Hi, I'm Annamarie Cox, and this is With Friends Like These.

You probably saw a lot of images out of Minneapolis this summer.

Most of them were things burning, or conflict, or grief.

George Floyd! George Floyd! George Floyd! George Floyd! George Floyd! I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe!

Well, near the same part of town where George Floyd was killed by police, there was another

kind of uprising taking place. It was also a response to the conflict playing out between

the protesters and the city. What to do about the hundreds of people who had lived on the

streets that now were a kind of battleground. A volunteer group of activists thought they

had an answer in opening up a shuttered Sheraton. About two miles away from where Floyd was killed,

it would be open to all comers. The Sher A TUN, as some people called it,

but it wouldn't be part of the show if it worked out great. What it? The Sher A TUN experiment

ended in violence and chaos. As you'll hear, the question of why it went so badly isn't that

hard to answer. The question you'll be wanting to think about is what could they have done instead?

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