The cops started it

BY DEVIN HOGAN Filing for office in even-numbered years usually opens the Tuesday after Memorial Day. Per Minneapolis DFL tradition, the 2020 endorsed school board candidates met on that first Tuesday – May 26 – to file for office together, take pictures, and send out a press release. It was…

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Bloomington Avenue reopenings and new openings

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Bloomington Avenue is looking OK these days. I love to see it, because a year ago, I wasn’t sure. Businesses along Bloomington tend to be either very small and/or creative and unusual. Eateries capitalized on being cozy and intimate, and had to pivot to takeout, which…

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Magical thinking

BY TONY BOUZA Another proposed system change to reform the police. How we love gimmicks and formulaic answers. And yet, in our real lives, we mostly tend to be more practical. In the end we usually find that the person matters and the system can be manipulated. Talented folks make…

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The struggle for rent control

BY GINGER JENTZEN AND JOE HESLA The Minneapolis City Council is the ultimate decider on whether Minneapolis gets to vote on a path for rent control in the fall of 2021. Minneapolis is a majority renter city, and the rents have never been higher. According to Rent Café, in April,…

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Brought together in sorrow and a hope for justice…

BY ELAINE KLAASSEN The day before Easter, 2021, I went to George Floyd Square to meet with Marquise Bowie, a member of Agape, and Marcia Sanoden, a “make-the-world-a-better-place” reader of Southside Pride, to talk about her offer to volunteer at Agape and what that might encompass. But we didn’t sit…

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Civil disobedience and civil disorder

BY ED FELIEN On Sunday, June 27, Andrea Jenkins, the Black trans Minneapolis City Council Member, had her car surrounded by about a dozen protesters as she was trying to leave a Pride event in Loring Park. The ward she represents includes three of the four corners of George Floyd…

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Publishing the truth is not a crime

BY AMY BLUMENSHINE Independence Day reminds us of the democratic leap forward made by an audacious set of colonies to free themselves from the rule of the king. The Bill of Rights of the Constitution insisted on freedom of the press and prohibits indefinite detention and cruel and unusual punishment.…

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The race for City Council in Ward 8

BY ED FELIEN On Thursday, June 24, Southside Pride wrote to Andrea Jenkins and Julie Stroeve, the two known candidates for City Council in Ward 8. We asked each candidate to please answer the following questions and send their responses by noon Monday, June 28. Only Julie Stroeve answered the…

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Exile

BY TONY BOUZA Policing in America, today, is about where medical science was in the 19th century—desperate for reform but staggering blindly under the problems. Hacksaws, in the Civil War, got plenty of mileage. Wounds got fingered and microbes ignored. Progress came and discoveries flowed with surprising ease, right? Actually,…

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