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The Volunteers of America Residential Reentry Center and the Longfellow Community Council in collaboration with Harvest Moon Backyard Farmers and other community groups are developing a backyard garden project at the back of the Minnehaha Avenue Community Garden at 3128 Minnehaha Ave. Funded by a $10,000 grant from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, this partnership provides VOARRC residents the opportunity to learn about urban gardening and cooking so they can develop marketable job skills and become engaged in the Longfellow community.
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Can the Vikings Stadium be stopped?
BY ED FELIEN
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Council Member Gary Schiff addressed a rally of anti-stadium activists before the vote on Friday. He said, “When we passed the amendment to the charter in 1997 calling for a referendum, we said, ‘We don’t trust politicians when it comes to corporate welfare. We don’t trust politicians when it comes to sports stadiums. This is not what democracy should look like, but this is the beginning of taking our city back.’ ” |
According to the latest estimates, it looks like the Vikings Stadium is going to cost the Minneapolis taxpayers upwards of $890 million dollars over the next 30 years. And in exchange for that gift from the city, we get a traffic jam eight times a year and an empty drag on development the other 357 days.
Is there any way the stadium can be stopped?
According to the Minneapolis Charter, the City Council is required to allow the citizens to vote on whether they want to use city tax money to fund a sports stadium. In a legal opinion written for Council Member Cam Gordon, private attorney Karen Marty says: “Minneapolis Charter, Chapter 15, Sections 9 and 13, restrict the city’s authority to incur indebtedness.
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The Wisconsin recall and the long march
BY ED FELIEN
On Wednesday, June 5, Eliot Seide, director of AFSCME Minnesota Council 5, issued the following positive spin on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker surviving a recall vote in a battle over collective bargaining and budget cutting:
“Today’s recall election was another step in a long march to restore worker freedom in Wisconsin. We’re disappointed in the results of the governor’s race, but it doesn’t erase the incredible journey so many citizens made from standing in the snow and sleeping under the dome to forcing their governor to answer for dividing their state.
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Report from the petition drive
BY ED FELIEN
Last month I announced in these pages a petition drive to change the terms of office for mayor and City Council from the present four-year terms to two-year terms. I thought, with the apparent anger of the Minneapolis voters at the mayor and the majority of the City Council for sticking us with a sales tax to support a Vikings Stadium that could cost us $890 million over 30 years, there would be considerable support and energy to change the city charter to make city government more democratic and more responsive.
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The Vine Arts Center supports local artists
BY JANET CONTURSI
In the summer of 2007, visual artist Sue Kolstad rode the Amtrak from Minneapolis to Washington state, and what she saw along the way changed the focus of her art for the next five years.
Kolstad is a member of the Vine Arts Center, a nonprofit housed in the historic Ivy Arts building in the Seward neighborhood. With a mission to support arts and crafts by connecting artists with patrons and the wider public, the center provides studio and gallery space, free exhibits, and sale space in its on-site store. The center will host its fourth Spring Member Show in June, and Kolstad’s work, inspired by her Amtrak journey, will be among the exhibited works.
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Redefining healthy
BY RAINA GOLDSTEIN
BUNNAG
Being “healthy” encompasses much more than being skinny, but it is often hard for us to focus on health goals that don’t involve temporarily slimming down. Like everything in our society today, we constantly seek quick fixes. Staying healthy requires hard work, but focusing on lifestyle changes instead of temporary switches can lead to simple, long-term wellness.
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The hungry insurgent
BY CHARLEY UNDERWOOD
The other day, I learned a new four-letter word from a naturalist: “lawn.” In her view, our yards contain an invasive species that has destroyed wetlands, wasted natural resources through frequent sprinkler irrigation, crowded out native species, and created pollution through fertilizer and pesticide runoff.
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Looking forward to what comes next . . .
Congratulations, Graduates!
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Bernadeia H. Johnson, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools |
Each spring, our preschool students visit kindergarten classrooms to get a sense of what they can expect from the coming year’s big transition. They embrace their day-long challenge with a blend of trepidation and excitement, understanding on some intrinsic level that they are getting a glimpse of their future, seeing that it is close enough to touch. Although they may not have a full grasp of what is to come, they know that their lives are about to change.
Each spring, our graduating seniors prepare for their own big transition. With college and career on the horizon, they savor the last milestones of high school and proudly ready themselves to accept diplomas in front of family and friends. And as they look out across the crowd, they too know that their future draws nearer by the moment.
While our graduating seniors were once those young learners, they will soon become those graduates. This is their milestone, years in the making through diligent work and the help of teachers...
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Look for the new Franklin Ave Pedestrian Plaza
ArtPlace, a national collaboration of 11 major national and regional foundations, six of the nation’s largest banks, and eight federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, has awarded one of its largest grants:
$435,000 to the Native American Community Development Institute to construct a pedestrian plaza on Franklin Avenue at the LRT station. The Anpetu Was’te Cultural Arts Market will connect the Ventura Village and Seward neighborhoods while also creating spaces for performances and vendors.
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Confronting racism in myself and others
BY POLLY MANN
 There she was on Stephen Colbert’s show. She was beautiful. Photographs can be doctored up, but I’d seen too many of her (including the one on the book cover of “The New Jim Crow”) to be unaware. Michelle Alexander is one beautiful young woman. Besides which she’s smart—college professor smart. That’s what she is—a college professor at Ohio State University, who’s written this phenomenal aforementioned book. Not too long ago she was on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now.
But don’t get sidetracked, as I obviously have been, by Michelle’s beauty. It’s her message that’s most important. “Jim Crow” may be a vague phrase to many of you, but I grew up in Arkansas where Jim Crow was a reality. Not a human being was Jim Crow but rather an it”—unwritten proscriptions which denied black people equality under the law. The polite term for black people then and there was “colored people.” Their drinking fountains, bathrooms, schools and even eating establishments were designated “for colored people,” and should they attempt to enter those used by the rest of the population, that is, the white part, they would be removed and not too gently removed, even perhaps with police escorts.
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The filet mignon deception
 If you’re one who enjoys a steak dinner now and again, let me ask this question: Do you prefer it with a nice sauce, a side of garlicky spinach—or maybe some transglutaminase?
Trans-what-did-he-say?
Transglutaminase is an enzyme made by the fermentation of bacteria and added to meat pieces to make them stick together. Yes, “meat glue”—it’s what’s for dinner!
This is yet another dandy product from industrialized food purveyors that keep inventing new ways to mess with our dinner for their own fun and profit. Right about now, you’re probably asking yourself: “Why do they need to glue meat together?”
Glad you asked. It’s so the industry can take cheap chunks of beef and form them into what appears to be a pricey steak.
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June
Riverside Community Calendar
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Donate to groups that used to meet at Walker Church
Headwaters Foundation for Justice has graciously set up an easy way that you can donate to help the Communities United Against Police Brutality, Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee and the Welfare Rights Committee to reestablish their committees after losing their offices and everything in them in the fire that destroyed Walker Church on Sunday, May 27.
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| Riverside Religious Calendar |
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
Marriage Equality Pins
If you would like to demonstrate additional support to defeat the Minnesota constitutional amendment limiting marriage this fall, consider wearing a lapel pin stating your position. It is guaranteed to initiate discussions and it is an opportunity to have a respectful conversation. All proceeds will be used by United Methodists for Marriage Equality. The suggested donation for the lapel pin is $5. Pins are available at the Minnehaha United Methodist Church office, 612-721-6231.
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June 2012 
