Telling The Story of The Roof Depot

When the city of Minneapolis took over the Roof Depot warehouse in the East Phillips neighborhood—a neighborhood with a large Black, Latino, and Indigenous population—they thought they’d found a new centralized hub for their fleet of vehicles to park and refuel. But neighborhood residents weren’t about to let this abandoned industrial building be demolished—and with it the unleashing of arsenic and other toxins into the surrounding community.

“The odds were extremely stacked against us,” said Erick Boustead. He’s part of the East Phillips Neighborhood Institute, a group that formed nearly ten years ago to put forward an alternative vision for the site. Their goal was to create a community hub that included an indoor urban farm, commercial space, affordable housing, rooftop solar and other community amenities—all without demolishing the building. “We’re trying to do this impossible thing,” Boustead said, “and break from this cycle of pollution.”

After years of raising awareness and trying to rally support for the cause, word of this brewing conflict surrounding the Roof Depot site began to spread. So, in the fall of 2022, a small group within the organization recognized that they needed to better coordinate their message to reach more people across more mediums. “Social media was kind of like the bubble or echo chamber, which is totally necessary for organizing and mobilizing,” Boustead said, who joined EPNI a little over a year ago. “But to influence the narrative we realized we needed that publicity.” They formed a grassroots communications team to try and simplify EPNI’s overall message while allowing space for others to easily promote their cause.

The videos seen on their social media feeds dating back to November of 2022 show the evolution in both style and storytelling. One of their early videos succinctly details a lot of background information on the project—hoping to quickly introduce newcomers to the mission—while centering emotional moments from when the community interrupted a City Council meeting.

“That first video I worked on felt special,” said Devon Cupery, who edited the piece using cell phone video and photos from Climate Justice Committee and Sierra Club. Cupery joined EPNI’s communications team soon after it was formed. “It seemed like people really wanted a video that could summarize what was happening and show the emotional content.”

Cupery got interested in this building and the neighboring industrial facilities when she would bike past daily. “They’d dump this toxic pollution right onto the bike path,” Cupery said. “I would hold my breath while biking by.”

Growing and strengthening their Storytelling

Other artists were starting to take notice and post their own versions of similar stories. Akičita Suŋka-Wakaŋ Ska with the publication Unicorn Riot captured scenes from another city hall meeting as well as a protest outside of Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey’s house. “When covering this story about the Roof Depot I felt this responsibility to inspire and educate through putting my microphone in the face of those directly effected,” Ska said. “And challenging myself to create something digestible for those coming in with zero knowledge.”

When talking about the video, it was the words and emotions of East Phillips resident Nicole Perez that moved Ska most. “She told everyone about the environmental health issues ongoing in East Phillips, and that the demolition would further increase the strife the community is going through, and you could tell this idea of demolition really scared her.”

Other organizations and organizers, in particular Minneapolis-based artist Ricardo Levins Morales, started to share their experience and offer advice about how EPNI could better engage a larger audience.

The team at EPNI also started to take liberties with their voice and found ways to inject some humor while still keeping the focus on their main message: the city wasn’t keeping their promise to East Phillips. “it's very rare as a media maker to have that freedom,” Boustead said, talking about the team’s willingness to experiment more with their videos and content.

At one of their communications meetings, someone brought up Mayor Frey’s 2018 inauguration speech, saying his words were contradictory to how he was approaching the Roof Depot site. It led Boustead to create a video that capitalized on the popular “How it started/How it’s going” meme, where Frey’s words were juxtaposed against the drum group Hoka-Hey leading an action to block the city council from moving forward with demolition plans.

While taking a more tongue-in-cheek approach, the video still stuck to EPNI’s core message: taking the mayor’s own pledge to create a cleaner, safer environment for marginalized communities and using it against him. “That was a very clear representation of how things were going,” Boustead said. “The city is saying these nice words, but then in the meetings and the decisions that were being made at city hall, we’re just pushing more pollution onto the neighborhood and sacrificing that neighborhood for other areas.”

For the communications team, it was less important for their videos to be explicit in their agenda or mission. “We’re trying to show and illuminate the contradiction,” Boustead said, while allowing the audience to come to their own conclusions.

The actions and protests around the site were getting larger and the people turning their cameras toward the cause grew as well. EPNI found ways to include their voice on their media channels. While not officially affiliated with EPNI, community member Aaron Johnson filmed a Roof Depot march in the spring of 2023, which became a video the team shared on their own social media feeds.

“I grew up in South Minneapolis in the 80s and 90s,” Johnson said. “I remember the Stop 55 occupation during my high school years and this felt like an extension of that.” The video captured a more activist, boots-on-the-ground rawness that continued to push EPNI’s storytelling in new directions.

The need to explain their mission began to recede as more media organizations picked up on the story. It allowed more freedom for different storytelling modes. On February 24, the team posted a video that again featured Nicole Perez, but in this one she struck a more solemn tone than what we previously saw inside the council chambers. Here she talked about her granddaughter with asthma. It’s one long take that’s solely focused on her for the entire first half of the video.

“I feel like my work's most powerful when I’m centering voices of people who are impacted by injustice,” said Cupery, the director of the piece. “And so oftentimes I would just try to really hone in on those moments that felt really poignant.”

A Shift in the Political Winds

Around the same time EPNI’s communication work began in earnest, the DFL took control of the Minnesota state government. It wasn’t clear how important that election would become for EPNI and the fate of the Roof Depot site until months later.

In early spring of 2023, the city’s stance on the property began to soften, and they seemed willing to discuss a sale. However, that amount of money would require outside help, which was something that some state legislators seemed willing to assist with. All of a sudden EPNI needed to pivot their messaging to a much different audience in a higher political office.

“It got to a point where we kind of had to tighten things up,” Boustead said. The team refreshed the website and tried to tighten up their messaging, while trying to remain true to their cause. “How do you balance that grassroots esthetic- Cause one thing we didn't want, one thing we wanted to avoid was just turning into a more like safe sort of washed down image.” 

The final videos leading up to a floor vote reflect a more refined, polished look, while still maintaining a raw, emotional appeal at their core. 

Against all odds—and with financial support from the state—the city agreed to sell the property to EPNI. And with it comes yet another shift in the mission of their communications team. They have until Sept 8th to secure the $3.7 million for their share of the down payment, and new work is starting to help spread that word. “What is the meaning of this next phase?” Cupery said, reflecting on the communications team’s new challenge. “Now that we've had this victory, how do we really carry out this vision and continue to build and grow the movement and create meaning around that?”

But the team is maturing in other ways too. Instead of relying on volunteer hours and contributions, they’re working to secure a more permanent funding source to appropriately pay those that help shape the messaging. “Equity issues come into play,” Boustead said. “It shouldn't be like everyone's volunteering.” By starting to pay for videography and editing work, they’re hoping to better reflect their own values and provide meaningful opportunities to community members that have already sacrificed plenty.

Story by: Tom Schmidt

Check out more stories from our Summer 2023 issue, “The Collective.”