To all of our allies and community organizers:

In the aftermath of the brutal police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent terror imposed on our grieving communities by the MPD, Minneapolis City Council members are attempting to portray themselves as innocent and helpless all-over social media. They are promising to pass a useless resolution and make statements that are nothing but a PR stunt, https://tinyurl.com/Mpls-City-Council-Statement. They are trying to tell the world that they support communities of color in Minneapolis. They don’t and never did.

The POC Councilmembers we elected to bring about systemic change continue to fail us. Mayor Frey and all 13 Council members voted to increase the police budget and allow white supremacist Bob Kroll to do what he wants as head of the police union. These Councilmembers never prioritized Minneapolis residents of color, our businesses, our housing, our rights, or our safety. In their latest statement, all 13 City council members failed again to call for the arrests of the other 3 officers and say that the killer Derek Chauvin should receive 1st-degree murder for killing Georg Floyd. The City of Minneapolis’s Department of Human Rights that is discussed in this letter has never been successful in police cases let alone discrimination cases. They are all complicit and guilty.

Our City Council has aggressively courted developers and investors to build luxury apartments we cannot afford, encouraged the gentrification of Black and Brown neighborhoods, and authorized the privatization of our public housing – actions which all benefit wealthy white people at the expense of BIPOC communities. Ward 6, which is home to most of our city’s public housing, does not even have a Councilmember to represent them at this time because Abdi Warsame left his position earlier this year to become head of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, after years of pushing MIPHA’s privatization agenda at City Hall. Ward 6 is made up of the majority of people of color and has been hit hard by COVID19, and no one is advocating for Ward 6 now.

Hold them accountable because they are also responsible for this crisis and tragedy. They need to go. They have been attacking BIPOC communities since they came into office: gentrifying BIPOC neighborhoods, privatizing public housing, failing to support minority businesses, and funding a police department that terrorizes our communities and kills us. As a campaign led by Black East African Women, Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition has first-hand experience for the last five years of this council’s racist attacks, anti-Black rhetoric, xenophobia, islamophobia, and misogyny.  This is a corrupt and incompetent City Council and Mayor, and they need to resign. We need new leadership that cares about the Black, Brown, and low-income communities of Minneapolis.