Along with Pangea Theater, he hopes to open the Center for Peace and Social Justice, a near-14,000-square-foot development that would include the Indian restaurant, a theater for Pangea, and co-working and incubation space for businesses owned by people of color.
After the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin, a lot of people rallied around one cry:
Won’t somebody please think of the property? Hundreds around the city were protesting yet another killing of a Black man by a white officer, but many pundits seemed more concerned with broken windows and burned walls than with, you know, death. This hand-wringing happens almost every time people take to the streets, an attempt to both quell uprisings and pit the interests of local business owners against those of the protesters.
You’re harming your own community, the argument goes, as if a building protected by insurance is a community. As if the owners of those small businesses would not also be interested in justice. And unfortunately, in the wake of the shooting of Daunte Wright nearly a year later, little has changed.