Along the streets of Minneapolis, there are blue and green ribbons everywhere you look. The ribbons, which represent the school colors of Annunciation Catholic School, are tied around trees, lamp posts, fences, and bike racks.
The ribbons are a show of support for the victims of the deadly Aug. 27, 2025 shooting at Annunciation and the broader community.
Marcia Haugstad, a Diamond Lake resident and South High graduate, described the ribbons as a “visible hug” for the affected families. “If you can’t go up and give them a hug, we want them to know we’re thinking about them,” she said.
In the wake of the tragedy, she and her 16-year-old daughter, Bella (a student at Southwest High School), have been making the ribbons to distribute throughout the neighborhoods surrounding the school. Their neighbor has family members who attend Annunciation School.
“One thing that I heard a lot of was people just didn’t know what to do or how they could support or how they could express their emotion,” Haugstad said. “This was a small way, but a way they could show that your whole community was embracing you. We all recognize the tragedy that this is.”
The duo began making the ribbons the night of the shooting after seeing another neighbor tie something similar around a tree in their yard. They decided to do the same, buying plastic tablecloths from the nearby Dollar Tree and cutting them up into strips. They gave away the leftover ribbons to friends and neighbors after posting about them in several local Facebook groups. They have not stopped making ribbons since.
“My daughter and I just kept cutting and people kept coming to our front yard to pick them up,” Haugstad said. “For at least a solid week, we were outside every day, cutting ribbons. People were coming and picking them up and sharing their stories and talking with one another about the impact [the Annunciation shooting] had on them.”
Haugstad said a teacher at Annunciation came with her son, who was a student there, and husband to pick up ribbons, and the next day they came back with additional tablecloths to help make more ribbons.
“She lives right in the neighborhood and she just said, ‘I can’t tell you how much this has meant to us’,” Haugstad said. “I think she was really overwhelmed with the support that the community was showing by even something as little as tying a ribbon under their tree.”
Haugstad estimates she has purchased around 500 tablecloths in the two weeks since the mass shooting. She and her daughter cut and distributed so many ribbons that they have depleted the inventory of blue and green plastic tablecloths in the immediate area. Haugstad said they made trips out to stores in the suburbs and even traveled as far as Rochester to purchase more supplies.
The Haugstads are far from the only ones making ribbons. Over in Linden Hills, Katie Kummer and her family have been doing the same.
One of her sons, now a ninth grader, graduated from Annunciation last year, and her children have many friends in the neighborhood who currently attend Annunciation. The family made green and blue ribbons at Washburn Library in the days after the mass shooting and have continued on their own in the weeks since.
With the ribbons, Kummer and her neighbors have been trying to create what they are calling an “Avenue of Angels” throughout southwest Minneapolis.
“When I see so many ribbons throughout our community, I see us coming together and agreeing that we can and should do something about this,” said Kummer. “It creates a visible solidarity in our community.”
The first step
For Haugstad and many others in the community, tying ribbons around their trees was only the first step towards taking action to prevent future mass shootings like the one at Annunciation.
Haugstad said for her, the ribbons “serve as a reminder of ‘OK now that I’ve done this, what is my next level of commitment or action that I can take to make sure this doesn’t happen again?’”
Haugstad has already signed up to volunteer with Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit that works towards gun violence prevention. This past weekend, Kummer and her family gathered with others at a local brewery to write postcards to legislators urging stricter gun control laws.
“This event just hits so close to home for so many of us in our community,” said Kummer. “As the initial shock continues to wear off, I think many of us in the community are trying to figure out where do we fill in, where do we stand in, where do we stand up?”
Haugstad said she and her daughter will keep cutting ribbons until there is no longer a demand for them. She believes that no one should be afraid to go to school, and that teachers shouldn’t feel like they’re on the front lines.
As for how long she plans to leave the ribbons up, Haugstad said she is committed to leaving the ribbons up “until something does change, for however long it takes.”
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