BY ED FELIEN What happened? A little over three years ago, on Sept. 30, 2015, you held a big community meeting with more than a hundred people at Plaza Verde to talk about the dangers of gentrification. You told Ryan Williams-Virden from the Twin City Daily Planet, “Gentrification is a…
BY TONY BOUZA The very word conjures a freighted emotional frisson we barely dare acknowledge or express. Watching “Thurgood,” a biopic on the Supreme Court Justice and the NAACP, inspired me to think of the role of Jews in America. They arrived at the Lower East Side of Manhattan and…
BY LYNN BALFOUR Anyone who has applied for employment by a Minnesota government entity (city, county, state) has the legal right to ask the employer for personnel data on the final candidates for that job and the employer is required to respond by providing such information or citing why the…
BY ED FELIEN Brad Bourn has prepared a special welcoming gift for Al Bangoura, the new superintendent of parks due to take office on Jan. 20. Almost the first thing on his desk will be the contract to hire an intergovernmental relations administrator. Last month we noted: “Park Board President…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE I’m going to assume you don’t. For the past two or three years, I have been on a quixotic quest to raise awareness about the incredible prevalence of child slave labor in the production of chocolate, and the enormous “conspiracy of silence” that leaves otherwise conscientious…
Why should your child die from a gunshot wound? The doctor has found the task a most difficult and onerous one and who wouldn’t? Dr. Marianne Haughey of St. Barnabas Hospital in Jersey City, N.Y., has been assigned victims of homicide for 25 years and one of her tasks has…
John R. Karrigan passed away peacefully on Jan. 11, 2019, at the age of 74, after a 10-month battle with metastatic melanoma. Preceded in death by his parents, Ellsworth and Vivien (Rasmussen) Karrigan, of Aberdeen, SD. Survived by his longtime partner, Bonnie Rae; siblings Steve (Lynn) Karrigan and Dave Karrigan,…
BY LEX HORAN, RECLAIM THE BLOCK On Dec. 5 the Minneapolis City Council passed its 2019 budget, which included no new funding for hires at the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), but they increased MPD’s allocation by 2.2% over its 2018 funding levels. The budget passed after extensive public testimony calling…
BY ED FELIEN Nothing can spoil Christmas quicker than hate. And racism is a special kind of hate. It dehumanizes a group, makes them less than human, and allows cops in the Fourth Precinct in North Minneapolis to treat African Americans like trash that has to be swept from the…
BY TONY BOUZA “What a great country!” The beginning of one of the many dumb jokes I love. Yet, for me, in there is contained the kernel of a central truth. Only an immigrant experiences the shock of change. I left a dictatorship (Spain) in Dec. 1937 to experience the…
BY ED FELIEN People are complaining of a smell coming from deals being made at the Park Board. Park Board President Brad Bourn appointed his best campaign worker, Kendall Killian, to a $114,000 a year consulting contract. They broke the contract into six-month periods, so it didn’t need board approval…
BY ASHLEY GREY Dear Readers, I have been showing you the most painful parts of my life for many months throughout the last two years. I suffer from schizophrenia, major depression, anxiety and PTSD. I also have dissociative episodes. At my worst I was bedridden. You guys, something has changed.…
Forgotten victims of war Recently I read a newspaper article about the so-called “comfort women” of World War II and it reminded me of my visit with several of these women years ago. Marianne Hamilton and I were in the Philippines protesting something or the other that Bill Clinton had…
COMPILED BY ELAINE KLAASSEN According to treehuggers.com, “Icelanders have a beautiful tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve and then spending the night reading. This custom is so deeply ingrained in the culture that it is the reason for the Jolabokaflod, or “Christmas Book Flood,” when the…
BY RICHARD TAYLOR When disputes become drawn out, as has the Midtown YWCA controversy, we are well advised to review the events and values that prompted Doris Overby to go signature-gathering on Aug. 20, 2018. By that time, YWCA CEO Luz Maria Frias, without inviting member input, had announced a…
