At 3 a.m. May 27, Rosalba Sanchez-Ponce needed to get her family out of her Minneapolis neighborhood.
They live two blocks from the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct building, an epicenter for protesting, looting and rioting that began after the police-involved death of George Floyd. Earlier that evening, protestors looted a Target store and burned down several other stores and an apartment building, and the chaos was continuing throughout the night.
They were unnerved by the sounds of sirens, traffic and people who continued to move throughout the neighborhood, yelling. They tried to sleep, but when they awoke and saw large fires, they decided they needed to leave.
So the Ponces texted their pastor, Father Joseph Williams, knowing that he might be able to help.
It wasn’t the first text from a parishioner Father Williams had received that night. The pastor of St. Stephen in Minneapolis, which serves a large Latino community, he had been receiving requests for prayer all night, into that early morning.
He welcomed the Ponce family to his rectory, which has a separate living space he was able to make available to Sanchez-Ponce, her four daughters and her mother. Grateful, they arrived with only some clothes and supplies for one daughter’s medical needs. Sanchez-Ponce’s husband, Margarito, stayed behind with her brother, Giovani Sanchez, to watch over the house.
Sanchez-Ponce, 41, and her mother, Silvia, lived in Los Angeles during riots following the 1992 jury acquittal of police officers filmed beating Rodney King, an African American, during an arrest. Rosalba sees parallels between that experience and what is happening in her usually calm Minneapolis neighborhood, she said. In Los Angeles there was more gunfire, she said, but this seems equally as frightening.
On May 25, Floyd was arrested on suspicion of attempting to forge a check. Bystander video footage posted online showed Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinning Floyd with his knee for minutes, as Floyd, an African American, repeatedly says he can’t breathe. He was later pronounced dead at Hennepin County Medical Center. Two other videos have been posted online showing the situation from other angles.
The four officers involved in the rest and death have been fired from the police force. On May 29, Chauvin was taken into custody by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. That same day, Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington called the death “murder” during a news conference.
“It’s not OK police did that,” Ponce-Sanchez said of Floyd’s death. “That wasn’t the right thing to do. He was begging for breathing. (Chauvin) should have listened. Policemen are meant to save lives.”
Sanchez-Ponce has struggled to explain to her daughters, ages 6 to 18, how it is that police officers, who are trained to keep people safe, could show such disregard for Floyd’s life. Her daughters are scared, she said. She feels badly that her daughters saw the fires and rioting. “It’s kind of a traumatic situation,” she said.
Meanwhile, Sanchez-Ponce and her family stayed again at the rectory May 28, the night protestors set the Third Precinct building ablaze. The St. Stephen rectory is about 2.5 miles from their home.
The turmoil hits the Ponce family ahead of what was supposed to be a celebratory weekend: their oldest daughter, Leslie, graduates from South High School in Minneapolis June 1. The family was planning a small party to mark the end of a senior year already upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a Catholic, Sanchez-Ponce said her response to Floyd’s death and the rioting is prayer. “We should all unite in prayer, but I don’t know what else we can do,” she said. But the rioting has shaken her impression of her usually tranquil neighborhood, she said.
Father Williams said he offered Mass May 27 for the repose of Floyd’s soul and prayed for his family. As the rioting continues, parishioners have expressed fear for their business and violence. One parishioner’s son had a panic attack. “They’re all frightened, kind of panic and pretty vulnerable at this time,” he said.
But, he said, his parishioners help him focus on what can be done in the turmoil.
“They remind me what I should be doing as a priest, which is praying first of all, and every one of them, I get texts, and they say, ‘Please pray,’” he said. “Most of the texts I get, whether it be for COVID-19 or this uprising with the violence we’re seeing now, it’s ‘Father, please pray.’ It’s humbling, because it’s like, oh yeah, before I think about how to be a community activist or other things, that I do have to intercede before God with them.”
