BY TRISH STACHELSKI On July 15, I attended the Women for the River’s Rally at Shell River Campground in Shell City in Wadena County, Minn., where Winona LaDuke and her organization Honor the Earth have been camped since the beginning of summer. All people were invited to participate in a…
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 TONY BOUZA Another proposed system change to reform the police. How we love gimmicks and formulaic answers. And yet, in our real lives, we mostly tend to be more practical. In the end we usually find that the person matters and the system can be manipulated. Talented folks make…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Dining rooms reopened and indoor café returns The Seward branch of Pizza Lucé has opened its dining room. Quite a few other Lucés have been open for indoor and patio dining for a while now. But this one doesn’t have a patio, so that may have…
BY GINGER JENTZEN AND JOE HESLA The Minneapolis City Council is the ultimate decider on whether Minneapolis gets to vote on a path for rent control in the fall of 2021. Minneapolis is a majority renter city, and the rents have never been higher. According to Rent Café, in April,…
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…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE When you live in south Minneapolis, your only knowledge (if any) of Highland Park in St. Paul may be Ford Parkway and its mostly upscale businesses. That’s because Ford Parkway is accessed via the bridge over the Mississippi River which is at East 46th Street on…
BY ED FELIEN When I was a small boy attending Mass at St. Helena’s Church, I remember a sermon by my favorite priest, Father Don Schnitzius. The way Father Don told the story of The Ten Talents was slightly different from Matthew, Chapter 25, but the message was essentially the…
BY ED FELIEN On Sunday, June 27, Andrea Jenkins, the Black trans Minneapolis City Council Member, had her car surrounded by about a dozen protesters as she was trying to leave a Pride event in Loring Park. The ward she represents includes three of the four corners of George Floyd…
BY STEPHANIE FOX Minneapolis YWCA The YWCA has three Minneapolis locations, Downtown, Midtown and Uptown, and all were busy with activities and events. Then came the pandemic and things changed. During the governor’s shutdown the only thing open was child care. While the mandate eliminated most sports, activities that could…
BY AMY BLUMENSHINE Independence Day reminds us of the democratic leap forward made by an audacious set of colonies to free themselves from the rule of the king. The Bill of Rights of the Constitution insisted on freedom of the press and prohibits indefinite detention and cruel and unusual punishment.…
BY TONY BOUZA Policing in America, today, is about where medical science was in the 19th century—desperate for reform but staggering blindly under the problems. Hacksaws, in the Civil War, got plenty of mileage. Wounds got fingered and microbes ignored. Progress came and discoveries flowed with surprising ease, right? Actually,…
