Occupy Homes arrested on trumped up charges
Occupy Homes MN Press Release: On May 30, 15 community supporters were peacefully arrested at the foreclosed Cruz family home, linking arms and sitting on the front stoop. Though they were originally charged with trespassing, the city decided to escalate the charges. Many of these protesters now face charges of third degree riot, a gross misdemeanor that could lead to a year in prison and a $3,000 fine.
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Batman, The Joker, Nazis and the culture of violence in America
BY ED FELIEN
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Oscar Wilde
 Should we blame the Batman movies for the tragedy in Aurora? After murdering the people in the movie theater, James Holmes put his guns in his car and calmly told the police, “I’m the Joker.” He had booby-trapped his apartment so that anyone entering it would have set off massive explosions probably killing many more people. This begins to sound like “The Dark Knight,” where The Joker blew up a hospital because he was frustrated in getting revenge.
What explains the perverse pathology of The Joker? At one point in the movie he says he mutilated himself in sympathy with his wife who had been scarred by a knife, but later he says: “You wanna know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker and a fiend. And one night he goes off crazier than usual.
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Why don’t we get to vote on it?
BY ED FELIEN
On May 25 the City Council voted to accept the legislation that authorized the State of Minnesota to collect $150 million in sales taxes generated in the City of Minneapolis to pay for the construction costs of a new Vikings stadium. The $150 million is just the beginning. The total cost with escalating maintenance costs could run from $675 million to $890 million.
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Local art on display:
Greg Lipelt and Lydia Kulesov
BY JANET CONTURSI
 Greg Lipelt has some advice for Minnesota painters: Lighten up! This man on a mission is urging artists to use more high-key colors and paint for themselves, rather than for the art market. Greg lives in the Bancroft neighborhood, but as a plein air painter his studio is the great outdoors. He spent most of his working life as a commercial illustrator, focusing on precision drawing and catering to demanding clients. Now nearing retirement, Greg paints what he wants,
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The hungry insurgent
BY CHARLEY UNDERWOOD
This past April, when most gardens still looked like dirt, we were already enjoying green salads picked from our yard. The salads were made from the young leaves of a basswood tree, grape vine, a few dandelion leaves, plantain (a common weed) and a few early sprigs of lettuce from a raised bed in my front yard. With a little salad dressing on top, it was a tasty celebration of early spring.
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Polly goes home to Arkansas and finds Walmart
BY POLLY MANN
Pole Cat Creek, Toad Suck Park, Pig Trail Scenic Highway and Eat Buck Nekkid Barbecue—these were some of the highway signs my friend and I encountered on a recent trip from the Twin Cities to Hot Springs, Ark. It was a memorable vacation. The most interesting place we visited was in the town of Bentonville in northwestern Arkansas, home of Walmart, Sam Walton’s corporate empire.
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WRC goes to Ramsey County welfare office to protest grants
BY KIM DEFRANCO, MEMBER OF WELFARE RIGHTS COMMITTEE
On July 26, 2012, the Welfare Rights Committee (WRC) held a kickoff campaign to raise the welfare grants. The MN Family Invest Plan (MFIP)’s grants to families have not been raised since 1986. That’s 26 years of families struggling far below the poverty level. That means 26 years of Minnesota politicians deciding to sentence children to poverty and homelessness.
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Our hearts go out to the Sikh community in Oak Creek
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN
We grieve with the Sikh community in Wisconsin in the aftermath of the tragic shooting that occurred on Aug. 5. We join others in Minnesota who have offered their support. A Day of Prayer was held Aug. 12 by the Minnesota Conference of Churches. The Muslim group CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, issued a statement: “… American Muslims stand with their Sikh brothers and sisters in this time of crisis and loss. We condemn this senseless act of violence … “
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Rest in Peace, Lauren Maker
I sent an e-mail to Lauren Maker at 1:25 on Friday, July 27. I’d been working on a writ of mandamus ordering the city to hold a referendum allowing the citizens of Minneapolis to vote on whether to financially support a new Vikings stadium almost nonstop for a week.
I sent it to her knowing she’d give me an honest and expert analysis of its hopes and dreams. After I sent it, I looked through my latest e-mails and found this from Annie Young:
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The Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare: A physician’s perspective
BY ANN SETTGAST
The day the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was upheld by the Supreme Court was ironic for me as a physician. Two of my patients asked me to prescribe medication for uninsured family members: A mother asked me for an inhaler for her adult son with uncontrolled asthma, and another asked me if I could refill her husband’s blood pressure medications for a month or two until he is able to find another job following his lay off. He cannot see his doctor due to his uninsurance.
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Soft necks will not be slaughtered
BY KATHY KELLY
and DR. HAKIM
Abdulhai remembers his father being killed by the Taliban. “Anyone who takes up a weapon in revenge, whether the Talib or any other, is acting like the Talibs who murdered my father,” he says, in a matter of fact way. “The solution does not lie in taking revenge, but in people coming together like the people of Egypt to defend themselves in a nonviolent way.”
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Listener’s Guide to a Bob Dylan Concert
By Ed Felien
First thing you have to understand is, he’s not going to sing to you. He snarls. That’s what you paid to hear--some 71 year old guy dressed up in a band uniform with a fancy cowboy hat, snarling at you like a cross between James Dean and Arthur Rimbaud. The thing is that guy also happens to be the best poet this country has heard since Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. His songs were the anthems of a protest movement that started with sit-ins in the South, moved to try to stop the war in Vietnam and helped to redefine acceptable relationships between men and women. And Dylan was there through all of it, cheering us on and denying he had anything to do with it.
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August
Riverside Community Calendar
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dowling Community Garden Anniversary
Dowling Comm-unity Garden, one of two remaining community Victory gardens from World War II, is preparing to celebrate its 70th anniversary in 2013. Any person who has stories or pictures from Dowling Comm-unity Garden willing to share them for this occasion is asked to contact the garden at 4736 Coffey Lane, Mpls. 55406, or call 612-722-3072.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
Toothpaste for Refugees
When new refugees arrive to Minnesota, the Minnesota Council of Churches Refugee Services supplies them with basic items for health and well-being. One of those items is toothpaste, and current supplies are quite low. Donations can be brought to the Minnesota Church Center at 122 W. Franklin Ave., Suite 100. Contact Kristin with questions at 612-230-3219 or at rsvolunteers-@mnchurches.org.
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August 2012 
