MINNEAPOLIMEDIA EDITORIAL | Blue and Green Ribbons: A Call for Unity Beyond Tragedy

MINNEAPOLIMEDIA EDITORIAL | Blue and Green Ribbons: A Call for Unity Beyond Tragedy

In south Minneapolis, grief now hangs from the branches of neighborhood trees. Strips of blue and green ribbon ripple in the September breeze, each tied by hands that trembled with sorrow but refused to be paralyzed by despair. They are the colors of Annunciation Catholic School, where two children were killed and several others wounded in the horrifying August 2025 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church.

The ribbons are not decoration. They are not simply fabric. They are love materialized, anguish expressed, solidarity stitched together by a community in mourning. Each knot holds a prayer. Each flutter whispers the names of children whose lives should have been filled with learning, laughter, and the promise of futures we will never see.

The streets leading to the church have been transformed into what residents call an “Avenue of Angels.” For neighbors and passersby, the sight is at once heart-wrenching and inspiring. Thousands of ribbons — cut by volunteers in libraries and community centers, made from donated tablecloths and fabric scraps, tied by parents, children, and strangers — together form a living memorial. They mark not only the depth of a community’s loss, but also its refusal to surrender to hate and hopelessness.

A Local Tragedy, A National Reckoning

What happened at Annunciation is not an isolated event. It is part of a grim pattern that stretches from coast to coast, a litany of violence that Americans have become all too familiar with. Churches, schools, supermarkets, concert venues — spaces once defined by safety and belonging have become vulnerable, even fragile.

Every time it happens, we ask: Why? Why here? Why them? Why again?

There are no easy answers. But there is one certainty: violence cannot and must not become America’s default language of pain, anger, or division. We dishonor the memory of Annunciation’s children if we allow ourselves to become numb, if we shrug at yet another shooting, if we retreat into political trenches while families bury their sons and daughters.

This tragedy calls us to action — not just as Minnesotans, but as Americans.

Choosing Unity Over Division

The blue and green ribbons are more than memorials. They are moral testaments. They ask us whether we are willing to set aside the toxic divisions that have corroded our public life. They ask whether we can stop seeing each other as enemies, stop treating disagreement as war, and start treating one another as neighbors again.

For too long, America has flirted with the dangerous illusion that violence or polarization can resolve our deepest differences. But violence solves nothing. It leaves empty chairs at dinner tables, empty desks in classrooms, and unfillable holes in families and communities.

What we need is not more rhetoric that pits citizen against citizen, but a renewed commitment to shared humanity. Our neighbors’ safety is our safety. Their grief is our grief. Their healing must be our collective responsibility.

The Work Before Us

Unity is not an abstraction. It is work. It is refusing to let anger curdle into hate. It is expanding access to mental health care so that those who are struggling do not spiral into despair. It is equipping communities with resources to intervene before violence erupts. It is standing together across faiths, races, and political lines to declare, in one voice, that every child’s life is sacred and irreplaceable.

In Minneapolis, that work has already begun. Volunteers gathered at Washburn Library to cut ribbons. Families donated supplies. Strangers tied memorials to trees, choosing to show up, to do something, however small, to say: You are not alone. We are in this together.

That simple act — taking fabric in hand, tying it to a branch — carries with it a lesson for the rest of us. Healing begins when ordinary people act with extraordinary compassion. Progress begins when we decide that even in the face of immense grief, we will not retreat into isolation or bitterness.

Beyond the Ribbons

But the ribbons, as moving as they are, cannot be where this ends. They should be where it begins.

Let them remind us of what is at stake when we fail to address violence at its roots. Let them call us to reach out to neighbors who are hurting. Let them drive us to insist on accountability from leaders who too often choose posturing over problem-solving. Let them stand as an enduring symbol that we can respond to horror not with hatred, but with hope.

The Avenue of Angels in Minneapolis is both a memorial and a mirror. It reflects who we are in our best moments — compassionate, united, resilient. But it also reflects what we could become, if we choose to let tragedies teach us instead of divide us further.

The children of Annunciation deserve more than our sympathy. They deserve a nation courageous enough to change.

In the end, those blue and green ribbons should not only mark what we have lost. They should signal what we can still build: a country where unity prevails over division, compassion over cruelty, and life over violence.

MinneapoliMedia