Healing Is Spatial: The Ground Beneath Our Feet and the Fight for Public Belonging

Pulled from MN Crime

Renee Good was murdered while exercising her constitutional right to protest, in our most common public space–a city street. She had the right to be heard, to occupy that space and to protect her community. Renee was continuing the history of protesting injustice in America from Selma, to Standing Rock, to George Floyd Square. Her act put her in direct confrontation with systems of power that have moved beyond fairness and justice to an immoral crusade to determine who can be present and who must be silent. The implementers of this failed policy do not own all the space, they attempt to control it through the power of violence. All Renee had in that moment was her voice and the ground beneath her feet, and even that was deemed too much. Her death forces us to confront how power continues to shape space in America, will space be liberating or oppressive.

Most people think of space as the tangible things we create–the buildings, parks, and schools–not as the all encompassing environment that we exist in and the interconnectedness of it all. America has a long history of displacing people, of treating land as an asset, something to be monetized rather than held as sacred, and of determining who has the right to decide who gets to occupy space. These systems are structural and they shape the very ground we walk on.

This legacy continues to play out across our city, country, and the world. The trauma of that affects us all collectively. It’s emotional, raw, and visceral. It is rippling outward into businesses, education spaces, hospitals, and the daily act of being out in community. We are all feeling on edge, torn apart, and deeply impacted.

Everyone has the right to be, thrive, express, and connect. That is the essence of spatial justice articulated so well by Kenny Bailey from the Design Studio for Social Intervention, an organization that collaborates with communities, artists, and social justice practitioners to rebuild spaces to be more just and vibrant. As we move through this moment, we have to consider what it means to tend to the spaces we inhabit right now. Trauma settles into streets, thresholds, gathering places, and it asks us to acknowledge the pain held within them. Healing cannot be abstract or distant. It requires practices that help communities breathe again, practices that make people feel considered in the present moment. Healing is a spatial act as much as an emotional one, shaped through how we hold one another, how we care for the places touched by harm, and how we cultivate environments where people feel seen.

As difficult as it is to visualize right now in the Twin Cities, The Center sees the work ahead as creating spaces that support collective repair. Not only attending to the urgent need for safety, care, and connection, but also shaping a new vision for America itself. A vision where occupying space is not a risk, where protest does not cost a life, and where power is not defined by who holds the weapons but by how well we protect one another’s right to exist.

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