Readers Write: Stolen cars, rideshare wages, Gaza, Jimmy Carter

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The Minneapolis City Council wants to recall Kias and Hyundais (front page, Feb. 23). This is meaningless and beyond the council’s authority. I have a 2022 Hyundai, readily and fully insured by a reputable agency. Is the council going to replace my vehicle? Will an entourage travel to Seoul to petition the company on my behalf? Retail merchants across the city experience shoplifting that threatens the viability of the largest companies. Will the council shutter these enterprises?

Rather than fully fund and incentivize law enforcement, certain council members continue in their attempt to deflect attention from their unwillingness to offer real solutions.

Dan Gunderson, Minneapolis

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I am amazed at the vacuous and ineffective strategy proposed by the City Council to recall Hyundais and Kias. What should shock Council Member Elliott Payne is not the engineering failure of the vehicles but the devastating impact on the city’s citizens he is sworn to serve. Absent from the discussion is how to bring to account and prevent those who are perpetrating these crimes. That is where the council’s energy should be directed.

Emanuel Gaziano, Minneapolis

I am excited to see the City Council in my city of Minneapolis working hard to ensure rideshare drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft are treated fairly and paid a wage that allows them to provide for themselves and their families. As the president of SEIU Local 26, a union of majority immigrants who work as janitors, security officers and more, I know many of our members or their families have done or currently do this work. The stories about the low wages and lack of respect these workers are facing, all in service of boosting CEO pay and corporate profits, should make all of us angry. It is clear that action is needed and also clear at this point that the corporations won’t do it without being pushed. That’s why my union of 8,000 Minnesotans is in support of politicians at the city and state level raising the per-minute/per-mile wages of these workers to a point where they aren’t scrambling to make ends meet while they do this important work.

I hope the City Council passes the wage floor they are working on as a first step, and I look forward to the state also acting to show that in Minnesota we believe all workers — no matter our job, race or ZIP code — deserve fair wages and respect.

Greg Nammacher, Minneapolis

I am saddened by the Biden administration’s and the United States’ latest veto of a resolution for a cease-fire in Gaza. The vote was 13-1 for it in the U.N. Security Council, and the United States was the only dissent. This is not merely an embarrassment, to say the least, for the U.S., but also a further weakening of U.S. influence as “defenders,” supposedly, of human rights. The killing of Russian dissidents is wrong, but funding the destruction and mass slaughter in Gaza is good. Is the U.S. veto a feather in Vladimir Putin’s cap?

Steven Smith, Minneapolis

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After over four months of genocide in Gaza with over 28,000 dead — mostly women and children — over 65,000 wounded, many missing, hospitals collapsed, no water or medicine, 1.4 million displaced and facing death, it’s an incredible humanitarian disaster and now President Joe Biden states that Israel’s behavior is “over the top.”

Wow! Thanks, Biden. So what does he do? Cut the funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which has been providing aid to Gaza and refugees since 1949. Continues to supply weapons to Israel and is trying to pass legislation for another $14 billion in unrestricted funds to it. Doesn’t sound like real concern to me. More like supporting the ongoing atrocity.

What is now needed more than anything is a permanent cease-fire. For those in the U.S., this is all financed by our tax dollars. We are all complicit.

Barry Riesch, St. Paul

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It’s been over 130 days since Israel started bombing Gaza, and more than 28,000 civilians have been killed, more than half are children, and not a word from this paper’s Editorial Board (except for the encouragement to Mayor Jacob Frey to veto a cease-fire resolution). Hospitals, schools, mosques, churches have been bombed and destroyed, and not a word. Israel cut off the water and stopped food from going in, literally starving to death the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, and not a word. South Africa screamed to the world that Israel is committing genocide, and not a word.

People always ask if the world knew when 6 million were being slaughtered in Europe by their neighbors, and the answer is always yes. Everyone had an excuse and justification for not saying anything or doing anything. I wonder what this Editorial Board’s excuse is. What will they tell their grandkids when they ask, “This happened on your watch; what did you do?” When Palestinian mothers write the name of their children on their forearms so their body parts can be identified when Israeli bombs blow them to pieces, and this board still says little, I don’t question its competency, I question the very core of its humanity.

Mazen Halabi, Champlin

A huge thank-you for the recent article celebrating former President Jimmy Carter’s 99th birthday and a year spent in hospice care (”The long goodbye: Jimmy Carter finishes one year in hospice,” Feb. 19). Honors for this great and humble man should be reflected in each and every American, and around the world.

In 2010, I was given the privilege of working a couple of days in St. Paul on the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Worldwide Habitat for Humanity project to provide affordable housing for needy families (and I still wear the T-shirt proudly). Midmorning on one of the days, our crew was told to stop working and to sit down in front of our house because Mr. Carter was touring the work sites. Everyone was informed that we could not stand up, approach or touch the president or the Secret Service would “take you down.”

When he, Walter Mondale and Chris Coleman eventually got to our site, Carter immediately started glad-handing folks and thanking us for our service while the Secret Service agents stood back and rolled their eyes. At a combined crew luncheon that noon, he was the keynote speaker.

Part of his message that I remember most was him saying that he understood well the problem of housing affordability, stating that it had taken he and Rosalynn several years after he got out of the Navy following World War II to save up enough to afford their little house on a peanut farm “that you may have heard about.”

He continued by saying that farm was their only home — well, there was one other house they lived in that was colored white, “but I guess you could call that one a loaner.”

This great, kind and self-effacing man should be declared a national treasure and celebrated for his grace, wit, courage, fortitude and style. Wishing there were more like him in the political arena at this time.

Paul Schultz, Ham Lake