Readers Write: Protests, Minneapolis public safety, unemployment support,

The Sept. 6 front-page article "Lack of civility stains our politics, protests" equates peaceful protests at officials' homes with armed protests. A nonviolent protest at an official's home may indeed be viewed as impolite. But to see it as anything similar to the very real threat of violence from an armed protest is absurd.

Armed protests can never be considered nonviolent — there is always the threat that someone will be hurt or killed. Armed protests are an indication we're becoming an authoritarian state — when guns are used to influence lawmakers, instead of words, instead of nonviolent protests.

Armed protests are an example of domestic terrorism. Guns are meant to intimidate, to frighten the opposition. The Legislature in Michigan canceled its session because an armed protest had been preceded by death threats to the governor.

Reporting that equates armed protests with noisy protests at someone's home normalizes armed protests. Until Donald Trump's presidency, there was nothing normal about armed protests in the United States. Please do not downplay the impact of armed protests on our fragile democracy or equate them with nonviolent protests.

I love how a Sept. 6 letter writer ("Not really transmitting 'balance' ") characterizes Black Visions/Reclaim the Block, which sponsored the park event at which City Council members pledged to rethink Minneapolis public safety, as a "special-interest group" opposed to "hundreds of thousands of Minneapolis residents." Obviously Black people are not a monolith, but to imply that Black residents who favor a new vision of public safety are not real Minneapolitans is ridiculous and offensive. And what about the thousands of people (of all colors) who also marched, chanted, donated and called for a different model — are we some small lobbying group not worthy of notice?

The letter writer argues that expectations of living safely in Minneapolis are a core part of the compact between the city and its residents, and yet in the status quo thousands of Black and Brown residents are allowed no such expectation — even from those ostensibly there to ensure it. Anyone who wants Minneapolis to return to business as usual must acknowledge that they're OK with their own comfort and safety resting on the continued harassment, inequitable arrest, abuse and killings of Black and Brown Minneapolitans by the city's Police Department.

No cosmetic police "reform" is going to change Minneapolis' deep racial disparities in education, housing and income — and the way MPD has been used to enforce them. Perhaps the letter can reserve some of the scorn he volleys at City Council President Lisa Bender for the decades of public policy that created those disparities. Perhaps he can refocus just a bit of his anger back at MPD, which as far as I can see is now acting completely out of the control of any elected official, not to mention their "chief." (See the ProPublica article "What Can Mayors Do When the Police Stop Doing Their Jobs?")

I was stunned to read that in a new Trump executive order citizens earning less than $100 per week in unemployment support are disqualified from receiving the $300 unemployment boost going to those earning more ("State's jobless to get added benefits," Aug. 30). No alternatives, no discussion. Just a few lines claiming that the poorest of workers in Minnesota do not qualify for more.

Who makes less than $100 a week in unemployment, you may wonder? I, for one, do. I receive $99 a week. A million other workers in the U.S. also make less than $100 in unemployment. In my case, I am disabled but working part-time in a low-wage job to care for seniors in live-in facilities — you know, caring for other people's aging parents.

I've paid payroll taxes since the age of 14, and was amply employed before COVID-19. Now I am more needy, but thanks to this bizarre and little-known executive order, I am deemed unworthy now of getting the unemployment boost.

What is Minnesota going to do to help? Nothing. There is no plan.

In New Hampshire, the governor raised the state's minimum unemployment benefit to $100 just so that all of that state's citizens can qualify for the unemployment boost. New Hampshire, a conservative state, saw the problem and fixed it. Come on Minnesota, we can do better, too.

Secrecy in the case of weapons development or other real national security threats is understandable. But what possible justification can there be for treating research and development to combat a worldwide pandemic like state secrets? Could it be the profit potential? Barbaric national pride?

If the efforts made to prevent others from learning how to prevent or cure the disease were instead dedicated to international cooperative research, we would certainly be much further ahead than our failed national leadership has gotten us so far. Who, exactly, is being protected by treating vaccine research like the Manhattan Project?

While I was fascinated to read how the Interstate 35W bridge colors are selected ("Curious Minnesota" feature, Sept. 6), I question why it was necessary to state the bridge was recently lit in purple in memory of "Black actor Chadwick Boseman." Would you have said "white actor Harrison Ford"? Doubtful. I can only hope the reporter mistakenly left off "Panther."

I am with Rachel C. Peterson ("For the long, distancing winter ahead," Opinion Exchange, Sept. 6). I, too, am a winter person, but specifically and importantly, a Minnesota winter person. That's because ours is a usable winter. Gets cold and stays cold. More reliably in the past than now, but still cold for months.

Cold you can count on means that ice fishing, cross-country skiing, skating, sledding, snowshoeing and amazingly quiet walks in the woods or on city streets are possible and can be regular activities for at least three and as many as five months of the year. To really appreciate this, try wintering in central Ohio where I grew up. There, it's mostly five months of cold mud and gray skies.