Minnesota Experience

(ambient sounds) (ambient sounds) (ambient sounds) (suspensful drone music) (suspensful drone music) (suspensful drone music) - [Narrator] In 1968, architect Ralph Rapson was charged with designing one of the largest urban developments in US history.

300 acres in the heart of Minneapolis, a city within a city, where people from diverse backgrounds would live in a planned utopia.

(suspensful drone music) Inspired by brutalist architectural design that melded form and function, the development modeled a new social reality, constructed entirely of concrete.

(suspensful drone music) It was to be a system for living, one that integrated all the social, physical, and psychological factors that make up human existence.

A network of two-way televisions would connect residents to services.

While a detailed implementation plan with feedback loops was to guide every phase of the project.

With a city center, monorail line, and towering villages cascading to the Mississippi River, the sheer scale of its utopian vision was stunning, a template for the metropolis of the future.

Rapson's drawings give us a window into the good life he imagined for the 30,000 people who would live in this vertical community.

Where concrete would provide a complete infrastructure for the modern person.

(gentle music) A life of leisure and repose would be supported by a web of services, including daycares, community schools, healthcare centers, and grocery stores.

Community would thrive in vast concrete plazas filled with arts and culture.

But the peaceful life among the concrete towers envisioned in these drawings could not be born from nothing.

- [A] We were all living in the West Bank at the time, and one night in February of 1970, Bill called and said, "Why don't you stop by?

There's some people I'd like you to meet."

And I went over to Bill's apartment, which was above the free store on Cedar Avenue, and there was some other neighbors, who had perused the 1968 Urban Renewal Plan and discovered that it called for the wholesale destruction of the West Bank community and replacement with high-density high rises, approximately 100 acres thereof.

(soft music) - And our real purpose is to move into areas that are sufficiently blighted, so that private investment is not attracted to the area, and it's dragging down our overall tax base in the city, it's providing image problems, and so on.

So those are the areas we want to go in.

And I think it is clear that when the Housing Authority started in Cedar-Riverside, those problems existed.

There needed to be some guiding hand in that area.

- [B] So it was a student working class jazz honky-tonk Skid Row.

The report in '66 says, "A fresh, broadly conceived cooperative attack on these causes behind the symptoms of social pathology is badly needed."

They had to get rid of this rough, scruffy neighborhood.

(upbeat music) You got me on the floor just rolling around - [Narrator] Urban renewal was the name given to the radical remaking of US cities in the mid-20th century, where governments targeted primarily working class and communities of color for demolition.

(door crashing) - This whole, this whole block, it being breaking down just because they wanna put new hotels, it's all right, they give us a temporary place to stay in until they break the block and fix it up again and give us back our own apartment so we can, you know, and make them bigger, which bigger families can live in it, but they just wanna break it down to put more in and smaller apartments so they can fit more people, but only their people, white.

You know?

The Black is being broken down.

- [Narrator] In the name of progress, nearly a million people lost their homes and neighborhoods.

This footage from the activist film "Break and Enter" tries to show what Mindy Fullilove called the root shock experienced by those displaced.

(upbeat music) Well-intentioned plans were unveiled in cities across the country in the 1950s and '60s.

This footage of the Gateway District in downtown Minneapolis was taken shortly before it was razed in 1960.

It gives us a glimpse of what the city had already lost to urban renewal.

(soft music) As they bought up the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, the developers carefully photographed the wood, brick, and dirt that was to be replaced with millions of tons of concrete.

It is as if they felt the need to provide some evidence of the neighborhood's blight before bringing in the bulldozers.

And thus, existing housing was removed to make way for phase one of the project.

In photographs of the towers being erected, we see tiny figures making their way through this strange new landscape, where the scale and texture of everyday life had been suddenly transformed.

- [speaker] And you get this massive structure that just is like something from another planet.

They were gray, and not only gray, but too big, way too big.

- [Speaker] They called it a new town.

We called it Gray Town, always this huge monolithic thing.

- [Speaker] It was not related at all.

It was just sort of plunked down in the middle.

- [Narrator] What the developers took as their blank canvas was actually the center of the counterculture in the Midwest.

(upbeat music) Don't have to worry about no misery - [Speaker] The ebb and flow of people and information and ideas was something that just moved organically.

Somebody please tell me what in the world - [Narrator] Compared to this organic culture, the good life the towers offered seemed artificial, individualistic, and contrived.

This idea was reinforced when Mary Tyler Moore's character moved in.

(upbeat music) - Hey everybody, I've got wonderful news, wonderful and exciting news.

I have finally, finally made a change in my life.

I'm moving to a new apartment, and it's fantastic.

It's got a swimming pool and a tennis court, and it's just beautiful.

I'm moving.

Isn't that great?

(bright music) (soft music) - [Speaker] I mean, we lived in gardens, we lived in colorful rooms.

We had people flowing in and out, maybe 10, 15, 20 people in a house at the same time.

And to have this tiny enclosed space that was your individual space.

Where were the trees?

Where were the gardens and playgrounds for kids to play?

And where were...

The communal space.

You know, we're... Yeah, and it was such a contrast because we were just communal space.

That's all we were.

- We have tried to be socially motivated in what we have done and to do things well, to be innovative, and to have respect for individuals and aesthetics and new inner city lifestyle.

- [Narrator] But who was the modern individual they imagined living in these towers?

(soft music) Some wore suits, while others did not.

In some drawings, Rapson tries to capture the spirit of the neighborhood, reflecting the idea that the counterculture was somehow compatible with this high rise utopia.

But messages of love and peace among the concrete couldn't hide the fate of the neighborhood.

In a photograph of the architect surveying his creation, there is a sense of certainty in Rapson's posture.

A solemn confidence perhaps in his role as author of this new world.

And why not?

The modern architect had been depicted as a hero in the first part of the 20th century, as a man who triumphed over mediocrity and threw off the fetters of the past to erect the future.

But by the 1970s, the reverence for the modern had come into question.

And trust in their creations was beginning to crumble.

(dramatic music) Like in J.G.

Ballard's 1975 novel, in which a brutalist high rise that purports to offer all the conveniences of modern life becomes a nightmare as the architect's utopian vision breaks down and the building turns against its creator.

(gentle music) (soft music) As the first phase of the development neared completion, an official dedication for the project was set for May 9th, 1972.

HUD Secretary George Romney was scheduled to appear as the guest of honor, but in a memorandum to Romney dated the day before the dedication, the local HUD office seems uneasy.

Residents are concerned that the local housing authority in selecting this area for urban renewal did not adequately consider the present residents' input.

It has created serious problems for the Department and Housing Authority.

- [Protester] Stay together, people.

Stay together, work together, come to meetings, but use your heads.

And think up tactics that will (muted) up royal.

(protesters cheering) - [Speaker] It, unfortunately for them, coincided with the big anti-war demonstrations on campus which shut down the campus for several days.

It's just a lot of people really pissed off about the war and about Cedar-Riverside.

- [Speaker] So it was all the same conversation.

It was we're against the federal government's interference in Vietnam and in our neighborhood.

Anti-colonialism at home and abroad.

(soft music) - [Reporter] Tuesday saw the first outbreak of violence on the University of Minnesota campus.

17 persons were arrested as about 500 young people, not all of them students, stopped traffic and disrupted the dedication ceremonies of the new town in town housing development in the Cedar-Riverside area of the West Bank.

The demonstration group, numbering between five and 700, moved from the streets to the construction site.

A chicken wire fence gave way as the crowd pressed against it and protestors headed in.

They were met by policemen spraying mace.

The students retaliated, throwing marshmallows, eggs, and stones at helmeted officers.

About 75 policemen moved into disperse the crowd, and for a time, the area looked like a battleground.

(tense music) - A photo of the dedication ceremony was published in a HUD newsletter.

But on closer inspection, the smiles of Romney and the developers look strained.

Their gaze is cast at something in the distance.

- It's a real clear case of community voices not being heard, and that the goal of this project is not to serve the needs of this community.

- [Speaker] The developers say, "Well think about the 20 year plan when this will all be bridges and there'll be a continuous park land throughout, and that this is only the beginning, and that you're judging too soon."

- [Narrator] As the neighborhood braced for the next stages of demolition, it adopted the IWW's Sabo-Tabby as its unofficial mascot.

- [Speaker] The slogan was, "Beware sabotage."

So, I mean, in this time, we'd be labeled as terrorists, though I don't think we ever did anything, we never did anything that would harm any people, but we did harm some property from time to time.

(tense music continues) - At the center of the neighborhood's resistance was the new Riverside Cafe, a collectively run coffee shop that never hid its stance on the neighborhood's redevelopment.

- [Speaker] We didn't call ourselves socialists.

We call ourselves anarchists.

And the collective was the Dire Wolf Gang.

We were the Dire Wolf Gang.

And our basic principle was, from each according to his ability, and to each according to his need.

- [Narrator] A weekly events calendar depicts the collective members hanging out at a bar, working at the cafe, and gathering dynamite to topple the towers.

(dramatic music) But sabotage was about more than destruction.

For the collective, sabotage meant cooking vegetarian food and charging customers what they could afford, while building a neighborhood-wide network of resistance, including a community union to rehab old homes, a free medical clinic focused on women's and mental health.

Sabotage meant starting a bulk food cooperative to feed the neighborhood.

They organized concerts, community meetings, and guerilla theater performances to fight urban renewal.

- [Speaker] People got together to help each other and form cooperative democratic organizations that are not controlled from the top down.

- [Narrator] Though its windows gazed out on the towers, life inside the cafe formed a lived alternative to them.

A utopia built not of concrete, but a million acts of creative resistance.

As momentum gathered, the neighborhood organized a tenants union to fight the developer landlord.

- [Reporter] The battles between the West Bank Tenants Union and the Cedar-Riverside landlord continue.

Last Friday, Cedar-Riverside Associates took Tenant Union members to court for withholding rent.

Solidarity forever Solidarity forever Solidarity forever For the union makes us strong - [Reporter] The protestors gathered late this afternoon at the People Center on Riverside.

Led by a collection of costumed figures, they began to march towards Cedar Avenue.

Along the way, they accumulated more marches at the new Riverside Cafe, which itself is under eviction notice.

- [Speaker] The cafe was the center of the strike operation.

Daily news was printed on the cafe windows.

- [Narrator] A tree of car horns was installed on top of the building to warn the neighborhood of eviction threats.

And when the sheriff finally delivered the eviction notice, a member of the cafe's bike gang, the Blind Lizards, knew exactly what to do with it.

- [Gang Member] Oh, there's mustard in here, why is that?

- Now, more than ever before, the community and the corporation are at each other's throats.

The corporation is on the verge of bankruptcy, and yet the community is still afraid that it will be railroaded out of existence, because if the corporation fails, the federal government will take over.

And why?

Because for all the private capital and all the private property involved in this big venture, this is all part of federal urban renewal.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] As the rent strikes escalated, the community challenged the developer's environmental impact statement in court and won by arguing that high rise living is socially and ecologically unsustainable.

- Cedar-Riverside's new town in town project has had its problems since the day it started in 1968.

It's been phased- - [Narrator] What once appeared as destiny now seemed in retrospect to be doomed to failure from the outset.

- [Speaker] We convinced the city that the urban renewal plan needed to be completely rewritten.

And so we rewrote it.

- [Speaker] The resistance had succeeded.

And so the community union, which had formed the Community Development Corporation, had replaced the Cedar-Riverside associates as the developer of the neighborhood.

That was our starting point is sitting down in the neighborhood committees, literally with maps and moving wooden houses around, on planning what that block would look like, which houses could be rehabbed, which needed to be replaced, what they'd be replaced with, and then would be organized into housing cooperatives.

(soft music) - [Narrator] At the community groundbreaking, activists wield hammers and shovels, tools that had become weapons of sabotage in the struggle for the neighborhood's future.

Many in this photo would go on to fight for fair housing the rest of their careers, their victory serving as a model across the city and the country.

This official photograph, taken soon after construction, conveys a reverence for the concrete tower.

There's something beautiful in its skyward aspirations, erecting a new home for humanity.

But what do we make of all this concrete 50 years later?

(soft music) Its stubborn durability has perhaps outlasted any meaning once attributed to it, while time has revealed new texture and complexity in what once appeared monolithic.

Little evidence remains of the unrealized plans for this neighborhood, other than a half-built bridge that has been appropriated by a local bar.

Instead of corporate offices and a luxury hotel, the cafe still stands.

(chairs clattering) (curtain rattling) Also standing are the people who saved it and the rest of the neighborhood from demolition.

Though now it is run for profit and the poster of Marx no longer hangs on the wall, a memory of its radical past persists.

(soft music) The West Bank is surrounded by a city and a world that have largely forgotten the utopian visions that clashed here in the 1970s.

In the distance, luxury high rises under construction seem to mock the lofty ideals the towers once represented.

Brutalism's concrete fell out of fashion long ago, along with the idea that housing should be built for anything other than profit.

(dramatic music) In the past decades, Cedar-Riverside has become home to thousands seeking refuge from distant wars, primarily in East Africa.

- [Weli] As you know that Minnesota has the largest Somali community, they all like to come here because they feel like it's a little more traditional.

This is where, you know, you start your life.

(Weli speaking foreign language) My name is Weli Hassan.

I'm the Executive Director of Riverside Plaza Tenants Association.

It gives them an opportunity because they have services that Riverside Plaza gives them, childcare centers there is for the mothers.

Jobs are available.

There's negative things about this area.

It's a crack stack or concrete jungle or things like that.

But our residents don't feel that way.

(soft music) Those who became state officials, they will tell you I started here.

So it is a place where everybody started.

(soft music) - [Abdur] My legal name is Abdur Zach Omar, I'm better known as Cisco.

I'm a cinematographer, community organizer, a hip hop artist.

I'm a father, a husband.

I moved here back in 2006, 2005 as a refugee.

I've lived in this neighborhood pretty much my whole life.

This community has meant to me everything really is like, I'm not a big fan of Minnesota, but Cedar-Riverside is home to me.

These are shots that I took of this community, Cedar-Riverside, my house and friends' houses.

The demand for Cedar-Riverside for their subsidized apartments is ridiculously high.

The wait times could take like 10 years or so.

Here in United States, everybody's trying to just keep a roof over their head, food on the table, and kind of independent.

And this is where you get the sense of community.

Out of any states, any community that I've been to, everybody knows everybody, they're connected.

They help one another in times of crisis and everywhere.

So I think people that you don't even know, you become family with instantly here.

My kids growing up here means everything to me.

My kids are, especially my son.

He's a part of this neighborhood.

Everybody who are my friends, everyone, the whole community's, uncle, aunties, and grandmas.

There are over 200 businesses in this neighborhood, and all are owned by East African or residents of Cedar-Riverside.

Come and check it out.

Don't listen to the media, and anybody who's outside of the community, what they say about our neighborhood.

This is a beautiful community, just like any other, if not better.

So I'd say come and see it for yourself.

The towers are a symbol for this community.

It's our picture.

(soft music continues) (soft music continues)