Minneapolis brings the fight for the Roof Depot to Mayor Frey’s neighborhood

Minneapolis, MN – Climate Justice Committee and community members gathered for a family-friendly walk through Mayor Jacob Frey’s Northeast Minneapolis neighborhood on Saturday, October 4. The walk was called to raise awareness for the Roof Depot fight and urge Mayor Frey to give the East Philips neighborhood a fair deal for the site. Participants put up hundreds of posters, handed out flyers, and had conversations with community members.

The walk was called by the Climate Justice Committee (CJC), a local activist group focused on fighting urban pollution and environmental racism in the Twin Cities. They have been active in the East Phillips neighborhood’s campaign to turn the old Roof Depot into an urban farm and community center.

The East Philips Neighborhood Institute President of the Board Dean Dovolis made the stakes clear: “Right now, we sit at a choice of two futures. A building owned by the community, run by the community, developed by the community’s committee, or a future in which the building is demolished and turned into a service yard for diesel trucks and other polluting uses. This is critical, because if we do not prevail, we condemn the neighborhood to these uses for our lifetimes and the lifetimes beyond.”

Dovolis added, “We already have an active agriculture program, so this dream is real. There’s only one thing that’s keeping us from making the dream real: Mayor Jacob Frey. We need your help to tell him that this is the right thing to do, this is the right action, this is the right future for the neighborhood. We, the East Phillips Neighborhood, are driven by this, because while we can’t control the issues in Washington, we can create our own vision of what we want to see in our society, right in East Phillips.”

Kent Mori of the Climate Justice Committee linked this action to the broader fight for indigenous rights: “Mayor Frey embodies environmental racism. The Roof Depot land itself, if it’s sold to EPNI, will be owned by Little Earth, the largest Section 8 native community in the United States. So if you want to talk about ‘land back,’ you gotta talk about Roof Depot being owned by the community! This is about native sovereignty and empowering native folks within their own community.”

Climate Justice Committee and community members will continue to elevate the cause of the Roof Depot in rallies and press conferences around the city.

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