BY ED FELIEN I accuse Dustin Schwarze and Mark Ringgenberg of Murder in the Third Degree for the killing of Jamar Clark. According to Minnesota Statutes 609.195, Murder in the Third Degree happens when “Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by…

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The Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board is sponsoring the last in a series of Community Advisory Committee meetings for the South Service Area Master Plan (SSAMP) on Thursday, May 5, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Central Gym community room, 3400 4th Ave. S.  This Master Plan will create a comprehensive,…

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BY JOHN KARRIGAN I don’t have thousands of out-of-state Sandhill Cranes to write about this month, but the park water birds have been quite good. On the last day of March, three Great Blue Herons were on the lake and one or two have been on the lake almost every…

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BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE A couple of years ago, there were serious fears in some quarters that the arrival of the Seward Co-op Friendship Store on 38th Street would open a wedge (if you can pardon the pun) to gentrification of the adjacent Central and Bryant neighborhoods. Even before that,…

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An Open Letter to Mayor Hodges, I supported your election and have been grateful for your effective leadership in our community. I ask that you extend that leadership to address the need to fund more adequately the upkeep of our neighborhood parks.  Carol Becker’s article in the April edition of…

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BY ED FELIEN He was disconnected from his family when he was 4, and it seemed like he never got connected after that.  A gangsta armed robbery when he was 19 got him 41 months in prison.  He got out and got busted for smoking grass—“Rich people do it in…

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For the past five years, the Minneapolis public schools have been slowly laying off educational assistants, a classification of paraprofessional, because they don’t meet new college experience requirements different from when they were hired. At this point, there are 17 EAs left in the district, all with 25 or more…

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BY CAROL BECKER Minneapolis has 160 neighborhood parks and 49 neighborhood park buildings.  This excludes any regional parks like the Chain of Lakes or the Riverfront.  A study done last year by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board showed that we need $14 million a year to maintain these neighborhood…

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BY ED FELIEN The Vigil on the Lake Street Bridge started in 1999 when local peace groups decided to act in solidarity with the people of Yugoslavia who were standing on bridges to protest the bombing by U.S. warplanes. Marie Braun, perhaps the    principal organizer of the vigil, wrote in…

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BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE It’s been a busy year on Lake Street since our last focus article. It’s like the title of one of my favorite SF novels, “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town,” by Cory Doctorow, but with somewhat less violence. At the offices of In the Heart…

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It must be almost spring because here comes MSPIFF (the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Fest-ival).  From April 7 to 23 there will be over 250 films shown from all over the globe.  The Film Society has been showing other than mainstream films since 1962. To see the full list…

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BY CARLA WALDEMAR OUR APOLOGIES Multiple corrections are needed for the article we ran in all editions of March about Savory Bake House, the new bakery across from Merlins on 36th Avenue South. First of all, it is Savory Bake House, not Shop; and it’s on 36th Avenue, not 35th…

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BY TONY BOUZA America’s hands wring in agony over police-black tensions now characterized by the Black Lives Matter movement. What a mystery! Cops treat blacks badly. Mirabile dictu!! Look at any analysis of American social, economic or judicial life and who will you find—literally or figuratively—on the ghetto corners of…

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BY ED FELIEN National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), Women’s Strike for Peace (WSP) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were sponsoring a March on Washington in April of 1965 to protest the war in Vietnam.  Four of us piled into a small Volkswagen and drove out…

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BY ED FELIEN The recent attacks by radical Islamic terrorists in Brussels were horrifying.  Thirty-five innocent civilians were murdered. The response by Ted Cruz on Easter Sunday, after coming from church and hearing the story of gentle Jesus’ Resurrection, was to carpet bomb ISIS. Sorry, Ted, but we’re going to…

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