of violence—is deeply traumatized. There are layers and layers of trauma here. From the very beginning with the government’s brutal policies toward Indigenous peoples, to Dred Scott, to a bloody history of labor crackdowns, to vigorous redlining, to uncommonly high Korean adoptee and Southeast Asian, Somali, and other refugee populations leading to anti-Asian and anti-African sentiments, to being a sanctuary city, to some of the highest levels of racial, economic, and educational segregation in the US to this day, there is no shortage of collective traumas to reckon with.

Since Covid, the traumas have outpaced many of our personal capacities to productively process this history and our present society. To this day, you see and feel it in the still-shuttered storefronts in the once lively Uptown area, and well beyond; the still-closed, burnt-down Third Precinct Police Station; the ongoing, ever-shifting human encampments; the many struggling restaurants; the long carlines outside at the food shelves; the curtains drawn in conspicuously ICE-monitored neighborhoods; and, yes, the shuttered day cares and other services, some of which are, or were, as is repeated over and over by the right, run by immigrant and refugee business people currently under investigation for wide-scale fraud by the government.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

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