(Image: Lauren Walker / Truthout; Hole in Fence via Shutterstock; EDITED: LW / TO)Nekima Levy-Pounds watched the scenes of officers slaying unarmed Black men replayed, one after another, in major cities across the United States, including New York, Charleston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Cincinnati. During all of them, she clung onto one hope: to never see the same stories unfold in Minneapolis, where she raises her 11-year-old son, heads the local NAACP and participates in the local Black Lives Matter movement.

However, it's clear that Minneapolis, too, is home to the kind of police violence that has inspired protests from Ferguson to Baltimore and led to the birth of Black Lives Matter, a national racial justice movement fighting against police brutality. Recently, the city and local protesters have become a focal point in the national racial justice movement.