A Minneapolis City Council candidate encouraged those who “feel like burning shit down” to target the city’s wealthiest residents instead of causing further damage to poor communities.
“Just a personal thought — just in case y’all feel like burning shit down, the poor community is not your oppressors. FYI — lake of the isles has more then [sic] needed and won’t be missed,” Rita Ortega wrote on her personal Facebook page, which is under her full name of Margarita, according to screenshots shared widely on social media Friday.
Margarita Ortega, running for #Mpls City Council Ward 9, suggests that those who want to burn things go to Lake of the Isles area.
Posted on Facebook. She has since changed the 1st post to private/not public.@ritaforward9
These are your replacements for current incompetence. pic.twitter.com/9MGv8413Mc
— CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) April 16, 2021
A popular tourist attraction, Lake of the Isles is surrounded by some of Minneapolis’ most luxurious homes, owned by the city’s wealthiest residents.
Presumably, Ortega’s comments were made in the context of this week’s riotous behavior in Brooklyn Center, where 20-year-old Daunte Wright was killed by police Sunday.
In a follow-up post, Ortega seemed to argue that her comments were justified because the wealthy “have the insurance and means to rebuild.”
“Division has been created and continues not by my hands. I’m not the greedy one living in million dollar mansions while people are sleeping in tents and on the street,” she said.
Ortega said she went to visit Lake of the Isles to “pray for healing, just to be met with more pain of seeing another injustice, that our home is not ours and the rich get to live in happiness and luxury where our ancestors used to pray and live.”
According to her campaign website, Ortega was a policy aide at Minneapolis City Hall and spent 10 years working in city government.
She was profiled in the Washington Post Monday and said she has “always felt we’ve never really needed the police.”
“The only way forward is abolishing the police,” she said on Twitter shortly after Wright’s death. “No institution should be allowed to murder in our communities with impunity.”
The only way forward is abolishing the police. No institution should be allowed to murder in our communities with impunity. As a mother my prayers are with Daunte Wright and his family. He should be alive right now.
— Rita Ortega for Ward 9 (@ritaforward9) April 12, 2021
Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
