Minneapolis City Council Member Robin Wonsley: Council policy threatens East Phillips residents

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Two weeks ago a majority of the Minneapolis City Council looked a room full of Indigenous East Phillips residents in the eyes and voted to move forward with the new Public Works facility at the Roof Depot site near Hiawatha Avenue.

Once again, Minneapolis is forcing East Phillips to bear the brunt of our city's pollution. The democratic processes that are supposed to protect East Phillips residents have been ignored.

East Phillips residents have been telling the council for eight years that the Hiawatha Expansion project risks further endangering their health. They have shared stories of asthma, heart disease and premature death from pollution — claims backed by the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians and the Twin Cities Medical Society.

In the 2021 public comment period, the city received 1,051 comments opposing the Hiawatha Expansion project and only two in support. The city itself has recognized this "unprecedented" public response.

The population of East Phillips is majority people of color in a city that is majority white. It is one of the most polluted neighborhoods in the entire state. East Phillips did not reach its current levels of pollution by chance. It is the result of years of decisionmaking by the city to put industrial polluters and highways in communities like East Phillips.

The Roof Depot site has high levels of arsenic in the soil, and the proposed Hiawatha Expansion project would expose nearby residents to further pollution from hundreds of public works trucks that would drive in and out every day.

Residents have spent the last eight years developing an alternative proposal. They organized, fundraised and worked with elected officials at multiple levels of government to make it a reality. When East Phillips residents first learned that the Roof Depot site would be for sale, they lined up $5.7 million in funding to develop an indoor farm and community center. Instead, the city swooped in and bought the property first.

At the time, Council Members Andrew Johnson and Alondra Cano alleged the city had threatened to seize the property through eminent domain if Roof Depot's owners sold it to East Phillips residents.

The public health realities should have been enough to halt the Hiawatha Expansion. The public comments should have been enough to stop the Hiawatha Expansion. The neighbors organizing an alternative should have been enough to stop the Hiawatha Expansion. Yet the City Council continues to push the project forward.

The council has the power to stop the Hiawatha Expansion. The council majority's repeated choice to use that power instead to carry out a violent act of land dispossession and environmental racism has continued to fracture any basis for trust or collaboration between the city and the community. The council could peacefully resolve this conflict at any time by actually listening to residents when they tell us what they need.

The protests by East Phillips residents have spurred more of a response from Mayor Jacob Frey and his City Council allies than has the vitriolic hate mail and death threats current and former council members receive. It's inspired more of a response than have the racist, antisemitic and homophobic comments current council members have made about residents — more than the bomb threats that I and several of my colleagues received during our first week in office.

These safety concerns have been ongoing for years. I have experienced them myself and know the anxiety and fear they cause. But why were protests by East Phillips residents the "tipping point" for City Council leadership?

Public comments made by the majority of council members about threats of violence is an attempt to shift the public narrative away from the reality that Minneapolis is choosing to commit a massive act of violence itself — continuing the ongoing poisoning of East Phillips. The calls for increased criminal penalties is retaliatory, targeting residents the City Council has put in an emergency situation. Misrepresenting discomfort as danger delegitimizes the actual safety threats that elected officials face.

Anyone who claims that they believe everyone deserves to be safe cannot also support the Hiawatha Expansion, which risks the safety of East Phillips residents.

Robin Wonsley represents the Second Ward on the Minneapolis City Council.