Knocking on doors in St. Paul to talk race, protest and disruption

As police arrested dozens of protesters outside the governor's mansion on Wednesday, a smaller group of people was out canvassing the St. Paul neighborhood. They knocked on doors to talk about race, protest and explain the disruption.

At first, Orin Ruvin and Jeremy Levinger didn't have any luck getting people to answer the door or chat about what's going on.

The two young white men in their 20s were part of a group of about 25 volunteers organized by the Minnesota chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice, or SURJ, a national group that organizes white people to support racial justice movements.

But a few houses down longtime St. Paul resident Barb Burleigh answered her door and she and Ruvin talked about the point of the protest, and what it's like living nearby.

"I don't see how a rally there with loud music is doing anything for the cause, it's just more negative," she said.

Ruvin explained the petition they're circulating calling for an independent prosecutor to be appointed to handle the case of Philando Castile, a black man shot by police on July 6 in Falcon Heights.

SURJ MN and Minneapolis-based civil rights group Neighborhoods Organizing for Change have collected more than 5,000 signatures, about half their goal.

But canvassers like Ruvin were also there to talk about race. Wednesday's group in the Summit Avenue neighborhood was white volunteers talking to mostly white neighbors. The volunteers headed out to different parts of the neighborhood in pairs.

Some neighbors were hesitant to speak candidly. MPR News agreed not to identify this woman who lives blocks from the governor's residence because she said she fears for her safety.

"I get the issue and I don't disagree with it," she said. "But I disagree with the way the people have represented it because I don't really think they're representing the people that care about the issue and I think they've been misbehaving. I think they've been disrespectful, rude."

Ruvin tried to explain motivations behind the Black Lives Matter movement tactics.

"Sort of my conception of it as somewhat of an insider, somewhat of an outsider, is just the idea of civil disobedience and raising awareness and trying to make a little bit of noise to make people involved," he said.

"It felt like it was getting people involved that wanted to hate on white people or hate on police, which is the exact opposite of what you should be doing," the neighbor added.

At times, neighbors just wanted to vent about the disruption. Levinger could not get a word in edgewise when a neighbor complained he was not welcome at the protest to take photos.

Levinger said he wished he could have had the chance to explain more about why protesters were on edge, citing the shooting of protesters at a similar occupation last year by alleged white supremacists.

But 24-year-old Levinger said he doesn't expect a person of color to have those conversations.

"It takes an amount of privilege and it takes patience that comes from that privilege of not dealing with it personally to address people like that," he said. "That's somebody who could be a potential ally."

At the end of a night of door-knocking, the group met back at Unity Unitarian Church and sat in a circle to share experiences.

Volunteer K.C. Harrison said she plans to approach canvassing differently next time after she encountered a "really intense guy" who held her petition clipboard and asked her a barrage of legal questions.

"A more personal level and a more general level in talking about the role of race in the conversation, rather than talking about the specifics of federal investigation, special prosecutor, federal oversight versus investigation. And some of those details he seemed interested in but also perhaps curious to see how deep our own knowledge of the subject went," she said.

Wintana Melekin, an organizer with Neighborhood Organizing for Change, ran the debriefing and training session along with SURJ MN. The black, Sudanese native got emotional talking to the two dozen volunteers in the room.

"To see this many white folks in the room is extremely powerful, because y'all did not exist when I was a kid. To see this many folks step up for Phil (Philando Castile) and to see them step up for Jamar (Clark) and Trayvon (Martin) has been a very powerful experience," she said.

Activists are holding an event in Minneapolis Wednesday about the theory and history of protest tactics. They've invited the public to ask questions about disruption and "white discomfort."

They also plan more canvassing in the coming weeks.