July 2nd: A Day of Rallies & Protests

This morning was a slow one. I woke up, had a bagel, then went back to bed for an hour. Then I headed out.

First event of the day was "Economic Justice Reparations Rally & Protest Phase 2". Per their event description:

"The Wealth Gap in America is due to systemic racism. Whites have 90% of the wealth and Blacks have under 2% of the wealth. Join us as we demand that Donald Trump and the United States government pay full and complete reparations for Foundational Black Americans who are descendants of slaves."

And then the last and second event was "Paul Schnell, No More Deaths from COVID-19". Per their event description:

"For almost a year we have been asking the Department of Corrections to work with us to #DeCarcerateMN with demands to place a moratorium on the use of technical violations to send people back to prison, and the release of those serving time for technical violations. When the Pandemic hit, we implored Commissioner Schnell and Governor Walz to let people go who were serving time for technical violations, had medical issues, who qualified for work release, and had fewer than 90 days left of their sentence. To date, our demands have largely been unmet, and COVID-19 is rapidly spreading through several Minnesota prisons, endangering our loved ones' lives.

It costs the Minnesota taxpayer $41,366 per year for every person who is imprisoned, with up to 24% of our population in for technical violations (spoken by Paul Schnell himself at our first meeting). While we are talking about shifting money from law enforcement to community needs, imagine the money we could use to serve our communities and the lives that would be saved in the process by releasing technical violators to safely be at home.

Since Paul Schnell has refused to hear us, we're going to let him know we will not be ignored any longer with a parking lot rally! Join us at 2:00 pm on July 2nd at Paul Schnell’s house xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to demand Paul Schnell celebrate the ideal of freedom with a gesture of actual freedom by releasing those who are serving time while having committed no new crimes!

**Please protect the health of others and your personal health by wearing a mask and practicing social distancing during this event.**"