(14) Notes from a {prole} writer in Minneapolis

2/8/26

Super Bowl Sunday

I never really gave a shit about Super Bowl and all the rampant commercialization. It never appealed to me except last year, when my man Kendrick Lamar rocked the house. His words and artistry inspire. It was good to finally see one of my favs take the main stage at the most celebrated shrine of capitalism.

But I am looking forward to Bad Bunny’s set. It’ll be a definite historical performance that people will look back to and know where we were at in society. I’ve never been a fan of his music, but I do love his collaboration with the Marias . I’m an extremely big fan of Marias! Her ethereal voice is the holy grail and must be protected at all costs.

Last night, I had a dream that I was with a group of friends, drinking on the Settlement back in Iowa. I get these drinking dreams even after almost 9 years of sobriety. My body reacts to the stimuli happening in my brain. The sweat, the shallow breaths, the jitteriness.

But, during the dream we were shooting pistols out into the woods at the old cemetery next to the railroad tracks. There’s a group of white boys down the bank. I don’t know how, but some kind of beef materialized—these kind of drunken sessions are never logical, but I guess we were beefing with the white boys and I shot one of them.

I felt instant guilt. I felt the flashing of my life crashing before my eyes. I thought of all my plans, my dreams ,and how this was gonna affect my family.

This must be how it feels after you make a split-second decision to shoot somebody. It was a knee-jerk response because I didn’t think about what he was going through. In my drunken haze—I thought he deserved it. It took me a little while longer for my brain to process his plans, his dreams.

That piled another layer of guilt on top of my selfish guilt. That made me think of the “buffer zone” between the second you pull the trigger, either you injure somebody or end their life, to the Big Repent.

I can say I’ve never had the unfortunate feeling of going through that.

What’s happening right now to our neighbors in Minneapolis with the daily specter of death looming over us; I wonder, are all those ice agents stuck in such a blender of chaos that they don’t even realize what they’re doing to people?

Of course, in the paper trail of resistance, looking at some of the profiles of these ice agents online, coupled with the lack of training and brainwashing, a good percentage of them are already psychos. Or can some of them be completely brainwashed decent people that they can shoot somebody and it’s just as easy as swatting a fly?

In either case, we have to think about those scenarios and think the worst at first in order to create change. No euphemisms. There should be no more wishy-washy language to cover the fact that we are dealing with the worst of fascism right now. No strongly worded letters, no compromise. Shut it down before any more loss of life occurs.

I’m writing this under a multitude of Valentine’s Day heart balloons in this early morning of Minneapolis. If you want euphemism, this is a good shade of red to cover what’s beneath the surface of the minds of masked state-sanctioned killers prowling these streets in the name of capitalism and depravity.

Perhaps, wait—no euphemisms, Kendrick DID say it best, as a way to deter a shooting crime in his refrain of [“Nobody respects the shooter, but the one in front of the gun lives forever.”]

Stay safe and look out for each other.