Elaine Klaassen
Spirit and Conscience, columns by Elaine Klaassen
Elaine started at Southside Pride in 1996 selling ads, maintaining the religion calendar and writing articles that eventually became a column called Spirit and Conscience.
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN The book of John Karrigan’s Powderhorn Birdwatch columns is finally in print. Those who never read Birdwatch in the newspaper and fans alike can now read John’s original take on life in its many forms while enjoying an enchanting visual book. John Karrigan lived on 15th Avenue…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN I’ve started going to two writing groups that have sprung up in our neighborhood. I go every time because I love words, language and people and that’s what these groups are about. I consider myself quite limited when it comes to imagination and since I wrote factual…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Steve Floyd (not related to George Floyd) has been taking Black youth from South Minneapolis on trips to Africa since the early ’90s. Floyd feels that traveling to Africa is one thing that really works to help them heal from the effects of slavery throughout their history.…
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BY CAM GORDON The rent control debate is heating up. With the city’s rent stabilization workgroup completing its work in December, it now falls to the City Council to approve a policy and draft an ordinance if we are to have rent stabilization in Minneapolis. On Dec. 13, the 25-member…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Steve Floyd is a man with a heart for others. He has raised four children—the fifth is still under his supervision; he nurtures dozens of other youth through the Agape Movement and through his work as a mental health counselor at Change, Inc.; he makes award-winning photographs;…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN I met Marquise Bowie at George Floyd Square in February of 2021 on a day commemorating the assassination of Malcolm X. I introduced myself because he was wearing an Agape hoodie, which identified him as belonging to the group I had wanted to write about for a…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Disco T was a well-known DJ in Minneapolis. He died of brain cancer on Dec. 31, 2021. At his memorial event, on his birthday, Feb. 19, everyone spoke of him as a legend, an icon. He was beloved and admired. I knew him by his given name…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN “The Times They Are A-changin’ ” is ever true. Sunday, Sept. 12, was a “bittersweet” morning, said Bethany’s Pastor Jeffrey Schulz at the final worship service of Seward neighborhood’s Bethany Lutheran Church. An ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) congregation at 25th and Franklin Avenues, it was…
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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…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN The day before Easter, 2021, I went to George Floyd Square to meet with Marquise Bowie, a member of Agape, and Marcia Sanoden, a “make-the-world-a-better-place” reader of Southside Pride, to talk about her offer to volunteer at Agape and what that might encompass. But we didn’t sit…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Former Minneapolis Chief of Police Tony Bouza at 92 has written “Confessions of a Police Misfit,” a short autobiography that covers a long life filled with remarkable experiences and observations. Along the way, he has much to say about history, current affairs, his peers, anyone else on…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN On Thursday morning, June 3, my neighbor texted me. She said they were opening up the streets at George Floyd Square!! And Agape guys were helping them. I already knew that Agape, a community organization committed to the well-being of young Black men and made up of…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Kelly Neumann, principal/owner of Neumann Law Group based in Michigan, came to Minneapolis on April 15 to meet with Agape because she felt that giving a donation remotely didn’t mean as much. In her remarks to the group, she said the time has come when “we can’t…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN If you go to 38th and Chicago, the corner where George Perry Floyd Jr. was killed by a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck, you will see that the people have claimed the intersection as a free state, an autonomous zone of nonviolence and anti-racism. They…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN At 38th and Chicago, where George Floyd was killed on May 25, the streets are blocked off so traffic can’t go through the intersection. Inside this space are many flowers, murals, a medic tent, daily community meals, a library, food giveaways and a group called Agape (unconditional…
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