Events That Brought Longfellow Together
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Midwinter Celebration – Our first directly organized winter solstice gathering brought neighbors together for “a walk of light, music, and community.” The evening featured luminaries, singing, poetry, and hot beverages, creating a warm and reflective space during the darkest part of the year. The event was made possible with support from Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Moon Palace Books, and Pangea World Theater.
Many people attended, including organizers, volunteers, artists, and community members. Together we activated the area, shared updates about future neighborhood developments, and experienced art as a way of bringing people together and supporting community healing. Attendees had the opportunity to view architectural renderings for the future Pangea Theater and connect with neighbors about what the next chapter of the neighborhood could look like.
Participants described the event as full of “warmth and intention.”
Midwinter Celebration
Downtown Longfellow
Community Meetings
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Days after the uprising following George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis Police, Ruhel Islam stood in front of his destroyed restaurant, where he met up with Dan Kennedy, partner at Kennedy and Cain PLLC, and Ingrid Rassmussen, pastor at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. The three had the idea to start meeting with others whose buildings had been damaged or destroyed during the uprising, or who had somehow emerged with property intact in a mostly burnt out neighborhood. Soon, weekly meetings were convened in the front yard of Holy Trinity. More business owners, residents, workers, and property owners joined in what started as an emotional support group. This transformed into a mutual aid network, as people grappled with clean-up efforts, government inaction and regulatory hurdles that prevented clearing rubble from destroyed buildings and beginning re-building. These meetings, and this group, eventually became Longfellow Rising.iption text goes here
Longfellow Rising Community Envisioning and Planning Workshops
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A series of conversations and design-testing sessions over three months, with business and property owners, workers, residents, and frequent visitors to Downtown Longfellow. With the help of a team of facilitators, designers and architects, we created a map of development projects that we hope to see in the neighborhood. We developed a list of principles we hope the rebuilt neigbhorhood will embody. And we imagined the things we hope will emerge in our community going forward.
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Members of the Longfellow Rising board had a table at the Minnehaha Open Streets in October of 2021. We sat out in front of the concrete barricades and barbed wire that surrounded the burnt-out former 3rd precinct. Little did we know, the building, the barricades and the barbed wire would still be there 4 years after the uprising.
Tabling at Open Streets Minnehaha
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