I talked with a friend of mine who lives in Minneapolis yesterday. (He told me, by the way, that whatever we're seeing in the media about the city, it's actually twice as bad there.) The conversation shifted towards the question of why Minneapolis is being picked with this much passion. Some of the factors he mentioned were obvious ones: Walz having run against Trump, the 2020 George Floyd protests that started the wave of protests in an election year, plus this whole fraud case and that sensationalist Somalian childcare thing, etc.
One thought that occurred to me in all that is the fact that Minnesota in general is known as a very white state. White, as in Scandinavian white. Which is very white. As white as white gets. And the state has had a recent influx of Somalians (most of them citizens and green card holders, but who's paying attention to that?), which should in principle should be a source of racial tension. I think they thought Minneapolis was rife for picking, and given that the 2020 protests were still fresh in people's minds, they hoped to fire up racial tensions by emphasizing all the Somalians (and Somalian-Americans) living in the city. Because if the whitest of the white won't feel aggrieved about having to live with black people directly from Africa, who would?
Obviously, that plan backfired. Because Minneapolitans (? -- god, how I hate that English doesn't have regular way to construct "people from place X") are so so white, they actually feel like they belong. They feel entitled to their land, their city, and their rights, and when you come barging into their houses, that's a thing that they don't like (there's definitely a Scandinavian angle there too). So they reacted. Without fear. Because they are white and everything they grew up with has told them that this is their land. And, surprise surprise, they don't mind sharing it with people who don't look like them, people who bring more flavor to their otherwise utterly monotonous all white lives. (Yeah, I know Americans from other ethnic groups live there too, but just go with the stylistic flow here.)
I think that's one of the differentiators: there is not enough racial contrast in Chicago or LA. But there is in Minneapolis. There isn't all that much in Portland OR either, but you know that's a hippy city that is going to have high inertia against being pushed into a race conflict. I guess they didn't realize that out Minnesota nice means the people of Minneapolis didn't have any appetite for that either.
I'm going to stick to this theory of "why Minneapolis?" until it's proven inadequate.
PS: My friend also notes the irony of seeing people with "Don't Tread on Me" flags on their porch talking about how everyone should comply with police orders or else they have what's coming to them. And I'm like, "these are the people who invented the term 'jack-booted thugs' talking about federal agents" Remember Ruby Ridge! Remember Waco!