Minneapolis climate activists celebrate shutting down major polluter in East Phillips neighborhood

Minneapolis, MN – On August 16, over 100 activists and community members held a celebratory rally in response to winning the struggle to shut down a long-time polluter, Smith Foundry.

The Smith Foundry is one of several heavy industrial sites located in the residential Minneapolis neighborhood of East Phillips, one of the most diverse and working-class neighborhoods in Minnesota. The city has long used East Phillips as its toxic dumping ground, and, as a result, East Phillips has some of the highest rates of asthma and cardiovascular disease in the state. Notably, Smith Foundry operated as the top lead polluter in the county, further poisoning an already environmentally overburdened community.

The neighborhood has been a center of environmental justice activism for decades, and Smith Foundry became a major focus of that struggle over the last couple years. Due to increased public pressure and militant struggle, Smith Foundry announced that they would be closing all operations on August 15. This comes after Bituminous Roadways, an asphalt manufacturer next door to Smith, announced their shutdown in March. The previous year, the community won a fight with the city of Minneapolis to take ownership of the old Roof Depot site and create a community space across the street from Smith Foundry.

The day after the Smith closure, the Shut Down Smith Coalition, a group of local organizations ,joined together to fight to close the foundry. They held a block party in the local Cedar Field Park to celebrate the major gains that organizing and struggling in the streets had gained for the community. Children ran around the park and through the playground, and community members grilled food for friends and families to eat together.

Organizations active in the struggle set up tables to share the other community demands they are working on outside of their work to shut down Smith Foundry, encouraging community members to get organized and continue fighting for liberation. Speakers drove this message home, emphasizing the need to fight militantly for a better world, rather than trying to appeal to the moral sensibilities of the ruling class.

Charlie Berg of the Climate Justice Committee stated, “They weren’t just going to shut down Smith Foundry because we asked nicely. They weren’t just going to shut down Smith Foundry because they realized it was bad. They were going to have to realize the whole community was going to make them shut it down if they weren’t going to do it themselves.”

Rachel Dionne-Thunder, cofounder of the Indigenous Protector Movement and an East Phillips community member, emphasized a need to keep fighting beyond this single major win, as she asked, “Why is it our communities of color, our minority communities, our native communities suffering disproportionately [from pollution]? It shouldn’t be a thing, and it’s not going to be a thing. We’re going to make sure it doesn’t continue.”

The speaking program ended with the group chanting, “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!”

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