AUTUMN CHMIELEWSKI, MHA, MA, SOUTHSIDE COMMUNITY HEALTH SERVICES Geraldine Cereceda has helped thousands of people gain access to healthcare services over the past 18 years. She is passionate about connecting underserved and marginalized populations because she knows what it’s like to delay care out of fear of the high costs…
BY ED FELIEN What happened? A little over three years ago, on Sept. 30, 2015, you held a big community meeting with more than a hundred people at Plaza Verde to talk about the dangers of gentrification. You told Ryan Williams-Virden from the Twin City Daily Planet, “Gentrification is a…
BY TONY BOUZA The very word conjures a freighted emotional frisson we barely dare acknowledge or express. Watching “Thurgood,” a biopic on the Supreme Court Justice and the NAACP, inspired me to think of the role of Jews in America. They arrived at the Lower East Side of Manhattan and…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE I’m going to assume you don’t. For the past two or three years, I have been on a quixotic quest to raise awareness about the incredible prevalence of child slave labor in the production of chocolate, and the enormous “conspiracy of silence” that leaves otherwise conscientious…
BY SHASA SARTIN The following piece is brought to you by the impassioned creations of Audre Lorde, Beyoncé, Kelis, Leikeli47, Megan Thee Stallion, Rico Nasty, and my mother. Have you ever encountered some upsetting information and … started seeing red? Shortly after you hear a very loud screeching sound: it’s…
Roberto de la Riva, Angela Conley and Tabitha Montgomery are all smiles greeting each other before the forum. Last month the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association (PPNA) held a community forum: “Positive Pressure to Protest” led by Roberto de la Riva from Inquilinxs Unidxs por Justicia, United Renters for Justice—a tenant-aid…
BY BONNIE RAE, ON BEHALF OF JOHN KARRIGAN Bluebird A good neighbor and frequent park walker reported seeing an Eastern Bluebird in the park in the middle of December and snapped a photo as proof! He also reported having recently seen a Cooper’s Hawk, as had another park walker, who…
BY LEX HORAN, RECLAIM THE BLOCK On Dec. 5 the Minneapolis City Council passed its 2019 budget, which included no new funding for hires at the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), but they increased MPD’s allocation by 2.2% over its 2018 funding levels. The budget passed after extensive public testimony calling…
Why should your child die from a gunshot wound? The doctor has found the task a most difficult and onerous one and who wouldn’t? Dr. Marianne Haughey of St. Barnabas Hospital in Jersey City, N.Y., has been assigned victims of homicide for 25 years and one of her tasks has…
BY TONY BOUZA “What a great country!” The beginning of one of the many dumb jokes I love. Yet, for me, in there is contained the kernel of a central truth. Only an immigrant experiences the shock of change. I left a dictatorship (Spain) in Dec. 1937 to experience the…
BY ED FELIEN People are complaining of a smell coming from deals being made at the Park Board. Park Board President Brad Bourn appointed his best campaign worker, Kendall Killian, to a $114,000 a year consulting contract. They broke the contract into six-month periods, so it didn’t need board approval…
BY ASHLEY GREY Dear Readers, I have been showing you the most painful parts of my life for many months throughout the last two years. I suffer from schizophrenia, major depression, anxiety and PTSD. I also have dissociative episodes. At my worst I was bedridden. You guys, something has changed.…
Forgotten victims of war Recently I read a newspaper article about the so-called “comfort women” of World War II and it reminded me of my visit with several of these women years ago. Marianne Hamilton and I were in the Philippines protesting something or the other that Bill Clinton had…
BY RICHARD TAYLOR When disputes become drawn out, as has the Midtown YWCA controversy, we are well advised to review the events and values that prompted Doris Overby to go signature-gathering on Aug. 20, 2018. By that time, YWCA CEO Luz Maria Frias, without inviting member input, had announced a…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Maybe it’s because of the ghosts in “A Christmas Carol,” or maybe it’s my majority Irish heritage, or maybe it’s just the natural feeling that comes around with all the sacred holidays, the longing for light’s returning, the pull of reuniting with family, but I can’t…
