A viral video from a Minneapolis co working building has cost a business owner his office lease, according to Forbes.
The incident took place Tuesday at the MoZaic East building in uptown Minneapolis, where WeWork operates shared office space. Video posted to Instagram by the Black owners of Top Figure, a Minneapolis social media and branding agency, shows Tom, the managing partner of F2 Group, asking the men whether they were tenants and which floor and office they belonged to while they used the building gym. The men declined to give that information, and Tom said he would call 911.
In the video, Tom is then heard calling a woman named Nicole, who appears to be a building manager, and telling her that he was dealing with people who did not appear to belong there. He was told that the men were tenants. One of the men can be heard saying, “As you can see, we’re dealing with racism here.” The Top Figure team wrote in its Instagram caption that it had rented space in the building for a year and a half.
Forbes reported that Tom’s lease with the building was terminated after the video spread.
Responses
Tom told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he “should have handled it differently” and that it was “not my job to have done anything.” He said he would have reacted the same way if the group had been women, and he said he was not acting out of racism.
Stuart, the CEO of Ackerberg Group, which owns MoZaic East, told the Star Tribune that he made the decision to end the lease while still upset about the video of George Floyd. “My heart hurts,” he said. “This is not how we do business.” The comments were also reported by The Hill.
What Top Figure said
The Top Figure team said in its caption that it was tired of putting up with this kind of treatment day to day and felt it had to bring attention to the situation. According to the post, the video had drawn more than 57,000 likes and over 7,000 comments.
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The incident came days after a widely shared video from New York’s Central Park, where a woman called police on a Black bird watcher after he asked her to leash her dog, and just as Minneapolis was reeling from the death of George Floyd.
