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Genevieve Hansen, a Minneapolis firefighter and EMT who was off-duty and a passerby at the scene where Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck, broke down recalling how police prevented her from administering medical care to the dying man.

“The officers didn’t let me into the scene” even after she identified herself as a Minneapolis firefighter, Hansen said at Chauvin’s murder trial Tuesday. “In my memory, I offered to walk them through it, or told them, if he doesn’t have a pulse, you need to start compressions, and that wasn’t done either.”

Hansen testified that another officer at the scene, Tou Thao, “said something along the lines of, ‘If you really are a Minneapolis firefight, you would know better than to get involved.”

“There was a man being killed,” Hansen said later in her testimony. “Had I had access to a call similar to that, I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities, and this human was denied that right.”

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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