BY ED FELIEN I feel like Oscar in Sesame Street: “I like trash.” What’s there to do during the pandemic and forced incarceration but watch trashy action flicks on Netflix? And, after you’ve watched all the James Bond movies and “Ocean’s Eleven,” you’re left with the dregs at the bottom…
BY DAVID TILSEN This year the entire Minneapolis city government is on the ballot—the mayor, all 13 council members, the Board of Estimate and Taxation and the Park Board. All of these elected officials have been through a lot as the city has been traumatized by the pandemic, the George…
BY TONY BOUZA Our—or any—society is driven by values. We repeatedly extoll the virtues of truth tellers and honest dealers. Our airways are clogged with boasts of integrity. Our morality defines us and we emphasize these beliefs in the artifacts of culture. There are not too many statues left of…
BY STEPHANIE FOX For Kurt Vickman, making sure that everyone has enough food to eat has been a lifelong mission. Once the head pastor of The Upper Room, an activist church, Vickman ran a food shelf in the church basement. He discovered that many people would ask to pay small…
Thank you for your excellent piece on Lisa Bender, published a few issues back [all February editions of Southside Pride]. I’ve lived in my own home here in the Wedge neighborhood since 1995 and I’m a semi-retired architect. I’ve also been on various neighborhood committees, beginning at the time when…
BY ERIC SKOGLUND In years past, maybe last century, I drove past Hiawatha School Park after dark in the dead of winter and saw the lights shining on an empty hockey rink—or maybe there was a solitary figure moving across the ice, skating, I presumed. It looked so cold, inhospitable…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE “By most estimates, we’ve been living in close proximity to companion animals for tens of thousands of years. Cats, dogs and other companion animals share our homes, and often our broader environments, and … are part of our families.” This is the introduction to a wonderful…
BY ED FELIEN A concerned reader wrote, “Please urge more equitable distribution. Please cover this issue right away. White arms are being injected at a much higher rate than their percent of population.” Native Americans are 1.8 times more likely to get COVID-19 than white people. They are four times…
Julian Assange, a journalist in danger Remember him? He’s the Australian founder of the website “WikiLeaks” who ended up in a London jail on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse. He could spend the rest of his life in the U.S. prison in Florence, Colo. He was…
BY JOHN KOLSTAD Is President Biden’s proposal regarding health care the improvement we need? How does it compare to Universal Single Payer (Improved Medicare for All)? Biden’s plan reads like a campaign promo piece. He speaks in glowing terms about how great the Obama Affordable Care Act (ACA) is and…
BY KATHRYN KELLY Taxpayers have now paid almost 1 million dollars for the Hiawatha Golf Course Master Plan. When the Park Board is questioned about the viability of any feature of their plan, their response is, “It’s just a concept.” Well, I have to agree that it is truly a…
KAY A. SCHROVEN In the late 1980s Erick Everson was hanging out in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis and was a frequent and friendly face at the Simpson Shelter. He battled mental illness. When Erick was doing well, he did odd jobs in the area such as helping out at…
Question about the count? I have known Ed Felien for over 50 years and remember his newspaper, Hundred Flowers, and stopping in at his office upstairs on Cedar Avenue for coffee once in a while when I was in college. One thing I can always count on is the truth…
BY ALEXANDRA CARTER Minneapolis needs rent control. It will solve a lot of looming problems but it won’t solve all of our problems. And the more it’s watered down by the city government, the less it will help. Those were the messages in a Zoom webinar attended by over 70…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The Ward 2 Housing Forum presented by City Council Member Cameron Gordon on Feb. 21 was attended by over 70 people. A lot of the attendees were landlords, mostly small scale. The Zoom meeting was hosted by Gordon’s policy aide, Robin Garwood. Co-presenters for the forum…
