He Lost an Eye in the George Floyd Protests. Now He Represents the Ward Where Renée Good Was Killed. |
Minneapolis city council member Soren StevensonMadison Swart
It was Soren Stevenson’s third day in office on the Minneapolis city council when, in the middle of a strategic planning session, Mayor Jacob Frey rushed out of the room. Soon, the council learned why: Federal agents had shot and killed Renée Good. Stevenson hurried down to the site of the killing, on the edge of the ward he represents. The ward—one of the city’s most diverse areas, with mix of Latino, Somali, Black, and white residents—also includes the site of George Floyd’s murder.
For Stevenson, who is 31, the brutality is personal. Six days after Floyd’s murder, heeding the call for white bodies at the front of the protests, Stevenson was standing near a closed freeway ramp, arms linked with other protesters, when police fired rubber bullets without warning. Stevenson was shot in his left eye, and would lose his eye and most of his sense of smell. The city settled Stevenson’s subsequent lawsuit for $2.4 million.
Stevenson, whose background is in affordable housing, hadn’t considered running for office before the incident. But the experience served as an inflection point: He felt “a duty to be a part of building a public safety system in Minneapolis that treated everyone with dignity.”
When we spoke from his office last week, he was still learning his way around City Hall. His office walls were bare, and his office phone and email had just recently been set up. A few days later, agents would kill Alex Pretti.
Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Let’s start in 2020. How did you decide to get involved with the protests after George Floyd’s murder?
“’Force’ is a nice way of saying, ‘Ending someone’s life.’ A nice way of saying, ‘Shooting someone in the face and maiming them, breaking people’s bones, kicking people’s teeth out.'”
I had just graduated. It was Covid, I had lost one of my jobs. And at the time, Americans had been watching a steady stream of Black men be murdered by........