Again, thanks to all of you who were supportive of our efforts in
this past election. Congradulations to Dean and Dean. Thank you Barb, for
your passion and focus on the needs of immigrants in our community;
Jonathan for your ideas; intelligence and for being the other renter in the
game; Shada, for demanding that we address social justice, and Chris for
bringing a different perspective. I've learned much from all of you.
Despite the positive victories of the Green Party and the obvious
new progressive direction for the city I still have concerns about how both
this election and events in New York will shape our lives to come. I worry
that my low numbers in this election could be used to justify more
aggressive policing, with some people using that to prove that the public
has no problem with policies such as CODEFOR, and could ultimately cause
people to overlook disregard for the civil liberties of city
residents. When we started this effort, some of our main contacts
were with immigrants, many of them Arab and East African, who had been
mistreated by law enforcement and in some cases were afraid and willing to
put up with petty crime rather than call the police when
needed. Unfortunately, many of them can't vote. Already, I've heard
disturbing stories from around the country and in our own city about people
blaming our immigrant neighbors for the horrible things that have happened,
and I worry about the effects on our personal freedoms.These are only a few
of my concerns.
Still this was an educational and rewarding experience. Aside
from my own winning this election, I couldn't ask for a better
representative than Dean Zimmermann, and I know he will also focus on this
as much as he can.
So I leave off where I started: A strong structure is well
balanced upon a strong foundation, and when that structure gets too top
heavy, the weight of that structure is most severely felt on that
foundation. The structure is our city government and the foundation is all
of us. It's important that the next mayor and city council do what the
current ones have often not, to listen to us rather than trying to lead us
and remember that we, the grass roots, are the foundation of Minneapolis.
Tamir Nolley
Whittier 6-7
_______________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - Mn E-Democracy
Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more:
http://e-democracy.org/mpls
