Minneapolis: Growing protests against the police killing of Australian Justine Damond are a turning point in Minneapolis.
On Thursday, the city's white middle class lined up behind Black Lives Matter activists, cheerfully chanting their slogans and, when asked, raising their clenched fists.
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Protests erupt after Justine Damond's death
Chaos after the resignation of Minneapolis' police chief following the fatal police shooting of the unarmed Australian woman who dialled 9-1-1.
It was surreal. Hundreds of Damond's neighbours poured into the streets, most of them innocent, even naive in the business of hardcore protest. But a BLM contingent was there to show them the ropes - at first gingerly. These activists took turns yelling the lines of protest; and amidst self conscious giggles, the locals took time to find their voices and call back the refrain.
"The people united, will never be defeated!"
"No justice, no peace, prosecute the po-lice!"
"What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like!"
And when the black mother of Philando Castile, the city's most celebrated black victim of police brutality embraced Damond's white fiance, and later Damond's white would-be mother-in-law, tears welled up in the crowd. As the pictures went around the city and the world, Minneapolis was changed.
By the time the marchers arrived in a local park for a round of speeches, they had truly found their voice.
The latest police killing victim might have been white, but the voices of passion were black - and when prominent African-American activist John Thompson called for a clenched fist salute, it seemed the entire crowd obliged, repeating after him: "We have a duty to fight for our freedom."
The black speeches were about years of black suffering and abuse that, because of Damond's death, were now a white problem.
When one of the speakers mentioned that five black protesters had been shot after last year's killing in Minneapolis of Castile, a young black man in the crowd leapt to his feet - and identified himself as one of the five.
BLM was making its point - dramatically. Because African Americans had been the habitual victims of police brutality, they had a well-oiled protest machine; and now they would put it at the disposal of the white Minneapolis community - many of whom had previously seen police killings as a black issue.
And just as it made a difference that Damond was white, blonde and beautiful, it also mattered that she was a foreigner.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's charge that her death was "shocking" and "inexplicable" was a level of official criticism not often heard in American discourse on police killings.
And the presence of an Australian media pack at press conferences in Minneapolis presented local officials with new challenges.
Fairfax Media's incredulity at what the bizarre circumstances of Damond's death revealed of an entrenched police culture resistant to change was picked up by CNN; and the hammering by Australian TV crews of police chief Janee Harteau's absence at a time of crisis, probably was a catalyst for her abrupt resignation on Friday, US time.
So it came as no surprise, that protesters stormed City Hall, celebrating the announcement of Harteau's ousting by Mayor Betsy Hodges.
But Hodges is under pressure too. "Bye, bye, Betsy," the protesters chanted. And leading the charge was the lanky, excitable activist Thompson, a friend and work colleague of the dead Castile, who has made protesting his new life's mission.
Inserting Damond's name in place of Castile's, they chanted one of last year's slogans - "If Justine don't get it, shut it down". Their surge forced Hodges to abandon her press conference - not a good look, because the harried mayor seemed to be on the run.
Hodges and Harteau have the same credibility problem - for all their talk of reforming the city's police department, they have presided over a series of killings and other ugly incidents of police misconduct. They claim they have changed the department for the better, but that argument is killed by the record on their watch.
And both have appeared to be covering their arses by heaping all the blame for Damond's death on the officer who pulled the trigger - instead of seeing it as a departmental failing.
That the officer is refusing to co-operate with investigators is problematic - for him and the department. But that he is a Somali-American Muslim also makes it look as though he is being scapegoated by officialdom.
Even the city's police union, always quick to defend officers in trouble, has remained silent. Is that because the investigation is not concluded or because the force's dominant white culture sees him as an expendable outlier?
Even as the investigation into Damond's death continues, both the mayor and the police chief as good as convicted the officer - rookie Mohamed Noor. Their mantra has been that this was an individual who went off the reservation, not a police department that can't, or won't, get its act together.
But in tackling Harteau, one of Hodges' challengers for the city leadership seemed to have the mayor in her sights too.
Endorsing the demise of the police chief, mayoral challenger and civil rights lawyer Nekima Levy-Pounds said it had been "a slap in the face to people of colour" that Harteau had spoken out about the death of the white Damond but in the recent past had defended officers involved in shooting black people.
And Thompson is not going away - and with so many in the white community behind him, he's probably never had such power as he does now.
"The fight for Justine is not over. It's just begun. We got a lot of allies," he said on Friday.
"Betsy Hodges was trying to appease the international press, trying to say, 'I did something about it. I did something really good. I asked the chief to step down', and thinking that's going to end what's happening, but it's not going to end nothing.
"We need Australia right here with us ... and we won't stop fighting for Justine and victims like Justine."
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