CHISHOLM — After more than a year of just about everything being canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a new event for music and dancing starting next week in
Heaven Heinzer-Clark, a 15-year-old student on the Iron Range, traveled more than 70 miles south to stand in the morning rain and protest outside of the St. Louis County Courthouse in Duluth.
She had a lot on her mind. She has been watching the trial of Derek Chauvin, the ex-Minneapolis cop charged in the death of George Floyd. And she just learned that police officers in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis, shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright on Sunday.
She considered the publicity surrounding the deaths of these two men and thought about the general lack of media coverage or interest concerning the death of Estavon Elioff, a 19-year-old Hispanic man from the Range city of Virginia, who was shot and killed by two white St. Louis County Sheriffâs deputies in Mountain Iron on Dec. 5, 2020.
Many in the Northland are responding to the death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright. A local group organized a protest outside of Duluth City Hall Monday morning calling for justice.
A Native American woman accused a police officer of harassing her and pulling her over without cause while she drove in town. A Black man claimed multiple violent run-ins with the police. A second Black man originally from Chicago accused law enforcement of singling him out while he was fishing next to several white people on a lake.
âThatâs a classic case of profiling,â said the third man identified as Jay. âBeing up here I want to be part of the change. I donât want to be part of the problem. But how can I be part of the change when Iâm already deemed a criminal?â
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Co-directors of VEMA, Seraphia Gravelle and Nathaniel Coward are pictured outside the groupâs new storefront at 12 West Lake St. in Chisholm. The two, along with Elizabeth Robinson founded the group last year to work against racism and injustice, and to ensure accurate and adequate representation of all people in the community.
Submitted photo