BY ED FELIEN Guilty! Guilty, as judged by the whole world. Everyone saw what happened. Millions watched 17-year-old Darnella Frazier’s iPhone video of Derek Chauvin squeezing the life out of George Floyd. The world was outraged. And local politicians acted surprised. Mayor Frey said, “That there will be Black Minneapolis…
BY TONY BOUZA Nostalgia is morbid homesickness. We are all susceptible. Take, for example, the Stenvig Years. The Seventies. Charles Stenvig, the president of the police union, got elected mayor three times for two-year terms, almost explicitly on the premise he’d control Black riots. The echoes I hear are of…
BY SAFIYO MOHAMED One of the tragedies of 2020 was the killing of George Floyd. George Floyd’s murder, caught on video, was one of the worst police killings that America has ever witnessed. I couldn’t imagine this happening in America where I believe the vast majority of people respect human…
Thank you, Southside Pride, for showing a picture of Chief Arradondo on the front page of your April edition. Thank you for quoting Chief Arradondo regarding his words at the Derek Chauvin trial: “It’s not part of our training, and it is certainly not part of our ethics and our…
BY TONY BOUZA In the English history of man the wise (Homo sapiens) there has never been even one who didn’t consider him(her)self a national leader. It might tempt you to ask—then where are all those cockups coming from? People—leadership is in short supply. Just looking at our last few…
Conscientious objection Conscientious objectors of every generation have heard some version of this: “Your freedom to be a conscientious objector was won for you by the military you refuse to join and the wars you refuse to fight.” Yet, those same generations have seen the military used to suppress the…
BY ED FELIEN Daunte Wright was pulled over in Brooklyn Center while driving his parent’s car for driving with expired license tabs. The officer in charge, Kim Potter, was a 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Park Police Department and former head of the police officer’s union. She was training new…
BY KAY SCHROVEN When the going gets tough, the tough get going, right? Last spring, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, when chaos and violence erupted on East Lake Street, Father Joseph Gillespie, O.P. (aka: The Patron Saint of Cautious Optimism) of St. Albert the Great Catholic…
For all of us, President Biden, stop the Enbridge tar sands oil pipeline from traversing Minnesota. I spoke at my court hearing in Aitkin, Minn., last week. After eight years of fighting pipelines within the law, I needed to civilly, disobediently, say STOP, no more. This pipeline is wrong. It…
The queen on the hill I am writing about the article Ms. Kathryn Kelly wrote for Southside Pride about Minneapolis Park Board Commissioner Steffanie Musich that appeared on the front page of the March 2021 Nokomis edition. I want to express two concerns I have about the piece: It was…
BY ED FELIEN Two tormented 21-year-olds unleashed a storm of death and sorrow last month in Atlanta and Boulder. Why? There are no easy answers. They were both victims of bullying. Robert Aaron Long was bullied by his evangelical church to hate and fear his natural need for sexual expression.…
BY ED FELIEN There was a lovely piece in the Pioneer Press in February about Bryan Ring bringing help and hope to the homeless camped out near Sheridan Park in North Minneapolis: “Stillwater man is godsend to people living in Minneapolis homeless camps.” “He brings sleeping bags, food, hand warmers,…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE You probably did not guess when you read my “Saving the Earth like we mean it” piece a year ago (https://southsidepride.com/2020/04/13/saving-the-earth-like-we-mean-it/) that it was only Part I of an ongoing exhortation. Even worse, this is the agitprop equivalent of a good-cop-bad-cop routine, and last year was…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE I’m not sure but I think spring on Lake Street might be the first neighborhood spotlight piece to get a second COVID treatment. According to the sparse feedback I get, this formula works—for COVID, and it should work for the gradual emergence and recovery from it—so…
BY TONY BOUZA The awful, awful thing about bureaucracy is its cold indifference. Many of my colleagues sought comfort, salaries and pensions while wallowing in self-pity and whining like gold medalists. Humanity was the great missing thing. Shortly before I left policing—for the first time voluntarily—we had an awful murder—Cindy…
