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Dear Mayor Jacob Frey,
Three weeks ago, our 6-year-old picked up a discarded syringe on a city sidewalk in front of our home and pricked his thumb with the dirty needle. His thumb bled and swelled. His throat tightened. We rushed to Children’s Minnesota, our minds racing with fears of fentanyl, Hepatitis and HIV.
No child should ever be diagnosed with “exposure to body fluids by contaminated hypodermic needle stick.” Yet in our south Minneapolis neighborhood, our children routinely find dirty needles next to their sidewalk chalk. That’s a serious problem. And it represents a serious failure by you, Mayor Frey.
For more than seven years, you have failed our neighborhood by refusing to meaningfully address the poverty, drug epidemic and resulting encampments that exist in our community. Because of your unwillingness to provide health, sanitation and trash services to our unhoused neighbors, we encounter unsafe drug use, uncapped needles, unsanitary conditions, break-ins and theft daily.
We no longer take the Lake and 31st exit on I-35W south, afraid of stray bullets that pierce our neighbors’ cars and bodies. We don’t walk to the closest convenience stores or gas stations, terrified of stepping over syringes and human beings sprawled on our sidewalks. Instead, we warn our children about overdoses, carjackings and gun violence that they witness in our front yards. We zip-tie sharps containers to our fences, invest in trash pickers and join together to clean up our neighborhood sidewalks and streets. You have been conspicuously absent from our community efforts.
Your preferred method of dealing with these uncomfortable and inconvenient truths — encampment sweeps — does not work for us or for our unhoused neighbors. We are deeply harmed by the violence you cause by evicting people who do not have their basic needs met. When our 6-year-old pricked his thumb, it happened just one day after your sweeps cleared out an encampment by the Midtown Greenway. More recent sweeps led to even more needles in the same spaces where our children ride bikes, play basketball and build fairy houses. That is unacceptable.
