WHAT DO WE DO NOW THAT OUR CITY IS BURNING?
11:11 Press has been proudly based out of Minneapolis Minnesota for its two-and-a-half-year existence. As you are probably well aware, the last seven days have seen the murder of George Floyd and peaceful protests that have been co-opted by violent rioters and looters.
We live across the street from an essential pillar of our community, a church that provides multiple outreach services, including a weekly food shelf, serving 1600 people per month, and in the summer months, offers fresh produce from the large garden they maintain in front of the church.
In the last week, White Nationalist groups have targeted the church in retaliation for the racial tension in our country (this is bigger than Minneapolis or Minnesota). It is our understanding that destruction of residential housing, churches, and small businesses are actions being taken from outsiders and radical groups which hope to create more chaos as a distraction from the important, peaceful, demonstrations.
Megan and I have been working with our neighborhood watch to keep our block safe and to keep a watchful eye on the church. We have witnessed and scared away multiple vehicles with stolen license plates and reported this activity to 9-1-1 and the FBI. As law enforcement has not made black churches a priority in their surveillance, we are receiving little support in our efforts to keep the neighborhood safe. We rely on a network of neighborhood watch, broken up block by block, to protect our city from these radical groups.
As members of the Minneapolis community, we are allies to minority rights groups and we want to support their voices in being heard.
As Minneapolis business owners, we will continue to publish books and will continue supporting artistic misfits. As much as we love the books we will be publishing in June, it doesn’t feel right to promote books during this time unless we are also supporting our community. Backdating from March 25 to June 8, we will be donating all of our profits to Reclaim the Block, an organization that encourages the Minneapolis community and city council members to move money from the police department into other areas of the city’s budget that can truly promote community health and safety.
A few other notes:
Due to lack of sleep and increased stress levels, we will be slower to respond to emails and messages. This doesn’t mean that we are ignoring you. We are working to respond to everyone as soon as we can.
We currently run 11:11 Press out of our home. We have an office set up in our basement and we store our inventory here (print runs, t-shirts, and various memorabilia + odds and ends). We’ve moved half of our stock offsite to another location so we can continue selling books. If our home and business are compromised, it won’t be a total loss.
The last few nights we’ve thought: “Ok, this is probably the last night” only to be informed by our neighborhood watch leaders to check under our deck and in our bushes for soda bottles full of gasoline or to make sure we have a garden hose attached and at the ready to put out arson fires.
Despite the stress and lack of sleep, despite having our bags packed and at our back door in case we need to grab our two young kids out of bed to escape our home in case of an emergency, we believe that this is part of a necessary change within our government, public safety, and community that needs to take place. We need to keep our community safe and let the voices of the oppressed and those caught within systemic racism be heard.
One book recommendation is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. (We are also fans of Cornel West.) There are many great books out there, and please contact your local indie bookstore for recommendations. Fellow small press Two Dollar Radio shared this great reminder on Twitter moments ago: “If you’re buying books about anti-racism please shop at indie bookstores!! They may even have personal recommendations for you. Amazon actively contributes to the police state by allowing police to use their doorbell cams. They also work with ICE.”
Stay safe and speak up for justice.
Andrew & Megan Wilt
P.S. Mike Corrao, an editor and author at 11:11 Press, and Logan Jones, a friend of the press, have put together a protest resource for folks, including info for staying safe while protesting, orgs to donate to, antiracist texts + more. You can view it here: http://protestfaq.com/