He Lost an Eye in the George Floyd Protests. Now He Represents the Ward Where Renée Good Was Killed.

It was Soren Stevenson’s third day in office on the Minneapolis city council when, in the middle of a strategic planning session, Mayor Jacob Frey rushed out of the room. Soon, the council learned why: Federal agents had shot and killed Renée Good. Stevenson hurried down to the site of the killing, on the edge of the ward he represents. The ward—one of the city’s most diverse areas, with mix of Latino, Somali, Black, and white residents—also includes the site of George Floyd’s murder.

For Stevenson, who is 31, the brutality is personal. Six days after Floyd’s murder, heeding the call for white bodies at the front of the protests, Stevenson was standing near a closed freeway ramp, arms linked with other protesters, when police fired rubber bullets without warning. Stevenson was shot in his left eye, and would lose his eye and most of his sense of smell. The city settled Stevenson’s subsequent lawsuit for $2.4 million.

Stevenson, whose background is in affordable housing, hadn’t considered running for office before the incident. But the experience served as an inflection point: He felt “a duty to be a part of building a public safety system in Minneapolis that treated everyone with dignity.”

When we spoke from his office last week, he was still learning his way around City Hall. His office walls were bare, and his office phone and email had just recently been set up. A few days later, agents would kill Alex Pretti.

Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Let’s start in 2020. How did you decide to get involved with the protests after George Floyd’s murder?

“’Force’ is a nice way of saying, ‘Ending someone’s life.’ A nice way of saying, ‘Shooting someone in the face and maiming them, breaking people’s bones, kicking people’s teeth out.'”

I had just graduated. It was Covid, I had lost one of my jobs. And at the time, Americans had been watching a steady stream of Black men be murdered by the police and no justice coming from it, getting no accountability. I was just one person who decided, “I’m not going to rest until George Floyd gets justice.” And I was joined by millions of other Americans. We were just sick and tired of seeing our neighbors, our fellow Americans, our fellow Minnesotans, be killed, and we weren’t going to go quietly.

I joined the protests, and six days later, I was at a peaceful protest before curfew, and a Minneapolis Police officer shot me with a rubber bullet. I lost my left eye and most of my sense of smell. And that put me on the trajectory to where we are.

How did that experience shape your understanding of the use of force against protesters?

It gave me a personal understanding of force. Is not this academic thing—it’s real human lives. It’s real stories. It’s real pain. It’s real blood. “Force” is a nice way of saying, “Ending someone’s life.” A nice way of saying, “Shooting someone in the face and maiming them, breaking people’s bones, kicking people’s teeth out.” And in the case of Renée Good, killing her.

What parallels do you see in the aftermath of the deaths of Good and Floyd?

“Something that has been really powerful is the organizing that’s happening around the schools: People patrolling schools, posted up on different corners, dropping kids off at school, taking them back, bringing groceries, taking people to appointments.”

The thing that I’ve been noticing the most is the way that the city ignited itself when our neighbor was murdered. When George Floyd was murdered, people got involved: street protests, starting organizations, neighborhood watches. I was somebody who stayed up on my porch. There was a Black church across the street from me, and I just stayed up part of the night, until my shift ended and my roommate took over, to make sure that it didn’t get burned down. After the murder of Renée Good, we’ve gone into overdrive. We remember how to look out for each other. We’re connected to our neighbors. A lot of people are like, “Hey, I haven’t seen you since the uprising. But here we are. We’re back.”

What has that reignition looked like lately?

Rapid response is a big one. [Saying] “ICE is at this place, come now,” and people show up quickly and are confronting ICE officers. That has worked to protect our neighbors. Every second that an ICE officer is bothered about someone blowing a whistle in their face is a second that they’re not taking one of our neighbors, and that’s time well spent. That’s a quote from [Minnesota Rep.] Aisha Gomez.

And something that has been really powerful in my ward is the organizing that’s happening around the schools: People patrolling schools, posted up on different corners, dropping kids off at school, taking them back, bringing groceries, taking people to appointments.

Speaking of which—what are you hearing from your constituents about how ICE is impacting kids?

“They thought that they were going to break our city. They were going to make us look bad.”

It’s having a huge effect. Elementary schools being battlegrounds is—I mean, just take that sentence in again. Elementary schools are battlegrounds. ICE is showing up to high schools and harassing students [when they’re] let out. We have a hybrid option available. A lot of kids who are afraid to go out, or whose parents are unsafe to go out—they’re at home doing hybrid learning. And I think any parent will know, school from home is not the vibe. We’re doing this because we have to—because a lot of families aren’t safe to leave their homes—but we’re not happy about it.

Why do you think ICE has targeted Minneapolis?

Minneapolis does not have the largest immigrant population of cities across the country, or remotely the most undocumented folks. I think the Trump administration picked a fight that they’re going to lose, and I don’t think that they knew they were going to lose. They thought that they were going to break our city. They were going to make us look bad. And while damage is being done to families across the city and across the state, ultimately, we are going to be successful because we are strong, and we’re organized, and we’re going to band together, and there’s more of us than there are of them.

What makes you say the Trump administration is going to lose?

“We are deciding right here in Minneapolis—in this country—are we going to have a democracy going forward, or are we not?”

They thought that they were going to come in here and play into this, “Minneapolis is a dangerous place that’s got all this fraud, yada yada,” and use racism against the Somali community or the Latino community. And I think they thought they were just going to come in, create some bad optics for the city, and leave. But in fact what’s happened is they’ve come in and they’ve found that we’re not just insane people who are going to light our city on fire. We are people who care about each other, and we want our neighborhoods to be thriving and successful. They’re getting a different fight than they expected. And we live here—it’s not like we can just quit at any point, because we’re going to continue to live here—but this invasion from ICE is temporary. It will end at some point, and we’re going to still be united. We’re going to still be looking out for each other when they’re gone.

For people who aren’t here, this can feel like a faraway problem. What are the stakes here?

This is really a question about: Do we want to have a democracy going forward or not? Are we going to accept that Donald Trump and the federal government can have completely unaccountable soldiers—secret police—who can do whatever they want to anyone at any time, or are we going to have a democracy where the government is by and for the people? Truly, I see this as a moment when we are deciding right here in Minneapolis—in this country—are we going to have a democracy going forward, or are we not? The stakes are no greater and no smaller than that.