BY STEPHANIE FOX Each year, thousands of people flock to Open Streets events in Minneapolis. During these city celebrations, streets are closed to automobile traffic for blocks and people walk, bike and even skate, visiting booths and businesses along the way. But then, COVID-19 happened. In non-pandemic years, there are…
BY ELINA KOLSTAD Rep. Barbara Lee is having a well-deserved moment as the sole congressperson to have voted in 2001 against the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which granted war powers generally held by Congress to the president of the United States. Twenty years of war has long…
The desperate need for prison reform Linda Franks of Baton Rouge, La., turned a room in her beauty salon into a meeting place for the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition, exemplifying what is happening to prison reform all over the country. One example is Vanessa Fano’s brother who…
BY DEVIN HOGAN In 2005 the junior senator from Illinois – then in office for just six months – gave the commencement address at Knox College, a small liberal arts school in western Illinois. It was a speech whose themes would define his career. Knox and the city of Galesburg…
BY DORIS OVERBY Our neighborhood block club has been celebrating National Night Out (NNO) and other events together for nearly 30 years. What hasn’t changed Since our block club was established in the early 1990s, some important things haven’t changed. We know our neighbors by their first names. We know…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Downtown at Chicago Avenue’s northern terminus, the venerable Guthrie Theater is cautiously reopening. I have really ambivalent feelings about entertainment happening while the pandemic is in the situation where there are no ICU beds available, and kids are having to go back to classes with nothing…
BY KATHRYN KELLY Lake Hiawatha is impaired with phosphorus. Much discussion has happened over the past few years about how to resolve this issue. What is the solution? There are several possible solutions: (1) implement natural wetlands (called constructed wetlands), (2) control the sources of excess phosphorus, and/or (3) phosphorus…
BY JOE HESLA AND ALICIA SMITH MURC (Minneapolis United for Rent Control) You may have noticed, there is a big conversation and fight for rent control going on in the Twin Cities. In St. Paul, renters and organizers collected nearly 10,000 signatures to put a tenant-centered rent control policy on…
BY JIM SPENSLEY The “MSP airport noise problem” isn’t a real problem as much as it is a sign the airport is at the center of life-threatening health and safety problems. An apt health analogy is that hearing airport noise is like seeing the light from a forest fire on…
BY DAVID TILSEN Over 45 years ago, several of us from the Alive and Trucking Theater gathered in a small apartment in Phillips. We were called by Sandy Spieler and Ray St. Louis to discuss a vision. They believed that regular festivals helped make communities strong, and that South Minneapolis…
Minneapolis residents have inherited a convoluted system borne out of early 20th century mistrust. No one trusted anyone so no one was given power. This resulting quagmire has hampered our democratic functions as “14 bosses” oversee city department heads and no one is held accountable. The new amendment would give…
BY TONY BOUZA One of the many flaws I’ve nurtured over what seems to have evolved into an interminable stay on the planet is a serious predilection for criticism. I’m always going on about this idiot or that fool. Surely I can’t be infallible on the issues. And I am…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE New eating places and concepts and “new to me” Amazingly, new restaurants and cafes and food service “concepts” keep on opening. Three fairly recent openings, in descending order of grandness (which pretty much relates to price and that pampered, entitled feeling, but not necessarily to actual…
Robin Wonsley Worlobah is for ALL of us by Ken R. Koense, RA, NOMA Minneapolis I have lived in the Twin Cities for nearly 15 years, and Minneapolis for nearly 14. As a resident of the Longfellow community, and Cooper neighborhood, Cam Gordon has been a faithful representative for our…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Grand Avenue is not like most of the other major thoroughfares we write about. It’s the only one with two esteemed liberal arts universities on it. Which may explain why it has no less than three independent bookstores on it as well. Also, although in terms…
