Clyde Bellecourt, “Keith Ellison, crisis in Phillips! Join us in mutual pursuit of justice!”

March 9, 2020

Dear Attorney General Keith Ellison,

Thank you for your attention to this crisis in our Community. East Phillips, as you know, is the most diverse neighborhood in all of Minneapolis. It is also the poorest on the South Side and the most overburdened with pollution from arsenic, lead, and airborne pollution from freeways, cars, and trucks as well as industrial pollution from a foundry and an asphalt plant. All of this is well documented, and results in more emergency room visits from asthma, more cases of children with lead poisoning, and more incidences of other ailments such as heart disease that are also linked to pollutants in the air.

When the 230,000 square foot Sears Warehouse occupied by Roof Depot Co. came up for sale, the Neighborhood; led by Little Earth of United Tribes, Tamales y Bicycletas, Somali Chemical Awareness, Women”™s Environmental Institute, East Phillips Improvement Coalition, and others drew up a plan that would create an Indoor Urban Farm with “green” jobs and job training, a community commercial kitchen, an all nations World Café and Market, a bike repair and assembly facility right on the Midtown Greenway in our own East Phillips Neighborhood.… Read the rest “Clyde Bellecourt, “Keith Ellison, crisis in Phillips! Join us in mutual pursuit of justice!””