As the families of Annunciation Catholic Church and School begin to piece their lives back together in the aftermath of Wednesday’s shooting that killed two children and injured more than a dozen other students and parishioners, so too does the wider community whose lives were touched by such profound violence and loss. Grief and horror rippled through the neighborhoods surrounding Annunciation on Wednesday like aftershocks of an earthquake as the news of the shooting spread. While those at the epicenter—the students, staff, and parishioners of Annunciation—have the attention of first responders, community members extend care to each other by using the skills and resources they have on hand.
After experiencing collective rupture, the response in Southwest Minneapolis is as varied as the neighborhoods themselves. People from all walks of life in Southwest are helping their neighbors process the grief and trauma inflicted by the shooting through art, music, conversation groups, and acts of service toward the Annunciation community. Sometimes the act of doing something at all offers a window into healing, providing an opportunity for processing the horrific events of Wednesday just by breaking out of normalcy to engage with it.
A somber soundtrack
On Wednesday evening, just hours after the shooting, crowds gathered in Lynnhurst Park to light candles and mourn together over the losses suffered that morning. Accompanying the program on his keyboard was Raymond Berg.
Berg is a professional musician who has played piano for countless weddings, funerals, and theater productions throughout his career. A friend passed along the invitation from Protect Minnesota, the gun control advocacy group that co-led the vigil, and Berg says he was “heartened to be able to bring a small contribution.”
“It’s really so hard because from one standpoint, you’re being asked to be a professional,” Berg says, “So you’re being asked to bring a specialized skill that that will attempt to to create some momentary solace or reflection, but at the same time you know that nothing is going to heal these wounds.”
Facing down the immensity of the task before him, Berg says he was still glad to offer what he knows best to the vigil. “Music is a tremendously powerful thing because it speaks directly to souls. It speaks deeper, I think, in many ways, than words do. And really, you know, I have no words. I don't think anybody did.”
Blood donors turned away at the door
At 1 p.m. on Friday, all five beds on the Bloodmobile at Wooden Ship Brewing were full and the line at the registration table was growing. Phlebotomists bustled around the cramped bus space labeling bags, inserting needles, and making sure donors were comfortable. In the days since the shooting, Memorial Blood Centers, which operates mobile blood donation sites including the one at Wooden Ship, had more than four times the usual number of donor registrations across all their locations, according to Morgan Christensen, the manager of donor recruitment for Memorial Blood Centers.
To accommodate the influx of donors, Wooden Ship added an extra blood drive day to their usual monthly schedule. Still, they had to turn people away who showed up eager to donate blood. “The entire schedule is all full within 20 minutes” of opening, says Alicia Northenscold, the account manager for the Wooden Ship blood drives.
Memorial Blood Centers declared a blood emergency on August 11 due to low stock. Donors responded well to the blood emergency, which Christensen says ensured that area hospitals were adequately stocked with blood ahead of time to be able to treat victims of the shooting at Annunciation and the mass shooting near Lake St. that occurred the day before.
“Minnesota is a very community-oriented state,” Christensen says. “When you have a lot of tragedies in a row you can get immune to them, but I have not seen that, especially not in this case.”
Northenscold says that donations after the fact can still help those injured at Annunciation. “There’s ongoing need for blood for some of the victims that will remain at the hospital. But also because it has a shelf life of 42 days, it will help replenish what was needed emergently and to keep that supply strong for future needs,” she says.
Christensen advises anyone who gets turned away from a blood donation site because of the donor overload to try again in a few weeks so hospitals can stay prepared for times of crisis.
A neighborhood association in action
First thing in the morning on the last Saturday before the beginning of the school year, Henrietta Couillard, a mental health therapist at Camden High School, sat at a circular table at Richfield United Methodist Church, listening.
About 50 people came to the church at the invitation of the Windom Community Council to process the events of the previous days with neighbors and professional therapists. Several of Couillard’s colleagues were scattered around the room as people recounted stories of workplaces going into lockdown, frantic searches for information, parents rushing to pick up their children from daycare, and looming questions of how to move forward. Annunciation falls within the Windom neighborhood, and many of the stories shared were separated from the church by mere blocks.
Mario Vargas, the Executive Director of Windom Community Council, says that when he heard the news, he knew the organization had to mobilize to serve their neighborhood. “We wanted to do something but we didn’t know exactly what. We knew we didn’t want it to be a rally, we didn’t want a traditional vigil,” Vargas says. Pulling on board members’ connections, they landed the spot at Richfield United Methodist and assembled a group of therapists to help guide the event.
For Vargas, healing starts in the neighborhood. The Windom Neighborhood Safety Club goes on group walks through the area every Monday and often passes by the playground at Annunciation, Vargas says. Now, he says he’ll be thinking about how some of the children that they saw a week ago won’t be there next time. “Neighborhood associations are the smallest form of government,” Vargas says. “Moving forward starting this week we’re going to be more deliberate in gauging block by block what people are looking for at the local level, what the solutions are.”
Fostering healing through art
Under the bright sunshine of Labor Day weekend, parents and children in the shopping area courtyard at 50th & France Avenue used markers to color in wooden ornaments strung on garlands of twine and decorated cards to send to the students of Annunciation.
Youth arts program Common Kind hosts weekly art-making pop-ups for children and families. Common Kind founder Jenn Sporcich says that after the shooting, she wanted to dedicate this week’s time to allow families to come process the violence together.
“It’s a way for us to get out our really confusing thoughts and feelings about this difficult experience and kind of see each other’s processing,” Sporcich said, wiping away tears.
“You’re deeply, deeply devastated and heartbroken, but then you need to turn on your strong teacher face during the open house, and you need to turn on your strong mom personality for your own child, so that’s why art making is so powerful,” says Richelle Norton, the owner of the nearby North Star Art Club and a teacher at Anthony Middle School. “It creates the space to elicit these conversations.”
Norton says that she often sees kids in her art camps open up to discussions that they might not have in another setting. “That’s the beautiful thing about art is that while your hands are busy and you’re working on something, you can start talking about things you would never expect,” she says.
The cards and garlands will be added to the growing mountain of flowers, stuffed animals, written prayers, and works of art that line the grounds of Annunciation in support of the church community and all they have lost.
You do not carry this alone
“You do not carry this alone.” That was the refrain of the hymn that Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg led for the crowd gathered at Wednesday evening’s vigil.
In addition to being the lead rabbi at Shir Tikvah synagogue, Lekach-Rosenberg is a neighbor of Annunciation and the surrounding community. “My whole life is in this corner of the Twin Cities,” Lekach-Rosenberg said. “From the moment I found out about it, I feel like I’ve just been inside of the swirl of responding to the crisis, responding to the tragedy, and wanting to show up for our friends in need.”
All in the past few days, Rabbi Lekach-Rosenberg has spoken at the vigil, attended public community care events, helped organize a community circle for trans members of Shir Tikvah, and mobilized Shir Tikvah congregants to support parishioners at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church as they returned to Mass on Sunday.
“Our tradition tells us our primary responsibilities are to comfort the mourners, to visit the sick, to visit those who are shaking. I think that in times like this, when all of us are experiencing trauma, whether it’s immediate or second or third degree trauma, we are all touched by it. This is our community. These are our kids. I think it's my responsibility as a community leader to remind people that we actually have sacred work to do.”
That sacred work will continue as Annunciation students return to school and the neighborhood settles in for the long haul of continuing to live with the memory of tragedy. As the days march on, Lekach-Rosenberg urges togetherness. “Keep coming to your houses of worship or your community spaces,” she says. “We are turning our community spaces into spaces of care. They always are, but all the more so now, making sure that people have chances to connect with one another, to ground and to focus on what needs doing.”
When she’s able to pause and look around, Lekach-Rosenberg says observing how the neighborhood shows up to care for each other is “moving.” Networks of care arise in all sorts of channels among neighbors who want to help each other through in whichever ways they know how to, exposing a shared humanity and a commonality of experience that heals.
