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Hagedorn must support Minnesotans’ lives, not Trump’s greedy agenda

To the editor:

Representative Hagedorn bragged in a Facebook announcement on Tuesday night that he joined several of his House colleagues to support President Trump’s executive order to force meat-processing plants to stay open even as plant workers across the country have contracted the Coronavirus, including workers in Iowa and South Dakota–our neighbors.

I am struggling to understand where Rep. Hagedorn’s interests lie. As recently as Monday night, Pilgrim’s Pride workers in Cold Spring, Minnesota walked out of their plant to protest the unsafe, inhumane working conditions, including a lack of social distancing and workers’ inability to leave the line even though they were developing symptoms of the virus. Gross negligence and worker extortion (“leave and be fired”) on the part of Pilgrim’s Part is an absolute disgrace, and NOW, Hagedorn is proudly puffing out his chest to tell Minnesotans that he supports forcing plants to stay open despite the obvious, documented evidence that meat-processing plants from Colorado to Iowa to COLD SPRING, MINNESOTA are places where the virus is spreading!

Rep. Hagedorn’s disdain for Minnesotan lives, and the lives as millions of Americans who will presumably eat the food processed in these plants, is the absolute antithesis of the values as Minnesotans we hold dear. Hagedorn would rather be a sycophant to Donald Trump’s greed and cruelty than serve and protect the people he was elected to represent. I moved from Arkansas to Nicollet County in August 2018, and the Minnesotans I have met and am proud to call my friends are community-minded, compassionate, and ethical people who understand that corporate profits pale in comparison to the value of our lives. Make no mistake, Jim Hagedorn does not care about workers’ lost wages–if he did, he would have advocated for much greater, longer-lasting financial assistance to working-class people than his party or its leader was willing to give.

In this remarkably callous announcement, Rep. Jim Hagedorn has proven beyond a doubt that he has absolutely forgotten what Minnesota values, if he ever actually knew. I suggest he FaceTime with Governor Walz.

Misti Harper

St. Peter

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