My thanks to Mark Snyder and Phyllis Kahn for urging the City of Minneapolis to pass a resolution urging federal authorities to respect the rights of local citizens. Personally, I think it is a great idea and if someone would like to forward to me two or three sample resolutions from other cities, I would be more than happy to put something forward to the Council.
I must say, however, that I am not very hopeful that there is much chance of such a resolution passing. The Minneapolis City Council President has ruled that the war in Iraq is not a local issue and only 5 council members (Lilligren, Johnson-Lee, Zerby, Niziolek and Zimmermann) voted to overturn his ruling. So much for "Thinking Globally-Acting Locally." Consider this: The US government is spending billions and billions of dollars of public money to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq in its attempt to keep the petroleum profits flowing into the pockets of Bush and Cheney's cronies. At the same time, Minneapolis has 6,000 units of public housing and 12,000 people on the waiting list but the US government has no money to build public housing. According to a recent study by the Minneapolis Health Dept. there are $57,400,000 in hidden health costs associated with the Xcel coal-burning electricity plant in northeast Minneapolis. At the same time, there is no Federal money available to build a wind and photo-voltaic electric generating system for Minnesota that could produce clean power free from dependence on foreign oil. A side benefit (besides creating new livable wage jobs) is that such an electrical infrastructure would be much more decentralized and less vulnerable to terrorist attacks. All of the money, of course, is being used to destroy the electrical infrastructure of Iraq. How can we expect a city council that can not make a connection between wasting money on war and not having any money to spend on local needs, to be able to see how such a simple thing, as the erosion of civil liberties, might have anything to do with the lives of the people of Minneapolis? Dean Zimmermann Mpls City Council Member - Ward 6 612-673-2206 _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
