A Black man, Marvin Applewhite, was trying to clean up streets in Uptown Minneapolis when he was chased away by protesters. Applewhite, a Minneapolis local, started an effort to organize youth to clean up the city of Minneapolis to give youth jobs and opportunities. Applewhite continued this in the aftermath of protesting and rioting in Minneapolis. This summer, Applewhite and his team of youth and other concerned residents have gone out each morning and clean up the graffiti from the night before. In raw footage of the incident, a woman can be seen screaming, “We are doing this for your people, man.”
Applewhite started this initiative to help employ local teens and give them jobs to do and it’s been something he has done for several summers.
Applewhite said his passion is “working with youth to give them job skills, guide them to be responsible young adults, and mentor them.”
In the footage of the incident where Applewhite was chased out of Uptown where he was cleaning up after the protesters who had been occupying the Uptown No Go Zone, protesters can be heard yelling at Applewhite. One protester told him that cleaning up was “a slave mentality, bro.” Another woman kept yelling, “The police are killing your people, bro.”
Some were angry at him for cleaning up at all, while others were angry that he was cleaning the graffiti off of streets, buildings, and parking ramps in the No Go Zone. They told him that he was causing damage to the memorial they had erected to honor Winston Smith, a wanted man shot and killed by U.S. Marshals.
One protester got in Applewhite’s face and said, “People are dying. No one gives a f— about the d— streets. You are literally dumb as f—.”
Applewhite tried to engage some of them in a discussion, defending his actions, and said that he was just trying to clean up the community, after which he was told to, “Go clean up somewhere else. Take that s— somewhere else.”
Other protesters can be heard repeatedly saying, “F— the blue line.”
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Hayley Tschetter is a reporter with The Minnesota Sun | Star News Network and The College Fix. She graduated with a degree in Communications from the University of Northwestern-St. Paul. Send news tips to [email protected].
