A Call For Justice
Just two weeks ago, a Minneapolis man was murdered by one of our city’s police officers. This is unequivocally unacceptable. Our city continues to seek justice for George Floyd at every possible level, and we are proud of you for that. We have seen your pain and heard your calls for us to step up in any way possible to help find justice.
While we are not a community organizing or political platform (and there are plenty of Black-led organizations that we should be following instead), there is one thing we know how to do: brew beer and spend time with our amazing patrons. So, we will use those two things to do our part. This is only the beginning, but we all have to start somewhere.
Here is an excerpt from a post we recently shared on our social media platforms:
While our city is still demanding justice for George Floyd and our staff is still carefully implementing procedures to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the state is allowing us to open our doors to you. Even after small businesses have been devastated by the economic downturn following the pandemic and our communities devastated by ongoing injustices and murder, our doors remain open to you.
It does not feel right to celebrate that we can pour you a beer again, but it does feel right to commune. Some of the best conversations and community organizing are done over a beer. Heavy hearts can be lightened in a shared space. We encourage you to use our tables for these purposes. Our community is running a marathon, not just a sprint, and that requires us to continue having conversations and hatching plans for years to come.
We never intend to profit or virtue signal at the cost of Black lives, and it’s nearly impossible to share our values as a business without doing so. While we cannot contribute financially to Black-led nonprofits at this time, we wholly plan to do so once we get our feet back under us after the pandemic passes (and we would gladly take our community's recommendations on this front). Right now, we encourage you to donate. Let your donation fund be greater than ever before. If you can afford a beer from us, you can donate too.
Our Plan
We have been racking our brains to find ways to encourage you to demand justice for George Floyd and dismantle systemic racism—and to do the same for ourselves. Financially we simply aren’t in a position to make a large donation at this time, which feels like the best way for us to demonstrate our solidarity. Then, a few great things happened.
First, artist Rob Monte reached out and offered his talents to help fundraise. A while back, Monte made a fantastic drawing of our taproom, and he wanted to offer that gift up as a way to generate funds for a non-profit of our choice. We will be selling prints of his drawing for $15 each, all of which will be donated to the Northside Funders Group and the West Broadway Coalition to support Northside businesses that have been impacted by COVID-19 and the recent uprising. Monte’s art is particularly special to us right now after months of not being able to welcome you inside our taproom. We thank him for finding a way to be of service to our community.
Monte’s art will be available to the public in our online store or for in-person purchase. Keep an eye on our social media channels for the release.
Then, we found a few specialty barrel aged beers that we had tucked away for our anniversary party this year. Since the party didn’t happen, we now have a handful of 11 Wells Rye Whiskey barrels filled with our MN Rice: Wild Rice Porter and our Russian Imperial Stout. With the public health crisis, these barrels were briefly forgotten. Now, we are packaging 300 bottles combined of these two beers, so we can release them to you this week. Each bottle will cost $20, and we will donate $5 from each sale to the Northside Funders Group and the West Broadway Coalition to support Northside businesses that have been impacted by COVID-19 and the recent uprising.
These beers will be available to the public in our online store or for in-person purchase. Keep an eye on our social media channels for the release date. These beers will not be available on tap.
Finally, we are thrilled to participate in the Black Is Beautiful beer initiative, which is “a collaborative effort amongst the brewing community and its customers, in an attempt to bring awareness to the injustices that many people of color face daily.” We will be brewing this beer as soon as we can get the ingredients and work it into our existing brew schedule. Upon its release, we will donate 100% of the proceeds to the the Diversity In Brewing scholarship at Dakota County Technical College (note, we had originally intended to donate to Black Visions Collective but have since learned that they have asked folks to donate to other ventures due to their great influx in funding). You can learn more about the Black Is Beautiful beer initiative here.
These monetary donations are just the beginning of the work we all need to do. We will continue to find ways to show up and do the work we need in order to build a more just Minnesota. We hope you will continue to hold us accountable going forward.
