Tonight in St. Paul: So I was sitting at my desk, getting a bit of work done, when I became aware of the sound of helicopters coming and going overhead. Since I live fairly close to both the governor’s mansion and the school where Philando Castile worked, that’s not been altogether unusual for the past couple of days. But this time it sounded as though they were to my north, so finally I checked the Star Tribune website, and found this: Marchers shut down I-94.
In a nutshell, protesters marched from the gov’s mansion to the highway (a mile or so) and shut down traffic a bit to the west of downtown, starting around 8 pm. They’re still there now, at about 11:30.
The local news stations have been covering it extensively, as you might imagine. There are loads of cops trying to get people to clear out, and some arrests have been made. There’s a construction site nearby and a few protesters have thrown debris from there, even rebar, in addition to the traditional rocks and bottles. The police have used some kind of smoke bombs to try to get the crowd to disperse, without success. Something that’s worrying me is that there are many many people crowded onto a smallish pedestrian bridge over the highway, which is probably not built to carry that kind of a load. More and more LEOs have been arriving from all over the area, incl. state troopers. The crowd seems to be thinning out a little bit but it’s still far from over.
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As of 11:45: The news folks mentioned a couple of times that the people throwing stuff have generally been admonished by other demonstrators, but just now they say that some bricks have flown. Now, however, people are starting to leave the freeway and may be heading back to the gov’s mansion.
There were also marchers on the other side of the river in downtown Mpls., where a big event called the Basilica Block Party was going on.
Crossing my fingers that this is resolved peacefully and soon...
