The Hillard Heintze After Action Report: Neighborhood Organizations Matter

Neighborhood organizations can play an important role in communication during crises.

The Minneapolis City Council recently accepted the Hillard Heintze After-Incident report, an analysis of "City departments’ and assisting agencies’ responses to events occurring within the city directly following George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020 and through June 3, 2020" (page 5). The report found, among other things, that "the decentralized structure of Minneapolis government and lack of coordination of the city government departments resulted in a lack of information that the public desperately sought. Additionally, the provided messaging was inconsistent" (p. 17). The report also recognized that "despite the lack of communication from the MPD and city officials, many residents and business owners worked together to protect their communities and prevent property damage" (p.18).

"The City had a disjointed and uncoordinated response... and did not communicate consistently with or provide timely information to the public."

The report noted that "community members perceived that the City had a disjointed and uncoordinated response to the protests, and did not communicate consistently with or provide timely information to the public. This lack of communication caused community members to lose faith in the City’s ability to protect them" (p. 77).

Many interviewees noted that communication between the City of Minneapolis and the community was inconsistent before Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests. They noted that some City Council members were communicative, while others rarely informed their constituents. Most interviewees felt there was a lack of communication from City leaders during the unrest, specifically the Mayor’s Office and the Office of Emergency Management (OEM). Community members said being in a position of uncertainty during the unrest due to the lack of communication created frustration and angst for them during the days after Floyd’s death...

One response to the lack of communication was the creation of informal information sharing systems by various neighborhood groups and wards. Though these systems were basic – such as email listservs, texting groups and newsletters – they served the needs of the community and filled the communication void left by the City. These methods became the only information portal for many Minneapolis residents at the time. Community members noted they became reliant on these networks to get information, and as a result, residents and business owners came together to support and protect each other. Many cited this as a rare positive outcome of the response to the protests and unrest. (p. 25).

In a previous post, we highlighted the important role neighborhood organizations in New Orleans played after that City's failure to respond after Katrina in 2005 (Why neighborhood organizations matter: part 1). In that case, City leadership faced a community backlash following mistaken assumptions and failures of communication. According to the report by City Works, “Neighborhood organizations became a vital nexus in the exchange of useful information.” In response to the Mayor’s top-down proposal, the City Council proposed its own recovery plan, focusing more on bottom-up neighborhood based recovery.

It is not surprising, then, that one of the key and first "takeaways" by the authors of the After Action Report is that:

The City of Minneapolis leadership should capitalize on neighborhood groups’ efforts to share information. The City could determine the benefits of these information-sharing methods for use in future critical incidents and formalize their use, if appropriate. Conversely, by not collaborating with neighborhood groups, the City could allow inaccurate information and rumors to disseminate or allow other entities unrelated with the City to control the information messaging. (p. 29).

In 2018 (the last year for which I have complete data), 43 neighborhood organizations in Minneapolis reported reaching 14,775 households through door-knocking, and most neighborhood organizations reached another 98,878 through flyering. They also reported 58,560 contacts on their email lists, 80,180 on Facebook and Twitter, and many reported routinely publishing paper newsletters.

Neighborhood organizations reach residents through a multitude of methods. Clearly, the City could have benefited from this broad outreach capacity of neighborhood organizations.

The City's confused and negligent response to the 2020 riots can be contrasted with the 2011 response to a tornado that ran through North Minneapolis.

Neighborhood Organizations and the 2011 Tornado

When a tornado touched down in North Minneapolis in 2011, neighborhood organizations pitched in to help. Board members from the hardest hit neighborhood, Jordan, went door to door to identify residents who needed help and shared their information with emergency responders. Other neighborhood organizations collaborated with NCR and Public Works to organize a massive community cleanup that removed hundreds of tons of remaining debris.

NCR partnered directly with neighborhood organizations to assist in these efforts, including requesting $600,000 from the City Council to support neighborhood organization work. In my 2013 report to the Minneapolis City Council on neighborhood organization involvement in tornado recovery efforts, I reported on:

• A neighborhood organization created relief fund that provided grants to repair 33 homes that otherwise were ineligible for federal or state relief funds. Many of these homes were occupied by seniors or people with disabilities who faced legal and other barriers to assistance.
• A multi-neighborhood cleanup effort involving more than 400 volunteers over the weekends of June 18 and June 25, 2011 from four parks.
• Additional outreach and door-knocking work. Neighborhood organizations worked with other agencies involved in recovery efforts to develop and distribute literature through direct outreach and electronic communication.
• Ability to meet with and participate in the Northside Community Recovery Team and collaborate more closely with tornado relief efforts.
• Neighborhood organizations worked collaboratively on a number of community meetings between 2011 and 2013 known as North First.

Neighborhood organizations have a long and important history in the City of Minneapolis, and can play an important role in helping to respond to crises such as these. Unfortunately, the City department responsible for supporting neighborhood organizations, the Neighborhood and Community Relations Department (NCR) appears to believe its role is to regulate and control neighborhood organizations, rather than advocating for and supporting them. NCR and the City collaborated with neighborhood organizations in 2011. This leads to the question: where was NCR in 2020?