A community activist posted a video that shows protesters surrounding a car with Minneapolis City Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins inside Sunday afternoon after a Pride event in the Loring Park neighborhood.
In the 23-minute video, protesters could be seen standing around Jenkins’ vehicle, near the Taking Back Pride event.
The activist who posted the video, Donald Hooker Jr., could be heard at times on a megaphone urging Jenkins to sign a list of demands that includes reopening police shooting cases, calling for Mayor Jacob Frey’s resignation and leaving George Floyd Square unchanged.
“I ain’t never ran from none of this,” Jenkins could be heard saying on the video. “I ran to represent people. … That’s what I did.”
Jenkins told the protesters that some of their demands were not within her powers as a council member.
A protester could be heard saying, “I asked you to leave George Floyd Square alone…” to which Jenkins said, “I was elected to represent that neighborhood … what you are asking me is not to do my job. … I’m telling you what the people told me.”
“I don’t think it should happen to any public official,” she added. “I think we have mechanisms for expressing one’s displeasure with their government, there’s a First Amendment right, people have the right to do that. We do not have a right to traumatize, detain and or humiliate people for their positions.”
“Holding elected officials accountable is good. Holding people for hours against their will until they’re compelled under duress to take positions is not,” Frey said in a tweet. “This isn’t a matter of politics or policy. We should all call this behavior out for what it is: fundamentally wrong.”
Terrorism: The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.