‘Letter to the Editor’ Archives
Letter to the community: Pesticide pollution is perplexing: Arsenic 1938 to 2019
The StarTribune article entitled “Superfund Site Mostly Clean,” Aug. 1, 2019, B1, page 1, is incomplete and leaves questions unanswered. For example, reporting that there are only nine property owners who refused soil testing does not tell the whole story.Though the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is tracking this, the number of properties refusing testing puts the onus or blame on the property owners as if they are the only problem remaining. When the EPA tested a total of 472 yards, it refused to test outside a three-quarter mile radius of the original site of contamination at 28th and Hiawatha. This three-quarter mile parameter limits our knowledge of how far out arsenic soil contamination extends. So, we do not have a true measure of how far out and how many properties are still contaminated with arsenic. In addition, the StarTribune article refers to East Phillips alone, as if the wind only blew [...]
Letter to the community: Don”™t go down the path of ugliness
I am a former 13-year resident of Phillips, during which time I was an activist and sometime-contributor to the Alley. When I saw “The Rand Report” I thought: Another interesting column. On reading further, I was saddened. The piece is a classic rant, full of angry statements backed up by unsubstantiated or non-existent evidence. (Sound familiar these days?) For example: “The Irish, as indentured servants, were worked to death with greater frequency than slaves.” Since at the time, Africans were counted as 4/5 of a person, it would be hard to calculate this even if there were any figures.  I have all good feeling for Irish people and Irish culture, and know they were badly mistreated by people who had immigrated to America before them, but were there any Irish chattel slaves (meaning that they and their offspring were property of the master)? Any Irish-aimed Jim Crow laws? Any laws written to discriminate against the Irish in banking, [...]
Commentary: Why aren”™t city officials listening to residents?
By Janet skidmore I try to be a good citizen. I volunteer as a block club leader and as a neighborhood safety patrol member. I am a long time reserve teacher in the Minneapolis Public Schools. I have been rehabbing a beautiful 100 year old home in south Minneapolis not to flip it, but to live in it myself and restore its beauty for the sake of preservation. I provide really affordable housing for 3 women in my own home. I have a block club with an email list of over 40 people, plus I am active on Nextdoor, where I hear the opinions of many of my neighbors in the Central neighborhood of Minneapolis. I attend community meetings when I can, even the ones that are in the middle of the day, which precludes me taking a substitute teaching job that day, resulting in a day”™s loss of income. I would think that the city of Minneapolis would appreciate a resident like me and want to keep me living here. I can show you numerous emails representing [...]
