As protests, riots and looting enter the third day in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd, police in St. Paul were seen guarding a Target as people throw shopping carts at vehicles.
A former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) St. Paul chapter was at the scene Thursday trying to get medication for her daughter, a reporter for MN Reformer captured on video, and she’s seen expressing her anger with the people surrounding the Target and clashing with police.
“St. Paul ain’t got shit to do with what happened,” Diane Binns says in the recording. “These people don’t give a damn about George Floyd. These motherfuckers need to go home,” she said.
Diane Binns, 70, of St. Paul is angry at the people here. Binns came here to get medication for her daughter. pic.twitter.com/GA1EJpx4XL
— Ricardo Lopez (@rljourno) May 28, 2020
Binns, 70, has spent much of her life participating in activism, reflecting on Martin Luther King Jr. and going to sit-ins for garbage workers in Memphis. She told the Spokesman-Recorder in 2017 that “I’ve [grown] up in [racism] my whole life.” She also was in Minneapolis for the riots in the 60s, according to the MN Reformer.
Diane Binns was president of the NAACP St. Paul from 2016-2018. She was here for the north Minneapolis riots in the 60s pic.twitter.com/AuuHIdAxZx
— Ricardo Lopez (@rljourno) May 28, 2020
She tells the reporter she went to the rally in Minneapolis the first day after Floyd was killed.
“I thought that it was going to be a rally, but as it got to the end, I was there about 30 minutes and I realized that it wasn’t a rally, it was going to be a riot,” she said.
After overhearing the plans for the riot, which included going to the police precinct, she left and didn’t return.
“I listened to what was being said. When they started talking about going to the 3rd precinct I knew how that was going to end.”
“I haven’t been up here since. I watched what they were live streaming on video and the destruction that they did to their own communities. What are people going to do that live in those communities, and they need those resources?”
“We don’t have many stores as it is. So why are we going to burn down the small business owners who are there for us? Most folks have moved out of the community, most businesses are gone, we don’t have business in the community.”
The destruction included the burning down and looting of multiple businesses. Some small businesses even began posting signs in their windows that read “This is a BLACK-OWNED business” to spare the property from being vandalized.
Signs hoping to save some of these businesses pic.twitter.com/3lU9JqpglN
— Ricardo Lopez (@rljourno) May 28, 2020
Floyd died Monday after a police officer was caught on camera pinning his neck to the ground.
Multiple building including multistory affordable housing were set on fire, with smoke filling the sky and able to be viewed from a 10 mile distance in what has been described as “unbelievable devastation.” (RELATED: George Floyd Protestors Set Fire To Wendy’s, AutoZone In Minneapolis)