Chapter IV: Midtown Exchange: The Aftermath and Cat

An enormous problem we had was that a group of people who mostly connected online worked with the homeless. Apparently, they'd been watching the former Sheraton Hotel that shared our parking lot and on the night after George Floyd died, the broke in and opened the hotel for "anyone" with the intent of being a place for homeless people. There was no organization system other than volunteers hauling in resources. They had hundreds more people there happy to have a roof than the hotel could accommodate with people even sleeping outside. The building was set on fire from the inside, furniture was thrown out of the windows, drugs and prostitution had settled in within 2 days. The organizers told reporters there was never a hierarchy and there wouldn't be. This was the free utopia that had hoped for the homeless population. Too bad they didn't ask the guy who owned the hotel. When things became too status quo according to the organizers (white people coming into a poor black neighborhood and doing all the work and the people they want to help are unreachable or don't want to change) they walked away.

That building, right outside our front door remained inhabited for 3 solid weeks after police tried to clear it out. The entire first floor was covered with plywood, chain link fences were put up. There were fires often. There were more break-in attempts on our building. We had expensive condos on the top floors. Nice cars to be had. Nice place to sell drugs.

They finally got the last campers out of the hotel. They had cleaning crews go in 5 days per week every week for months. They put 24 hour security (real people sitting in trucks) on the property. This was still happening in December when I left. They were looking forward to snow so they could see if people where sneaking in.

See:
Minneapolis Police shut down former hotel-turned-homeless sanctuary

But everyday know there was a threat in the parking lot just a few hundred feet away was horrible. Our building connected to the hospital 2 blocks away, so I could get there without ever having to go outside. Each time I went there, I'd walk through a glass walkway that connected the buildings from block to block and went over the roads and each time, I'd check the door that opened into the hotel very carefully. I'd check the windows for cracks and breaks and each time I'd recheck them to see if they were worse, or please God, that they had repaired the windows.

I got so scared, I couldn't be on the first floor on that side of the building. I couldn't see it without freezing up. The problem is that next to the hotel was the transit station. Drugs had always been sold there, but a new gang had taken over since the Floyd riot and things were hostile. Going anywhere meant leaving Midtown Exchange, walking past the hazardous hotel, and waiting at the bus stop where differing gangs were meeting up. I just stopped going out. I cancelled appointments. I was waiting for one, possibly 2 surgeries in the fall and I only saw doctors I absolutely needed to.

My wheelchair was covered in extinguisher powder and I needed to use it, but in public people recognized me from the videos. I'd hear "there's that white bitch who stabs black people" and people would come running while I was waiting for the bus. I got shoved and knocked down in my apartment building. I asked building management to share the video of it so I could file a police report, they wouldn't. I had a woman harass me, scratch my face with her fake nails, and do what she could to provoke a fight at the entrance of the building. When she left I took a picture of her and her car, her boyfriend got out of the car slapped me, smashed my phone on the ground and threatened me. I asked the building management for security footage of that. They wouldn't. And since it was a Sunday afternoon, we didn't have security to witness it. Minneapolis police had stopped responding to most 911 calls in April 2020, so there was no point calling the police. I'd tried on previous occasions.

I cut my hair and left it grey hoping I wouldn't get recognized and in the months that I was Harassed, no one came up with a single person who had been stabbed much less many people. It's hard to be heard yelling "Who was stabbed?!" When surrounded by a crowd punching and yelling at you.

I had a really bad concussion. I don't remember most of June. The reawakening of my childhood trauma being surrounded by people shouting "I can't breathe!" over and over wrecked me, the looters beating me, then being harassed on the street made me progressed me into a serious state of mental illness. I did not feel safe. There wasn't anything I could do to make myself more safe than to be at home, quiet and tucked in a corner.  When I experienced really bad episodes I went or was taken to the Emergency Room with increasing self harm.

I had this great dream. I was going to move to my dream address right near downtown and I was going to live in the micro-bustle for the rest of my life and I was going to give up a lot in rent to live this life and it turned out to be a trashy place to live, George was killed a couple of blocks from where I used to live, COVID changed everything, 6 miles of Lake Street was burned down and now home break-ins, stand-up robberies, car jackings and murder were everywhere. There were open drug deals on the bus, fist fights, flashed guns. At the rent I was paying, I couldn't afford to take taxis. I was trapped and I only had my little space. I did rearrange the furniture so the entry door was blocked and someone could only come in a few feet before they'd be blocked. I blocked my windows. It was my only place.

I do have family in Minnesota. I have distanced myself from them, but that doesn't mean they leave me alone and they do mean me harm. They are physically dangerous and I've tried to keep my location secret for the last few years. What if my sister (the most likely to come beat down my door) saw the video of me from the riot? Would the family find me?

I had a really bad concussion. I don't know how bad it was. I don't remember most of June. The reawakening of my childhood trauma being surrounded by people shouting, or saying, or wearing a t-shirt that said "I can't breathe!" over and over wrecked me, the looters beat me, then being harassed on the street progressed me into a serious state of mental illness. I became irrational. There wasn't anything I could do to make myself more safe than to be at home, quiet and tucked in a corner. I did rearrange the furniture so the entry door was blocked and someone could only come in a few feet before they'd be blocked. I blocked my windows. It was my only place that I could be safe.

When I experienced really bad episodes of anxiety I went or was taken to the Emergency Room with increasing self harm.

I tried to find out about breaking my lease with Midtown Exchange. I had a very bad concussion.

The part of The Exchange we lived in was only 4 floors high. The first floor was the market and 2 - 4 were apartments. There was a light sink in the middle of the building to let natural light come in when that area was a department store. Most apartments face the street, but a few apartments on each floor faced into the light sink. Mine did.

I had a problem with my neighbor Catrina and her kids. I didn't know her name was Catrina, she was the gal who lived in 437.

Apartment 437 was almost always home with her 2 kids, but she'd have up to 14 kids at her house at a time along with assorted moms. Every night, Cat would line up all of the kids at one end of the hallway near my apartment and they would race down the hall past her apartment towards the common area.

 All of the kids were under 10 years old, most were under 6 and they'd dig in with their heels on the hollow concrete floor and stomp-run all the way down the hall screaming. Then there would be another heat and another.

I don't have kids but I've lived in an apartment building before. It's kids and I know the mom is running it so she'll keep it in check. It's COVID and there's no school and there were way too many kids. It seemed like a good plan to wear them out.

One night, it was 11p, and I hear them winding up for a race and the kids were screaming taunts at each other. I got out of my bed (the star is where I lived) went around the corner and said to the mother that I understand kids like to run, but could they please be more quiet and not do it so late at night.

I didn't know it at the time, but Cat was a convicted felon (Catrina Martin V. State of Minnesota Case Number: 19HA-CR-18-1262) having served time for making terroristic threats and was currently on parole. She didn't like me asking them to be quiet and from then on, whenever neighbors were around, she told them that I had been perverted with her children and she had a special name for me. She wouldn't leave me alone. I contacted building management. They said they would talk to her.

It didn't stop. The management office said they didn't have evidence, so I took photos and video and sent them to the office.

I was very frightened and upset most of the time. I was all nerves. I was suffering terribly from PTSD and wasn't able to leave my apartment. The wad kids were out in the hall without Catrina around and with my living room windows open and the hallway windows open, they could hear me ask them to be quiet. They'd run into their apartment get Catrina, she confronted me using the expiative nickname she'd made for me and told me to stop picking on her kids. The kids joined in taunting me by her side.

From then on, the kids would walk along the wall that is the corner of my apartment patting, tapping, and slapping the wall (up to 14 kids) and then they would run away screaming, or they would just hit the wall really hard. Of course I talked to building management. Not only were we in COVID lockdown, everyone was supposed to be masked, no one was supposed to be in the common area, but these kids are playing, soccer, tag and racing bikes down the hall and harassing me. Management sent out a flyer about the rules, especially the rules for kids since so many large families lived in the building.

Eventually, the kids started barricading my door from the outside. I stepped out and over the pile, turned the corner to look down their hall and saw the son who called Cat who came over with two friends and they each swore that they were going to be me that day and every day they saw me looking at the kids. I told them I was calling the police. The police told me to get an order of protection. (19 Sept 2020)

My immune system disappeared. I got an ear infection that turned into a rare fungal infection they couldn't kill. I was on weeks of antibiotics, antifungals, and narcotics and I'm trying to plan a move to Nevada! 

Later in September, I find out I do not have to have spinal surgery, but a medical device I've been waiting for has been approved by the FDA and I can have the surgery to implant it in October.

It was so much to handle. My mental health wasn't good. People were desperate to get me out of Minneapolis and I wanted to get out of Minneapolis, but at least I knew I would get in at College Villas when my name came up. I started to really work out the money I'd use to rent a moving truck and drive across country. I'd owe the Exchange some money that I could pay in January. I could do it. I could make it work. I had to go. I HAD TO GO!