Simplicity, Community, Justice, Peace

BY ELAINE KLAASSEN In “Mennonite values in a warming world,” David C. Garen articulates spiritual guidelines for living on the Earth. (The piece was printed as a “web-exclusive” for themennonite.org.) Garen is a retired hydrologist who spent most of his professional career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the…

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Savers, Perkins and a laundromat

BY ELINA KOLSTAD On arriving in MSP after a two-week trip to Germany visiting family, I found out that the Perkins in my neighborhood, the last remaining Perkins in Minneapolis, had permanently closed a few days earlier. The next day I went to an event near the house I grew…

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Bloat, and more bloat

BY TONY BOUZA [On Sunday, July 29, The StarTribune reported: “Arradondo told reporters after a meeting of the City Council’s public safety committee that he wanted to add 400 more street officers by 2025 in order to keep pace with attrition and population growth. “Last week, Arradondo shared a startling…

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How the world works

BY RICHARD TAYLOR In his book “The Grand Chessboard,” Jimmy Carter’s former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote, with refreshing candor, “The three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians…

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You can work for climate justice

BY ALLISON ANDRADE The U.N. warns that the world is “on course to exceed the temperature threshold” of warming, meaning another 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) above that set out in the Paris climate agreement. Many cities and community organizations in our country have set out to hold themselves…

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Better transit needs better roads

BY JOHN CHARLES WILSON There are internet forums where people discuss every issue under the sun. Yes, even obscure subjects like public transit have their own online discussion groups. And, as you can guess, many people in those groups have the “transit vs. roads” or “transit vs. cars” misconception. Interestingly…

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MN350 meets with Cargill executives

Members of the MN350 Solutions Committee met with Cargill executives on July 11 to make them aware of changes they could make to benefit the environment. When the activists arrived at Cargill corporate headquarters in Wayzata, they were not allowed to enter the building but rather were escorted by security…

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Boulder Dam is down!

BY ED FELIEN Somehow, as mysteriously as it appeared, Boulder Dam has disappeared. For more than a year, Southside Pride has called for the removal of the boulders under the 30th Avenue footbridge. The Barr Engineering study of Minnehaha Creek identified this rock weir as the control point for the…

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Bouza & the Subtle Art of Losing

Hello Ed, Mr. Tony Bouza, The subtle art of losing, does a good job of describing the cause of government bloat. A government official who is “a wonderful man -flattering, generous, thoughtful, knowledgeable and altogether a real pleasure to be with,” who tolerates a bloated bureaucracy. An official who allows…

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Republicans: The Key to Better Transit

BY JOHN CHARLES WILSON While transit users in the Twin Cities rejoice at improvements such as the new C Line “over North,” many are still annoyed by the thinning out of “plain old bus service,” which has gradually occurred over the past few decades. While the Southside Pride readership area…

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Will more neighbors make our city greener?

BY ELINA KOLSTAD Many people agree that increasing the housing density of an area will decrease the CO2 emissions per person through increased efficiency. For example, people won’t have to drive as far, or perhaps won’t have to drive at all, because there are more likely to be resources they…

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