Star Tribune
Uber tells drivers it’s shutting down only Twin Cities service center
Uber is notifying drivers in Minnesota that it will close its only Twin Cities service center in less than a month, a concrete step toward its pledge to pull out of the metro area entirely over a pay dispute with the Minneapolis City Council.
The letter to drivers from the San Francisco-based rideshare company’s head of Mobility Operations in the U.S. and Canada says Uber will close its Greenlight Hub in Richfield on April 15. That will leave drivers with nowhere in the city to get face-to-face help with renewing documents, getting vehicles approved and inspected, or resolving other issues.
The letter, to be sent this week, also reaffirms the company’s intention to exit the market and stop service at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on May 1, the day the new regulations go into effect.
Both Uber and the other major rideshare company, Lyft, are pulling out in response to last week’s vote by the Minneapolis City Council to raise pay for rideshare drivers. Uber has gone further, saying it plans to leave the Twin Cities entirely.
“We know that this decision will have a huge negative effect on the Twin Cities,” Uber executive Camiel Irving wrote in the letter. “It will put thousands of drivers — like you — out of work. And it will strand people looking to get to the office, to school, or back home safely after a night out.”
Uber driver Howard Snitzer, of Kenyon, Minn., said the Greenlight Hub is “helpful when you need somebody.” He just visited the tiny office at 60th Street and Lyndale Avenue S. on Tuesday, he said.
Snitzer, who says he has made “great money” driving for Uber and Lyft full time for the past five years, said closing the hub might be Uber’s way of negotiating and applying pressure on Minneapolis to roll back the driver pay ordinance. And in fact, some on the council may be considering a move to reconsider the vote.
“The City Council does not need to be in the middle of my business,” said Snitzer, who said he pays his mortgage and expenses and can afford a vacation with what he makes driving. “They did not speak to enough players. They have no business representing me. I hope Governor Walz will step in and fix this.”
Republicans and Democrats at the State Capitol have introduced a series of bills that aim to give the state control over rideshare regulations.
“This wasn’t a decision we made lightly,” Irving wrote, noting Uber trips in Minneapolis would be some of the most expensive in the nation under the new pay ordinance.
Uber driver David Ralls says he believes Uber is not bluffing.
“They have done it before,” he said, noting the rideshare company left Austin, Texas under similar circumstances. “The Council is looking out for the little guy, but the real little guy in all this is the passenger.”
Ralls, a Uber driver for the past 7 years, said he spends a lot of time in Minneapolis and makes the equivalent of $30 per hour.
“I’m always busy,” he said. “These drivers [who pushed for the pay raise] claim you can’t make minimum wage. If they can’t, they are doing it wrong, or not trying. There is no reason they can’t make over minimum wage.”
Irving wrote that Uber supports legislation that would ensure all drivers in Minnesota earn at least the minimum wage after expenses, and in the letter encouraged drivers to contact state lawmakers in support of legislation that, he wrote, “raises your fares, protects your flexibility, and keeps ridesharing affordable.”
ZUMBRO RIVER VALLEY, MINN. – From his combine on an October afternoon, harvesting dried-out soybeans the color of dust, Martin Larsen points to a hillside where his ancestors from Scandinavia homesteaded.
History might be happening again on the Larsen farm.
Last year, on this plot of land along the Zumbro River, the 43-year-old farmer from Byron grew oats. Not oats for hogs or cows. But oats for humans. He hauled the oats to a miller across the state line into Iowa. A previous year, Larsen even had a contract with Oatly, the trendy Swedish maker of milk alternatives.
Something of an oat renaissance has been occurring down in the fields west of the Mississippi River. During winters, Larsen — through his job with the Olmsted County Soil and Water Conservation District — evangelized to fellow farmers on the humble small grain.
His friends and neighbors were listening. As of this fall, over 60 farmers, covering 6,000 acres across southern Minnesota, have joined Larsen’s informal coalition to grow food-grade oats. They call themselves the “oat mafia.”
Star of breakfast food, children’s books and, increasingly, those nondairy lattes, oats are easier on the environment, requiring less nitrogen than corn, which means a lot in the karst-rich hill country of southeastern Minnesota, where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has tasked state officials with cleaning up drinking water.
“Nitrates come from this,” said Larsen, driving his gray Gleaner combine on a patch of soybeans beneath a hillock just beyond the suburban sprawl of northwest Rochester on a recent warm Friday afternoon. “I’m not going to beat around the bush anymore. That’s what the data says.”
But as the oat mafia looks to the future, they’re struggling with a basic marketing question: Who will actually buy these oats they’re growing?
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
