Police reform efforts falter in Minneapolis, yet hope persists. BY SARAH LAHM
FARRINGTON LLEWELLYN
‘Transformative Change’ Proves Elusive
Robin Wonsley Worlobah at a Justice for Jamar Clark rally in 2016 to demand the indictment and conviction of the Minneapolis Police Department officers responsible for Clark’s murder.
ROBIN WONSLEY WORLOBAH has an incredibly busy schedule these days. The Chicago native,
who has lived in Minneapolis since 2014, is not only a full-time community engagement coordinator for the statewide teachers union, Education Minnesota, but she is also working on a Ph.D. in gender, women, and sexuality studies at the University of Minnesota.
Still, her eyes light up often with laughter and police department seemed more possible than ever— warmth. before they quickly collapsed. Wonsley Worlobah is running for a seat on the Any “transformative changes” in Minneapolis, she Minneapolis city council next year, as the city’s first says, whether they involved recent pushes for fair Black, female Democratic Socialist candidate. Her wages, paid sick time, or tenants’ rights, came from candidacy is fueled in part by the years she has spent the community up—and not from “any proactive as a grassroots activist in Minneapolis, working on work from city leaders.” campaigns for racial and economic justice. She aims to change that. All of these facets of Wonsley Worlobah’s life— scholar, union employee, activist—coalesced on May mmediately after Floyd’s murder, the streets of Min25, 2020, when George Floyd was murdered. neapolis erupted in protest. The police department’s Floyd, a Black man, was arrested over his alleged Third Precinct building, home to Chauvin and the use of a counterfeit $20 bill. When officers tried to fold other involved officers who were there when Floyd his six-foot, four-inch frame into the back of a squad was killed, was burned to a shell on May 28. car, Floyd resisted, saying he was claustrophobic. For many outside observers, it seemed like a waHe ended up face down on the street, his wrists tershed moment. Vicky Osterweil, writing for The shackled together. A white Minneapolis police officer, Nation in June, expressed awe at the way events in Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than Minneapolis had quickly led to calls to abolish or, at nine minutes while two other officers helped pin him a minimum, defund the police. down. A video taken by a young woman at the scene There had been riots and protests after other went viral, sparking a summer of unrest in Minneap- high-profile police killings of Black and brown peoolis and around the world. ple, Osterweil notes, including the 2014 unrest that But it wasn’t Floyd’s death, exactly, that prompted took place in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown Wonsley Worlobah to run for office. It’s what hap- was shot by police while walking home from a conpened afterward, when efforts to reform the city’s venience store.
I
Sarah Lahm is a writer based in Minneapolis. Her work has appeared in various local and national publications, including In These Times and The Progressive, where she writes the Midwest Dispatch column.
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