This is Planet Money from NPR.

The last few weeks have been exhausting for a lot of people, especially people in Minneapolis,

including Javier Moreo.

It's just been really trying time, even if your neighborhood was not literally in flames,

it was just extremely difficult to rest or to sleep.

Javier is a union organizer in Minneapolis, St. Paul.

Until recently, he was the president of a union, SCIU Local 26, representing thousands

of janitors, security officers, window cleaners.

But lately, all he is thinking about, all his city is thinking about are the protests.

There were a few days when 911 was almost non-functional.

Neighborhoods that do not trust the Minneapolis Police Department have begun policing themselves.

When he went for a meeting in South Minneapolis, he told me that it looked more like a war

zone in a movie.

There were humvees and soldiers carrying machine guns.

So much has happened in the past two weeks.

But there is this one thing that really stuck out for Javier, started with a letter on

Monday.

So a week after Memorial Day when George Floyd was killed, there was made public a letter

by Bob Crowell, who was the president of the Minneapolis Police Federation.

In that letter, the police union president writes that the four officers charged with killing

George Floyd were fired without due process.

And he is going to fight to get their jobs back.

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