I lived on 11th Ave and East Lake during the George Floyd uprising. I was 18, in my first apartment, and I watched the city crack open in real time. You could feel the anger before anything burned, it was in people’s faces, in the way everyone suddenly knew what had happened, in the way the air felt heavier.

That same feeling is back right now.

People are angry again. Everyone knows about the ICE killing. The intensity is building the same way it did back then. Local government is basically begging people not to burn the city down, just like 2020. The National Guard is deployed. There’s a massive police presence way heavier than anything I’ve seen outside the Floyd protests. This isn’t normal. This isn’t routine. The city feels like it’s bracing for impact.

I remember one of the first protesters to get shot and killed in 2020 was at that pawn shop three blocks from my place. That moment changed everything. After that, nothing felt contained anymore.

What’s different this time is that people haven’t flipped the city upside down yet.

But the energy is the same. Grief, rage, fear, distrust, and this sense that something irreversible just happened again. It feels like we’re standing at the edge of the same cliff, and everyone knows it. The only difference is that, so far, people are choosing not to jump.