The city council in St. Louis Park, Minnesota will no longer begin meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. The council voted unanimously to drop the recitation of the pledge in an effort to appease their diverse community.
“I hope it’s not too controversial,” councilman Tim Brausen said. “Our community tends to be a very welcoming and increasingly diverse community, and we believe our citizens will understand. I don’t think we’re going to be any less welcoming by not starting our meeting out with the standard ritual.”
“I want to make sure that we are welcoming to everyone in our community, and so I just felt that was an unnecessary component to include every single week in our work,” council member Anne Mavity told the Star-Tribune.
St. Louis Park is in Minnesota’s fifth congressional district. Their representative in Congress is Rep. Ilhan Omar.
“We’ve had some racial equity initiatives going on in the city of St. Louis Park for awhile where we’re trying to get more diverse communities and historically less engaged communities to come and participate in our public process,” Brausen told the newspaper. “Given the current Washington politics that are going on now, there’s a lot of people that are afraid of our government, and we worry about that.”
If the pledge of allegiance offends you, if the notion of one nation under God makes you feel uncomfortable, perhaps you might be better off living in another country.
