| |
|
 |
State Senator Patricia Torres Ray stood with striking Cub workers Tuesday, May 24, at their camp-in and hunger strike on the public sidewalk outside Cub Foods on Lake and Minnehaha. She told the crowd of about 40 supporters, “You are not here for them. You are here to protect our democracy. Our country is under attack by corporations. We have forgotten where the struggles for freedom in America come from. The strength of our democracy is in our workers. Workers need to come together and we are here today to start this unity.” And then she turned to the striking workers standing beside her and said in English and in Spanish, “Thank you for reminding us what a true democracy is all about.” |
Hunger strike ends as Bishop, Congressman Ellison, officials intercede
On Wednesday, June 1, retail cleaning workers with CTUL (Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha—Organization of Workers United in the Struggle) and their allies agreed to end a 12-day hunger strike at the request of faith leaders and elected officials who pledged to press Cub Foods management to agree to meet with the workers’ organization to discuss a proposed code of conduct.
 read more
Crime in Powderhorn
BY ED FELIEN
 |
| Doug Hill, PPNA Safety Committee chair |
There has been an unprecedented crime wave in Powderhorn, and some of our elected officials don’t seem to have noticed.
Two young African-American women from our community, Tomika Swoope and Stephanie Smith, were murdered earlier this year, and the police and the mayor have yet to make a public statement about the victims or progress in solving the crimes. The first four months in 2011 saw a 60 percent increase in burglaries in Powderhorn Park, Corcoran and Standish neighborhoods. Although this was a tragedy for some families in South Minneapolis, it didn’t distract our mayor from his principal focus of finding new ways to tax the people of Minneapolis to give a $250 million gift to the billionaire owners of the Vikings and the Timberwolves. Third Precinct Inspector Lucy Gerold says, “Officers have been working hard to reverse this trend,” and in May police arrested 11 burglary suspects and have charged eight of them.
read more
Chalchiutlicue
 |
| The Chalchiutlicue Puppet made by young people was the big hit of the march for water to Powderhorn Park Saturday, May 21. |
Last month, Ce Tempoxcalli and Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc hosted the 7th Annual community celebration in honor of the water at Powderhorn Park. The three-day event featured youth and adult presentations about the history, current issues and future of quality and access to water; Aztec dancing; and most importantly, a very political call to action asking everyone to consider, “What are we doing to protect the future of water?” Mother Nature responded with a resounding reply as rain fell in record quantities throughout all three days.
read more
Rare sighting of a Summer Tanager
BY JOHN KARRIGAN
 |
| Mallard ducklings |
I ended last month’s piece by wishing for good weather for the May Day pageant. It was a good thought, but did not happen. I think it was the coldest May Day by far, but the theme highlighting Crows was great, with many human-made crows of various shapes and sizes. There are some real Crows that enjoyed it and they have been staying around the area for all of May. They have been joined by many other birds, but not as many as I expected.
Within a few days of May Day there were newly hatched Mallard ducklings and Canada goslings. Most seem to be doing very well.
Maybe the cool, wet and inconsistent weather really is nice for ducks (and geese), as the old saying goes.
read more
Starting Over
BY ANNE WINKLER-MOREY
 It is that time of year when blooming crab apples produce amnesia, causing us to forget our February pledge: “Not one more winter.” We overdose on flowers, noses painted with the tell-tale signs of pollen. Like new mothers giddy with baby-love, we forget the pain we have just experienced and start thinking we could handle another one—another baby, another year in Minnesota.
This year, however, I will not be swayed by pink blossoms. I’m taking my job hunt and my life-partner, David, on the road for 14 months of pedaling.
read more
Easy Solutions
BY TONY BOUZA
I’m now a very old person—actually most people my age are dead—and in no mood to do much of anything, much less write a very tiring article about a tiresome business. The publisher often, flatteringly, asks me to pen something—maybe it’s just because the price is right. Anyhow, I mostly resist. I’m trying to be a Zen master of mopery.
read more
Reflecting on the work we have done together
 |
Bernadeia H. Johnson |
As I near the end of my first year as superintendent, I have been reflecting on the work we have done together. I was inspired, as I began the year, by the actor Danny Glover, who dedicates every performance to someone. It might be Nelson Mandela or the old man who guards the stage door, but he is always working for someone other than himself. This focus gives his acting purpose and makes his work more meaningful.
Following Glover’s lead, I dedicated my work this year to the 3,100 college-bound kindergarten students who entered our school doors. I made a commitment to them and to their families that they would be reading by winter break. I was pleased to announce in March that over 60 percent of kindergarten students achieved or exceeded reading at ‘level B’ or higher. At the mid-year point, approximately one-third of kindergarten students already achieved reading levels that met or exceeded those expected for the end of kindergarten.
read more
Celebrate Summer
The Twin Cities American Indian Arts Festival is a vibrant outdoor festival that celebrates American Indian arts and cultures and stimulates economic opportunity along Franklin Avenue. As the only American Indian arts festival in the Twin Cities, this free and open event celebrates the rich history and place of American Indian people in Minnesota.
read more
Good-bye Shelly
BY ED FELIEN
 |
| Sheldon Kleve |
“Why can’t you be more like Sheldy,” my motherwould say when I’d done something particularly bad. Sheldon Kleve, who my mother called Sheldy and everyone else called Shelly, was an altar boy. He went to St. Helena’s Catholic School and always looked like an angel, but the Shelly I knew also smoked cigarettes, drank beer, played the guitar and sang bawdy country-western songs.
We met in the back pews at the 9 o’clock children’s mass at St. Helena’s. I immediately recognized a soul mate. The nuns spent years trying to keep us quiet. Later, when I had a paper route delivering the Morning Tribune, I’d make sure King’s Bakery on 42nd Street was my last stop, and Shelly would slip me a powdered cinnamon donut out the side window.
read more
Eric Holder protest: serious and spirited
By Ed Felien
 |
| Deb Konechne welcoming Eric Holder to Augsburg |
Eric Holder, the U. S. attorney general, came to town on Friday, May 27, to support the City of Minneapolis’s new Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. The program is actually a duplication of a program developed in Seattle that funded a web of agencies to support youth mentoring, job training and anger regression therapy.
In Minneapolis there is little money to fund such new initiatives (responsibilities normally assumed by the County) because the State Legislature has slashed local government aid and the mayor is obsessed with trying to find $250 million dollars to give to billionaire owners of the Vikings and the Timberwolves. But Holder came to pat them on the back, nevertheless, and he met with members of the Somali community to reassure them that his agency and the FBI were not targeting Somalis or Muslims in the War on Terror, even though at times that’s the way it seems.
read more
Ryan is peddling a raw deal for you
BY JIM HIGHTOWER
 If you were being hustled to buy an insurance policy, would you trust a salesman who said, “Let’s go to a bar, have a couple of drinks, and talk it over.”? As we say in Texas: Never sign nothing by neon.
Be careful then, because Rep. Paul Ryan is coming at you—winking, blinking, and grinning—hoping to sell you on his Medicare privatization plan. Chair of the House Budget Committee, Ryan and all but four of his Republican colleagues voted to replace Medicare with this deal. The clincher in his sales pitch is that folks over 65 “would be enrolled in the same kind of health care program that [we] members of Congress get.”
Wow, you might think, Congress critters always give themselves the best, so where do I sign?
read more
|
June 2011 
