Opinion: Lake Street rising

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It was as early as 2001 when I first fell in love with Lake Street.

I was working then on Minnehaha Avenue near the corner of Lake Street at Centro de Derechos Laborales (Worker Rights Center) at Resource Center of the Americas. In the 1990s, Lake Street converted from the boarded-up street it previously had been into a warm and hospitable thoroughfare where, as a Latina, I could feel right at home talking in Spanish with neighbors and going out for delicious tacos, tamales or pan dulce. That was thanks to families from two small Mexican towns who had started settling around this street and opened businesses: grocery stores, restaurants and, finally, the Mercado Central cooperative at Lake and Bloomington.

Lake Street transformed even more as new immigrants from Somalia and Ethiopia moved into south Minneapolis neighborhoods, followed by newcomers from Ecuador. At the Mercado Central, you could find the best tamales, jugos de fruta and pupusas, as well as artisan works from Mexico and Central and South America. You still can. Today, along Lake Street, you can also find Somali, Ethiopian, Ecuadorian, Colombian, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants and grocery stores. And at the Midtown Global Market, you can enjoy an international marketplace with food and wares from all over the world and award-winning Native American cuisine.

By 2008, I was working at Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio (CLUES) at Lake and Columbus, teaching English to adult newcomers. My student population included students from all over Latin America as well as African and Asian immigrants. It is a pleasure to still run into my ex-students all over Lake Street, and it is wonderful to hear so many different languages spoken on this street. From the east corner by the Mississippi River (the border between Minneapolis and St. Paul) to the farthest western corner at Uptown, Lake Street has been for several decades a center of ethnic diversity, and it is the heart of the LGBTQ community as well.

I traveled this street many times on the Route 21 bus. The bus was often tightly filled with elderly people with walkers, Latina moms with their babies, schoolchildren carrying their grocery purchases, high school students on their way home after school and hardworking adults going to or coming from work. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Lake Street was also hit with an economic crisis when people stayed home, stores and restaurants closed and some people lost their businesses. Like many others, I started to work from home. Classes moved online and I only saw my students’ faces on a computer screen. I missed being with them.

In the midst of the pandemic, the Lake Street community was shattered on May 25, 2020, when George Floyd, a Black man, was brutally murdered by police just eight blocks from Lake Street. The pain of racism and the anger of injustice was felt in the neighborhood. Riots broke out and south Minneapolis — and my beloved Lake Street — went up in flames.

Everywhere in the neighborhoods, “Black Lives Matter” signs went up and the refrain “Say their names” was heard. Murals depicting brown and Black faces in struggle for justice appeared throughout Lake Street. On the corner of Chicago and 38th, the community built a memorial to Floyd, a reminder that racism and police abuse have no place in this neighborhood. The community fought hard.

For several years afterward, the Lake Street community suffered with closed businesses, empty lots and people without work. Five years later, after excruciating pain and grief, the Lake Street community is beginning to heal.

On Lake Street, you can now see new construction and new businesses. People are back on the streets. Events and festivities such as Dia de Muertos, outdoor markets and festivals, and the May Day Parade are happening again. Groups of neighbors — children and adults — have organized to do art projects. Yoga and Zumba sessions are back in the parks. On the walls of Lake Street, beautiful murals have been painted by community artists depicting life and activism in these neighborhoods. The people of south Minneapolis continue to fight for immigrant, LGBTQ and labor rights as well as environmental justice through various organizations.

On a beautiful spring day earlier this month, I marched in the traditional May Day Parade with a group pulling colorful paper-mache sculptures of fantastical animals (called alebrijes) while we danced along to a Mexican band who accompanied us. We passed hundreds of people along the parade route, which started at the corner of Bloomington and Lake. We were only one of many contingents that had prepared for this celebration with giant puppets.

For decades, the parade has been a traditional springtime event in south Minneapolis. It was suspended for several years. But this was now the third year in a row that it had been staged again. The people who participate in the parade, and who watch it, represent the vast diversity of the neighborhoods around Lake Street.

It has been a tough time for this community, and with the political environment, this year has proved to be quite a difficult one. And yet, today, the families of Lake Street neighborhoods continue to work, struggle, create and live life in powerful and courageous ways.

Teresa Ortiz lives in south Minneapolis.