BY DEVIN HOGAN In 2005 the junior senator from Illinois – then in office for just six months – gave the commencement address at Knox College, a small liberal arts school in western Illinois. It was a speech whose themes would define his career. Knox and the city of Galesburg…
BY DORIS OVERBY Our neighborhood block club has been celebrating National Night Out (NNO) and other events together for nearly 30 years. What hasn’t changed Since our block club was established in the early 1990s, some important things haven’t changed. We know our neighbors by their first names. We know…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Downtown at Chicago Avenue’s northern terminus, the venerable Guthrie Theater is cautiously reopening. I have really ambivalent feelings about entertainment happening while the pandemic is in the situation where there are no ICU beds available, and kids are having to go back to classes with nothing…
BY KATHRYN KELLY Lake Hiawatha is impaired with phosphorus. Much discussion has happened over the past few years about how to resolve this issue. What is the solution? There are several possible solutions: (1) implement natural wetlands (called constructed wetlands), (2) control the sources of excess phosphorus, and/or (3) phosphorus…
BY JOE HESLA AND ALICIA SMITH MURC (Minneapolis United for Rent Control) You may have noticed, there is a big conversation and fight for rent control going on in the Twin Cities. In St. Paul, renters and organizers collected nearly 10,000 signatures to put a tenant-centered rent control policy on…
BY JIM SPENSLEY The “MSP airport noise problem” isn’t a real problem as much as it is a sign the airport is at the center of life-threatening health and safety problems. An apt health analogy is that hearing airport noise is like seeing the light from a forest fire on…
BY DAVID TILSEN Over 45 years ago, several of us from the Alive and Trucking Theater gathered in a small apartment in Phillips. We were called by Sandy Spieler and Ray St. Louis to discuss a vision. They believed that regular festivals helped make communities strong, and that South Minneapolis…
Minneapolis residents have inherited a convoluted system borne out of early 20th century mistrust. No one trusted anyone so no one was given power. This resulting quagmire has hampered our democratic functions as “14 bosses” oversee city department heads and no one is held accountable. The new amendment would give…
BY TONY BOUZA One of the many flaws I’ve nurtured over what seems to have evolved into an interminable stay on the planet is a serious predilection for criticism. I’m always going on about this idiot or that fool. Surely I can’t be infallible on the issues. And I am…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE New eating places and concepts and “new to me” Amazingly, new restaurants and cafes and food service “concepts” keep on opening. Three fairly recent openings, in descending order of grandness (which pretty much relates to price and that pampered, entitled feeling, but not necessarily to actual…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Remember a few years back when Twin Cities Nonviolent partnered with individuals and peace organizations to create 10 Days Free from Violence in the Twin Cities? It was in the fall. The initiative wasn’t so huge the first year, but the next year, in 2019, hundreds of…
Call it murder The Catholic Agitator of June 2021, a monthly newsletter, carried an article by the journalist Chris Hedges, entitled “The Age of Social Murder” which should be required reading for all of us. He defines the murderer’s weapon as global warming, seldom defined or recognized as such. Each…
BY ELINA KOLSTAD Between the record- breaking heat waves, major floods from Michigan to New York, severe droughts throughout the West, and the possibility that the Champlain Towers South collapse was exacerbated by rising sea levels, you might have noticed the impacts of climate change have officially arrived. We no…
BY DEVIN HOGAN Filing for office in even-numbered years usually opens the Tuesday after Memorial Day. Per Minneapolis DFL tradition, the 2020 endorsed school board candidates met on that first Tuesday – May 26 – to file for office together, take pictures, and send out a press release. It was…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Bloomington Avenue is looking OK these days. I love to see it, because a year ago, I wasn’t sure. Businesses along Bloomington tend to be either very small and/or creative and unusual. Eateries capitalized on being cozy and intimate, and had to pivot to takeout, which…
