Readers Write: Soo Line Community Garden, IVF, immigration

Opinion editor’s note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

The piece “Mpls. community garden trail in Park Board’s hands” (March 11) does a good job summarizing the importance of the Soo Line Community Garden, one of few parks in my Whittier neighborhood, which was identified by the Minneapolis Park Board as having “park gaps” per its “Parks for All” report. It is a critical spot for kids and families in a dense urban area.

I am a Soo Line gardener and love the community, and the many friends I’ve made there, who come from all over the world. These are people I would otherwise never have known. Green spaces and parks create connections and gathering that few other places can.

Hennepin County, the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Authority, which focus primarily on infrastructure, decided that a green space where people meet, read and exercise and where kids play isn’t a park. This can only be described as Orwellian, especially since these government entities have no jurisdiction over the land. (Opinion editor’s note: The Park Board owns the land.)

Soo Line is not just land to be paved over. There are better bicycle ramp spots on the south side of the Greenway, and the county’s absurd argument that it must preserve the space for a transit line decades away (assuming it gets built at all) makes no sense. That’s precisely why it wanted to avoid federal requirements for an alternative site analysis. It is easier to just say Soo Line isn’t a park. Shame on the county for ignoring its constituents and for disrespecting the community.

Kedar Deshpande, Minneapolis

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As a Whittier neighborhood resident, I consider Soo Line Community Garden a cherished third space, beyond my work and home life. It’s where I connect with neighbors, volunteer with elementary school kids over the shared joy of growing food, and build community in relationship with the land. And Hennepin County’s proposed two-way bike trail that enters from both sides and cuts through the center of this park? That would eliminate Soo Line as a community hub.

I am a biker. I bike commute to work most of the year. I live between the Bryant and current Nicollet access points to the Greenway, and I do not need another access point, certainly not at such great cost to the community. There is no reasonable argument that pits bikers against protecting one of the only green spaces in the neighborhood, particularly one used by young students, immigrant families and other low-income residents who deserve access to nature and food security. A bike ramp compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act will be part of the new Kmart redevelopment and the gardeners have proposed designs for the south side of the Greenway that would not need to cut through the garden.

It is a disillusioning experience to engage in the political process at a very local level and be ignored. Hennepin County’s responses to strong community opposition to their plan, including through surveys and public remarks at their open house, has varied from evasive to dismissive to hostile. Their inability to gather community feedback and to pivot once learning of community priorities and needs demonstrates a lack of respect. If Hennepin County fails to listen, I hope the Park Board stands up for Whittier residents and protects this valued green space.

Jessica Kochick, Minneapolis

And I thought the fall of Roe v. Wade caused a social and political firestorm (“States must protect IVF,” reprinted from Bloomberg Opinion, March 12). The Alabama Supreme Court’s decision declaring frozen embryos as children has galvanized the culture war of abortion into a new cultural battleground.

Recently, someone gave me a hypothetical situation to solve. That is, to choose between saving a dozen frozen embryos or one screaming child from a building fire. What do pro-lifers do?

I told him the rescue response is neither clinical nor moral. The rescue response is one of adrenaline. The screaming child near the flames will be rescued. And I didn’t let it go without saying that the premise of this rescue conundrum is meant to cause conflict within the pro-lifer’s mind. Many of these frozen embryos are discarded (killed?) anyway. The pro-lifer would avoid the moral dilemma by advocating for not having frozen embryos to potentially or eventually discard in the first place, if they are children as the Alabama Supreme Court decided. And as an orthodox Catholic, I believe they are “children.”

Daniel Pryor, Delano

As we trudge through the 2024 election campaign, the media must remain vigilant and shout it to the rooftops when politicians get it wrong; there is just too much at stake. Latest example: The Republican Party was given free airtime to speak to a nationwide audience and respond to the State of the Union address. Their spokesperson, Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, offered a heart-rending tale of a woman who was the victim of sex trafficking that she implied was due to President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, and if you listened to her, she really laid it on thick. This poor woman in her story was repeatedly gang-raped, which of course makes our president responsible. The only problem? As the Washington Post and others have now discovered, this happened in the early 2000s, long before Biden ever took office, and it didn’t even happen in the United States! (”Senator misleads with attack on border,” March 11.) Yet Biden is demonized for this, which is somewhere beyond sleazy.

When people and organizations are given free access to millions of people, such flat-out lies need to be called out by the press, “above the fold” on the front page. I, for one, am nauseated by those who think that “proving” something simply means saying something. No: There’s a funny thing called evidence that matters. And darn it, misleading millions of people and fraudulently playing to our basest emotions matters, too.

David Lapakko, Richfield

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I’m ready to scream. During the State of the Union address, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene echoed the mantra about the lone illegal Venezuelan immigrant who killed Laken Riley that ignores the many U.S. citizens who kill dozens and hundreds of innocent American citizens. I do not minimize the tragedy around Riley’s death. It’s sad and it’s painful, even at a distance. But if anyone is going to put Biden’s head on a pike over the one illegal immigrant, the MAGA crowd should be equally excoriated for their tunnel vision regarding the many homegrown murderers who still have access to guns and the tragedies they inflict on our society. I’m fed up with this blind obeisance to the gun cult of the MAGA right. Yes, do a better job of vetting the migrants we allow into the country. “We” tried to do that with bipartisan legislation, but the MAGA commander in chief killed that opportunity. Who’s in charge here, anyway? For God’s sake, people, quit laying the blame on your enemy of the moment and look at the inaction and the truculence of the MAGA right in Congress for the cause.

Fed up in Brooklyn Park,

Harald Eriksen, Brooklyn Park