Ed Felien
BY ED FELIEN
Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu
We can no longer stay with you
We must hang our harps on a weeping willow tree
And may the world go well with thee
Fare thee well, for we must leave you
Do not let our parting grieve you
For remember that the best of friends
Must part, must part
So until another meeting
When we’ll wave a friendly greeting
We will always keep your memory in our hearts
We are going to stop publishing Southside Pride with this edition.
I’m 87.
And, lately, I think a lot about the hereafter.
I go into a room and I wonder, “What did I come in here after?”
Like with Southside Pride.
What was I after when I started this thing?
I started Southside Pride 35 years ago in reaction to George H. W. Bush’s war against Iraq. We wrote about Bush as a Texas Oil Man, about his ties to Halliburton, and about how when he was with the CIA he was probably responsible for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
In those days, we typed out the copy and pasted it up on boards and then we drove it to the printer.
From the beginning, our masthead has proclaimed, “We are proud of the racial and cultural diversity of the Southside, and we oppose racism and other efforts to keep us apart as a community.”
Hennepin County has agreed to host our website, so past issues and articles will be available on line.
But before I say good-bye I need to acknowledge a debt I owe to the thousands of you who read this paper. For thirty-five years we have sent out our messages of radical peace and love in the hopes that someone might read those messages and go out and do something about it. When you pick us up, you redeem that hope.
And, to our advertisers: thank you, thank you, thank you. Your support has made it possible for us to publish and distribute a free newspaper.
From 1997 to 2007 we also published Pulse of the Twin Cities, a weekly alternative newspaper featuring the local music scene. David Goldstein started selling ads for us. We wouldn’t take cigarette advertising. We got the idea we should do Smoke Free Saturday Nights at local bars. If the bars would agree to go smoke-free for a Saturday, then we would run a full-page color ad for them. They loved it. Patrons loved it. One bartender told us, “That’s the first time I could see to the end of the bar.” Opposition to excluding bars from the No Smoking Indoors act crumbled, and the Legislature amended it to include bars. After we stopped our Pulse, David began selling ads for Southside Pride. Without him we couldn’t do this paper.
Next, on the list of Indispensables, would be Rebecca, our graphic designer, who makes us look beautiful; Robin, our proofreader, who keeps us coherent; and Bridgit, our accountant, who makes us look solvent. Ron cleans the office. Celia, our tech guardian angel, keeps us connected. We have great regular writers: Deb, Stephanie, Kay, Clint, Cam, Dave and Elaine.
There is a familiar sadness that seems to almost overwhelm you, like ending a winning season with a team that had become family. You don’t want to give that up.
But it’s time to move on.
Regrettable failures:
There are some regrets, some failures of communication.
We were never able to convince some public official to take up the case of the murder of Terrance Franklin. We know from the civil case (where the City had to pay out a million dollars in a Wrongful Death lawsuit) that officers of the MPD executed Franklin and lied in their report. Did those officers violate Minnesota Statute 609.505, Falsely Reporting a Crime? It is tragically ironic that the City has spent millions studying the proper George Floyd memorial at 38th and Chicago. It has tied up traffic for five years and wrecked local businesses. All of this to find the proper memorial to remind us that murderous racism existed in the MPD, while, at the same time, they refuse to examine the racist murder of Terrance Franklin by officers of the MPD still employed by the City of Minneapolis. Hopefully, Council Member Jason Chavez, as Chair of the Public Health and Safety Committee of the City Council, will hold a hearing in which he questions Chief O’Hara about the discrepancies in the police report and the judgement of the civil case that found the officers murdered Terrance Franklin in cold blood.
We regret that the City has never fully explained the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. We know that a very peaceful demonstration was transformed into a riot causing half a billion dollars in damages to Lake Street with The Umbrella Man’s smashing of windows at The Auto Zone and writing “Free Shit” on the walls. We know The Umbrella Man was a member of a white nationalist motorcycle gang of ex-cons. Did his gang have any connection to City Heat, a motorcycle gang of white nationalist cops in the Twin Cities metro? Was it a police riot to protest the Mayor’s firing the four officers involved in George Floyd’s murder and the Mayor’s surrender of the Third Precinct to demonstrators? We deserve answers to these questions.
We regret we have not been able to convince the Council Member representing the Twelfth Ward, whether Andrew Johnson or Aurin Chowdhury, to dredge Lake Hiawatha of the sand that gets dumped on city streets in winter that flows into the storm sewers and ends up in Lake Hiawatha. It has reduced the depth of Lake Hiawatha from 33 feet to a sandbar in places. It has made the lake unhealthy for swimming, and fish can’t survive a hard freeze. The City put the sand there. The City should take it out.
We regret that we have been unable to convince the Park Board to remove the dams that are blocking water from leaving Lake Hiawatha causing the flooding of Hiawatha Golf Course and basements in nearby houses. I grew up a block from Lake Hiawatha. There was hardly ever a time when flooding was a problem. The problem with Lake Hiawatha and Minnehaha Creek was that in the summer, quite often, there was drought which caused the Creek to dry up and Minnehaha Falls would disappear. In August of 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson was going to visit Minneapolis, Vice President Humphrey wanted him to see Minnehaha Falls. But it was during a severe drought, so Humphrey convinced the Army Corps of Engineers to build a dam on Minnehaha Creek to hold back the water in Lake Hiawatha. The dam had removeable boards that would allow water to rush through once the boards were removed. When Johnson’s plane arrived, the boards were removed and water rushed over Minnehaha Falls to impress the new President. Unfortunately, the five foot foundation of the dam remained, and that has permanently raised the water level of Lake Hiawatha by five feet which has caused flooding in the wetlands surrounding the lake and the flooding of the basement in my parent’s home on 42nd Street and 29th Avenue. The Park Board wants to turn off the pumping and flood the area because they think a swamp is a much more natural look, even though the flooding is the result of the unnatural Humphrey dam.
Southside Pride is not alone in saying good-bye to the public arena this December. Southside City Council Members Andrea Jenkins and Emily Koski will be retiring. They have served the City well. We are grateful for their service.
Adieu kind friends, adieu
