Mayor Melvin Carter in his inaugural address called Saint Paul a city with momentum but also “deep inequity,” pledging to revise policies on police use-of-force, enact a 15-dollar minimum wage and fight “some of the worst disparities in the country.” Carter said the third stanza of the national anthem, “our national freedom song, is an ode to slavery, dating back to the noble group of rich, white, straight, male landowners, who embedded into our founding principles a yearning for a set of God-given rights they sought to secure for only themselves.”
Former Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles-Belton says Carter did *not* go too far and his message is, “Democracy of today means that everybody needs to be working together, everybody counts, everybody matters, everybody’s voice needs to be heard.”
Carter says, “Our city hall won’t be designed to simply lift my voice, but to lift every voice — starting with those who have gone ignored for far too long.”
More in this interview with Sayles-Belton: