by Dennis Dalman
A Sartell resident, Peter Wilson, addressed the Sartell City Council at its July 12 meeting to thank local police and to suggest that people who teach “Critical Race Theory” and those who get vaccinated should be clearly and visibly identifiable.
Wilson spoke during the Open Forum time at the council, during which people can share complaints, concerns or suggestions for a maximum time of three minutes each.
Wilson thanked the Sartell police for doing a good job to maintain local safety. A local police force, he said, is far superior to the national police forces of other countries where Wilson has lived.
Those who teach or take training in Critical Race Theory are promoting racism. Wilson used the example of the League of Minnesota Cities, which he claimed gave similar racist training to city personnel a couple of years ago.
Critical Race Theory, currently a very controversial topic, is an overall name for a movement of legal and academic studies that explore social, cultural and legal factors and how they interact to impact racial realities, including systemic racism.
Referring to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic 1950 novel, “The Scarlet Letter,” Wilson suggested those who teach Critical Race Theory could perhaps be identified by some symbol on their clothing or uniform. In Hawthorne’s novel, the lead character is required to wear at all times the embroidered scarlet letter “A” on her clothing to alert all the Puritans in her village that she committed adultery and birthed a daughter out of wedlock.
Wilson, who noted he has lived in Sartell since 1989, described himself as a proud member of the John Birch Society since 1981. That group, long in existence, is dedicated to protecting the United States from left-wing radical programs and ideas and defending individual rights. Among its current agenda items are opposing what it calls “Deep State/Big Government,” support for local police, “saving” children from public schools, countering Covid-19 “overreach,” stopping the globalist trade agenda,” and opposing a call for a new Constitutional Convention.
Vaccinations, Wilson said, can cause death or serious illness even many years after they are given. Those who get vaccinated, including city employees, should be clearly identified, perhaps by the symbol “V” for Vaccination, so that residents can become aware of – in Wilson’s words — the “potential issues they may cost others.”
