BY ED FELIEN Doug Marvy died last month after a short and intense relationship with cancer as a result of a long-term blood disease. I first heard about Doug when I learned about the Milwaukee 14 burning draft records and serving prison terms for their opposition to the draft and the…
BY ED FELIEN I grew up Roman Catholic. St. Helena’s Church in South Minneapolis. I was a good Catholic, went to Mass, took Communion. It fell apart for me in my freshman year at the U. I started reading James Joyce, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Then…
BY ED FELIEN The 62nd District DFL endorsing convention will be Sunday, April 14, at Washburn High School. Registration begins at 9 a.m. and the convention will be called to order at 10 a.m. There are four excellent candidates seeking DFL endorsement: Bill Emory; Londel French; Ira Jourdain; and Anquam…
BY ED FELIEN Hodan Hassan was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2018, and she’s been re-elected ever since. She and Rep. Aisha Gomez have introduced a bill in this session of the Legislature to spend $10 million on construction of the Neighborhood Development Center on Lake…
BY ED FELIEN In her Dec. 9 article in The New Yorker, “In the Shadow of the Holocaust,” Masha Gessen makes the case that Gaza is like the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Israelis are acting like Nazis: “For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in…
BY ED FELIEN Hey, Jason, can we talk? I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks. But you won’t answer my emails or return my phone calls. On Jan. 4, I sent you the eight-point proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza we had just published in the January edition of…
BY ED FELIEN Please go to your DFL Precinct Caucus on Feb. 27. It’s a matter of life or death for Palestinian children. More than 10,000 Palestinian children have been murdered by U.S. bombs dropped from Israeli planes or from U.S. missiles shot from Israeli bases. A caucus is a…
BY ED FELIEN “You gotta fight like hell, or you won’t have a country anymore!” “Immigrants are poisoning the blood of America.” Trump’s racist and nativist appeal is not new. It was the crusading ideology of the Know Nothing Party prior to the Civil War. From “Mitch and John” by…
BY ED FELIEN Let a hundred flowers blossom, let a hundred schools of thought contend. For those of you who are irretrievably nostalgic about your wasted youth and want to relive the resistance to the war in Vietnam, the music and the fog of psychedelia (when you could pull up…
BY ED FELIEN 1. The U.S. is in the unique position, as Israel’s storehouse of ammunition and weaponry, to demand an immediate end to hostilities. 2. With support from the U.N., the U.S. must commit to the restoration and rebuilding of Gaza. 3. The U.S. and the U.N. must recognize…
BY ED FELIEN Erica Bouza Fragile and delicate. The last time I saw her was in their bedroom. I looked at her and almost wept. The sadness and loss she read in my eyes frightened her. But she was strong as steel when convinced of a righteous cause. I wrote…
BY ED FELIEN The Star Tribune missed an opportunity to fully explain the extent of Donald Trump’s connection to the white supremacy movement when it published “Trump denial strikes familiar tone; Professing ignorance on Hitler similar to remarks about Klan, QAnon, Proud Boys” by Jill Colvin on Dec. 28. They…
Speech by Ilhan Omar: “I am also saddened by the fact that 535 Members of Congress could come together in one breath and fully condemn the horrors of what Israelis experienced, and that there is now only a few handful of them who could get to the point of saying…
BY ED FELIEN Most Palestinians want peace. Most Israelis want peace. But Hamas and right-wing Israeli politicians know that their ticket to success is to sow the seeds of fear and loathing. If they can convince their people that there is a tiger at the gates that wants to devour…
A fond remembrance by Ed Felien My earliest memory of double dating with Marty and Martha was taking our kids (in strollers) to the Minnesota State Fair. Jennifer lost her pacifier and Marty wondered what archeologists a thousand years from now would make of it. That was almost 60 years…
Columns by Ed Felien