I don't suppose i have to add this but I will. We are talking about much more than racial profiling here. When you are arrested and taken downtown and the car you were driving was towed to the impound lot, and then you might be held up to 72 hours over a weekend, before you may be cut loose with not so much as an apology, you're looking at a minimum $175 to get your car and if you don't have the money, it just keeps ticking upward til the city is auctioing off your car or selling it to a scrap yard. Now somebody is making money off this deal. I don't care what anyone from the city might say about how "it costs us to keep all these cars". Figure that one out! This is nothing less than economic warfare against what common sense will tell you are those in our society least able to afford it just as towing and ticketing in the winter cars that most likely belong to renters with little option but to park on the street and who would love nothing more than to put a few bucks together to buy a house and settle down with or without their significant other, raise a family, but can never seem to make it happen often because they work for companies like Target who make billions for their shareholders and seek city subsidies not just from Minneapolis but from cities all around only we call it "economic development" and who pride themselves on their 'generosity' while paying office workers and store clerks wages that just position them above or below the poverty line and who fight like hell to keep unions at bay. And we, us who vote, allow our government to tacitly approve of this meanness and greed. What's worse is we practice it ourselves as a city. I love this place for some strange reason but it can be a mighty mean and cold place and I'm not just talking about the weather. There are many issues to confront; airport noise and starting to make plans for a new airport(we should never have stopped the process but there was no strong voices to carry it forward), catching up on funding infrastructure improvements and stop the thinking that says we have to cut back services when what we need to do is manage them and our finances better, reform our police department which costs too much before we even add in claims against them and which does not have the confidence of large portions of our population, find new ways to address housing issues be that relaxing some codes like lot size or whatever we need to do, work for strong representation at the capitol beyond our reps and senators, work with the county and police units and other social service agencies to deal with a full blown mental health crisis, and so much else. But first of all we need to commit ourselves to our people and only a small part of that is catering to the profit motives of our businesses. Charity sucks. Giving 5% or 10% or whatever percent of pretax or after tax or whatever to worthy causes sucks. Don't get me wrong. It's great to have folks like Allina, Wells Fargo, etc involved in community building but if the profit motive, the greed, were not so great to start with working to build a block of housing on Portland Avenue by corporations might very well be a moot point. I hate to sound like this flaming idealist. i like to think of myself as practical. I think it is practical to think like this. Who doesn't want to live in paradise and who is to say we cannot. We always save "that's impractical" or "things will always be like that". Well yeah. They will be. And the reason they will be is there are so damn many people who say "It's impractical" or "you can't change the world". Well maybe not but I say , you gotta try. Otherwise what good are you? Tim Connolly Ward 7 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
