Steve Fletcher is a city councilman in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He represents an area that's been

pretty protected from the riots and protests in the wake of George Floyd's death. It's

near the university, filled with coffee shops and students. The mayor lives there. But

Steve knew something was changing in his ward when he started getting these phone calls

in the last couple of weeks. They were from constituents who were worried, pleading for help,

and unable to reach the authorities. And there were several nights that I stayed up all

night because people couldn't get through to 901 even. And they called you? You sure? About

what? There's, you know, two sketchy guys with a vehicle that doesn't have license plates

driving up and down my street. Who do I report it to? How do I get information out? I

mean, like we had people in our city trying to harm us who were drawn by the news and by the

protests. And people were trying to report that. It was terrifying. I mean, it was really scary.

And I was passing information through to anybody I could get on the phone at the mayor's office,

at the governor's office, at the National Guard, like wherever we could sort of find ways to

back channel information if the 911 system was overwhelmed. Steve got elected back in 2017

after our career in nonprofits and the arts. And suddenly his constituents weren't just asking

him to craft some legislation or debate the finer details of the city budget. They wanted

something much more immediate. And to be clear, I wasn't even the council member who was the most.

I mean, I was, I was operating from my apartment. My north side colleagues were out organizing

neighborhood patrols and violation of curfew because they were pretty convinced that nobody

was coming to help the north side. The city, the whole city, felt abandoned. In spite of the fact

that they have an 800 officer police force, I mean, people were not getting help that they needed

for a while. And I think once that fell apart, people are willing to say, oh, was this really

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