BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Lake Street rebuilding and revival Spring is a good time to talk about Lake Street. Lake Street started rebuilding in the midst of the pandemic from the destruction wrought by the anger unleashed in the George Floyd uprising. But it was slow at first. It’s stronger…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Spring 2023 dawns on a reinvigorated Chicago Avenue at 48th Street and the southward stretch. There are a couple of new incoming businesses, there are some longtime stalwarts thriving once again, there is a lively sidewalk culture, and there’s even a new transit option from Metro…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Is Uptown … political? There are several different takes on what’s going on with Uptown and Hennepin Avenue south of downtown. Psychically, Hennepin seems to lie upon a political fault line in Minneapolis. Or that’s what you might think if you read Minneapolis “Left” Twitter (which,…
BY DAVID TILSEN Ray St. Louis died in hospice on March 12, 2023. He had not been living in Minneapolis for decades, and had only visited when the Minnesota Renaissance Festival was in town. In spite of that, his work and creativity has made an impact on our South Minneapolis…
BY ED FELIEN DFL ward conventions are coming up at the end of April and the last half of May. The Ward 2 convention will be on April 30. It will be a virtual convention. According to the Minneapolis DFL, “no known candidate is seeking the DFL endorsement.” Robin Wonsley is seeking re-election. She…
BY SAND BRIM This article first appeared in CounterPunch on March 10, 2023. It is reprinted here by permission of the author. The 1973 Siege at Wounded Knee is the longest “civil unrest” in the history of the U.S. Marshal Service. For 71 days, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and members of…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Openings and closings All things old shall be made new again! Leading the Openings and Closings is a Return. The Seward Cafe held an event to announce their relaunch on Tuesday, March 14. I had to go to a caucus that night, but I managed to…
BY KATHRYN KELLY On March 22, 2023, the Metropolitan Council voted to amend the Hiawatha Golf Course Master Plan to the Nokomis-Hiawatha Master Plan. This opens a potential spigot of Met Council money to fund the Hiawatha Golf Course project. What was wrong with this vote? A Met Council member…
By Ed Felien The Mayor, the Police Commissioner, the Chief have to realize they will never regain the trust and respect of the community until they hold police officers accountable for crimes against our community. In the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Terrance Franklin, Mike Padden proved…
BY KAY SCHROVEN “The shoot first, think later approach to policing needs to stop.” – Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor Before George Floyd, before Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and before body cameras were worn by the Minneapolis police, there was Terrance Franklin, aka Mookie. The case did not get…
BY TONY BOUZA I served as an expert witness in police cases all over the country for about 20 years and wrote a book about it. A lawyer would call, describe a case, and I’d ask questions. If I liked it I’d ask for relevant documents—upon which I’d predicate my decision…
BY ED FELIEN I think Tony Bouza is correct to begin his analysis of the Terrance Franklin homicide with an account of Franklin’s encounter with police Sgt. Katherine Smulski. Smulski heard a burglary suspect had returned to the Greenleaf apartment building on Lyndale Avenue South. The apartment’s security camera footage shows…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE We published each of 2022’s Education supplements on a sort of a cliffhanger. In early March we were in the pre-strike cooling-off period for a historic strike that took place the next week. In October, it was a month until an election that would bring five…
BY KAY SCHROVEN There was plenty of sun and the temps were above freezing on Sunday, Feb. 26, as the East Phillips and Little Earth communities and their supporters celebrated Judge Edward Wahl’s recent injunction to allow the Minnesota Court of Appeals to review the activists’ request to permanently stop…
BY CAM GORDON County’s new Zero Waste Plan could end garbage burning downtown Once again, people are organizing to shut down Hennepin County’s downtown garbage burner. The burner, known as the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC), has been fraught with controversy since before it opened in 1989. “Communities have been…
