Photos by Dan Huiting
Hiawatha Tent Encampment
For the past three years, Andrew Broder has hosted a January residency at the Turf Club, traditionally on Wednesday nights, geared towards getting folks off their asses in the new year and inspiring community based action. All the proceeds go to charity. January is a good time for an annual recount and reset, and last year, I helped Broder put together a throwback punk rock zine that we passed out at the shows. This year, we wanted to do another one. 2018 was kind of a dark time, with chaotic politics and a near constant churn of bad news. So we decided to get dramatic, to match its tone to the times: Our theme would be the apocalypse.
Last fall, the entire city began to notice that right in the heart of Minneapolis’ Phillips neighborhood, right along Franklin Avenue, across from the American Indian Center, on a strip of land owned by the Minnesota Department of Transportation, 200 homeless people had set up camp. Nobody could figure out if this was a social justice action like Standing Rock, or just a group of vulnerable people sticking together for survival. Broder and I wondered if it could be both.
Hiawatha Tent Encampment
We knew our zine—on paper, printed with ink, etc.—wouldn’t have the most up-to-the-minute take. The newspapers and the television stations had been reporting on the story for months. Reporters spoke to the mayor and the police chief. They spoke to aid workers. They spoke to the people living there. There were stories filed on deaths from drug overdose. There were stories on the encroaching cold. The camp seemed to force all of us to acknowledge the larger homeless problem the city has faced for years. There was an appropriate tone of general civic embarrassment about a homeless encampment along one of the most historic thoroughfares in our state—Highway 55, which ties our past to our present, which ties Floyd Olson to Fort Snelling, the Mall of America to the airport named after Charles Lindbergh, the Dakota to Coldwater Spring, and the Minnesota to the Mississippi. 200 of the poorest amongst us, those of us suffering the most pain, huddled up there on a hill overlooking our skyscrapers and our glass football cathedral. Camped out in the open, like a carcinoma on our neck.
In November, Broder and I asked our friend, Reuben Crowfeather, a Native dancer and pow wow organizer, a singer with Iron Boy, and a guy who grew up in Phillips, if he would accompany us while we visited the people the neighborhood had begun calling “The Wall of Forgotten Natives.” We went on the first day of November, and kept returning as the skies turned grey, and the air turned cold. We talked to dozens of people in the course of the month. As Thanksgiving passed, our city leaders came up with a plan to move the encampment two blocks away. As we went to press, the 200 tents were coming down—the plan was to migrate the people living there to the “Minneapolis Navigation Center,” a facility constructed on Red Lake land, with three heated “sprung structures” that can accommodate 120 people.
We edited and condensed our interviews into a meditation on encamped dreams that ran in our zine, and then Broder edited some of the interviews into this audio collage, stitched together with ambient sound and music, that we played before the concert began at the Turf last Wednesday night. It’s raw audio, and after Broder brought Big Red Machine’s Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner to the stage as he introduced the piece, the entire Turf Club listened together in stunned silence, all of us forced to deeply consider what is happening in our city. Two days before the show, Reuben called me to let me know that Todd, the first voice you’ll hear on this recording, had overdosed outside of the Navigation Center.
Take the time to listen, and then perhaps think about what we can do to help.
Andrew Broder's residency at the Turf Club continues tonight with Marijuana Deathsquads, Gully Boys, Sophia Eris, and DJ Keezy & Naeem (DJ Set). January 23rd will feature Hymie’s Basement, Yoni Wolf (of Why?), Lady Midnight, Dave King/Andrew Broder, Margret, and DJ Babyghost & Naeem (DJ Set). The final night of the residency, January 30th, will include The Cloak Ox, Serengeti, Angel Davanport, Naeem and Feelfreehifi (DJ Sets).
