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Frost Fest 2013 will be on Friday, Jan. 25, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Pearl Park. This year there will be free sleigh rides—pulled by real reindeer. Other outdoor activities include ice skating and a bonfire. Inside entertainment will include a Kid’s Dance with a DJ, children’s games, door prizes and much more. If you would like to help out, contact Courtney at the Hale, Page, Diamond Lake office at 612-548-4735 for more information.
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Undo the harm
By Ed Felien
The Hippocratic oath for doctors generally means, “First, do no harm.” The oath DFL legislators should take for the 2013 Session should probably be, “First, undo the harm already done!”
The 2012 election gave the DFL an overwhelming victory and a mandate. The Republican legislature proposed two constitutional amendments that went down in defeat: a plan to restrict voting rights by requiring a photo ID and an amendment that limited the rights of same sex couples to marry. Both amendments were a cynical ploy by the Republicans to turn out Christian evangelicals. This was the strategy that worked so well for Karl Rove in 2004 in carrying the state of Ohio for George W. Bush. But by 2012 the voters had wised up and the Republicans got whipped by backlash.
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Clyde Bellecourt
BY DAVID TILSEN
Let me tell you a little about Clyde Bellecourt. Clyde has spent his life in service to our community in Minneapolis. He started the American Indian Movement 40 years ago in Minneapolis in response to the Minneapolis police’s abusive activities in the American Indian community. The AIM patrol, a group of courageous men and women who were available to document, intervene and correct the activities of the police, played a vital role in improving the lives of many people in our community.
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Northrup school for sale again
BY ED FELIEN
The Minneapolis Public School (MPS) system is trying to sell Northrup School again. The school at 1611 E. 46th St. opened in 1923 and closed in 2005. At one point United Properties was planning on buying the property, tearing down the school and building 106 cooperative housing units for seniors, but a weakened housing market destroyed those plans.
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Letter to the editor
World is getting flatter
Dear Editor,
I believe Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” and the complex process of globalization were poorly represented in November’s article, “The ‘flat-world’ yarn falls flat in the MIA’s globalization exhibit,” by Janet Contursi, on the MIA’s new exhibit.
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Let’s make a revolution!
On Tuesday, April 16, 2013, the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party will be holding precinct caucuses. Anyone can attend and anyone can put their name forward to be elected as a delegate. Delegates elected at the precinct caucuses can attend ward conventions a week or two later. Delegates at those conventions will be asked to endorse candidates for City Council, and later at a city convention they will be asked to endorse a candidate for mayor. If, for instance, you live in the 11th or 12th Ward your council member voted to give the billionaire Zygi Wilf $650 million of our tax money to pay for his new Vikings stadium. As a delegate those candidates for re-election would have to ask for your vote. Further, you could advocate for things like municipal ownership of the electricity. Wouldn’t that be nice?
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My history with the Farmer Labor Caucus
BY ED FELIEN
I served on the Minneapolis City Council from 1973 to 1975. I lost my bid for re-election in 1975 in a close election even though I had successfully authored such outrageous ideas as: the Gay Rights Ordinance that made affectional preference a protected class in the Minneapolis Civil Rights Code; an ordinance that allowed renters to pay delinquent utility bills and deduct that amount from their rent; downzoning to prevent two-and-a-half story walk-ups from taking over our neighborhoods; and numerous anti-war resolutions. I unsuccessfully attempted to introduce rent control to preserve low-income housing, and I unsuccessfully attempted to pass a resolution calling for a feasibility study to investigate the viability of municipal ownership of the electric company.
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Save money. Save lives. Stop jailing pot smokers
BY POLLY MANN
Today as state budgets are strained to the breaking point, it seems like a good time to examine all state facilities with a view to reducing them wherever possible. Who can fault Enlightened Self-Interest? Programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should be sacrosanct, as well as programs to alleviate hunger, homelessness, etc. So what’s left? Well—there are penal institutions that have been growing by leaps and bounds. It’s even a growth industry with the construction of privately-run prisons a source of competition throughout small-town America. And it’s strictly an American phenomenon. Globally, the United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its prisoners. Prison growth has been fueled by tough drug enforcement, stringent sentencing laws, and high rates of recidivism—the re-arrest, re-conviction or re-incarceration of an ex-offender.
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Handgun control
BY TONY BOUZA
As a result of Roe v. Wade, welfare reform and contraceptive availability, the population of young criminals you and I shaped through the hopelessness of racism, joblessness and no education has been reduced, producing a peace dividend of street crime not seen since the ’40s and ’50s. NYC reached murder levels of over 2,000 per year in the’80s, now reduced to one-fourth of that total. The trend is national and under-appreciated.
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The hungry insurgent
BY CHARLEY UNDERWOOD
As I write this, the massacre of 20 young children in Connecticut is still fresh and bitter. It reminded me of something that happened at the beginning of my teaching career some 42 years ago.
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Climate change and political headwinds
BY POLLY MANN
It’s rather like a prophecy that’s come true. It’s not quite as dire as naming a date on which the world will come to an end but the recent freaky weather—the storms, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes—have made believers of many of us—politicians, scientists students and just plain citizens—in climates that “are a changing’.” So we’re paying more attention to the recent U.N. climate control conference held in Doha, Qatar. The newspaper items about it have usually been one or two paragraphs on the inside pages. So here’s my summary.
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‘Iraqis cannot forget what Americans have done here’
BY CATHY BREEN
“It is not written in our hearts, it is carved in our hearts.” I awoke this morning still shaken with these words in my head.
Yesterday I was in Ramadi and Fallujah. Instead of bringing a message of caring, of empathy for their suffering and a desire for peace, my presence as someone from the U.S. seemed to open wounds that are unfathomably deep.
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“The Shelling of Fallujah”
by Ed Felien
[from Southside Pride, December, 2006:]
The shelling of Fallujah will no doubt be remembered by Middle Eastern scholars in the same way we remember the bombing of civilian populations in Lidice and Guernica by the Nazis or the firebombing of Dresden or the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were horrible crimes against unarmed civilians.
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War in Afghanistan, what is it good for?
BY ED FELIEN
The war in Afghanistan is principally about opium. That’s what we’re fighting for.
From “Drugs, guns & democracy abroad” by Ed Felien, published in Southside Pride, November 2008:
Afghanistan has grown opium certainly as long as recorded history. Opium grew throughout the Middle East. We have evidence of opium poppies worked into the design of headdresses for Greek goddesses long before there was a written record of Greek culture. The British began to control the exporting of the drug early in the 19th century. The Opium War in China in the middle of the 19th century was a result of the Chinese government trying to forbid the British importation of opium from Afghanistan and the Middle East. The British won the war and the Chinese were forced to allow the British to sell opium. Early in the 20th century Sicilians and Italians found the opium through contacts in Beirut and had it manufactured into heroin in laboratories in Marseilles. The heroin was then smuggled into Europe and the United States. The traditional route for smugglers was over the mountains from Afghanistan, through Pakistan, then through Iran, Iraq, Jordan and to Istanbul and Beirut. The Golden Route traveled the entire length of Iran through the northern mountainous region to Iraq.
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January
Nokomis
Community Calendar
announcements
Falls 4 All Playground to be Built Next Spring
Plans are being finalized for the first Universally Accessible playground in the Minneapolis Park System. With the help of therapists from the Courage Center and Minneapolis Public Schools, the playground concept is nearly complete. This means all of our children, regardless of ability, will have a safe, fun, accessible place to learn new skills, challenge themselves, explore, interact and play, with independence and dignity, as a group and as individuals.
Volunteer Award to Southside Resident
Nokomis resident Steve Seltz will be awarded the Rookie Volunteer of the Year Award of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Upper Midwest Chapter, on Jan. 26. According to marketing and public relations director Anna Kucera, the award is given to new volunteers for the quality of their work, the number of hours they put in, and the extent to which they work on behalf of others living with MS. “We’re lucky to have him on our team. He rolls up his sleeves and gets [whatever needs to be done] done.”
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| Nokomis Religious Calendar |
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events
Revival
Tuesdays, Wednesdays & Thursdays, 7 p.m., until Feb. 28
Greater St. Paul Church of God in Christ
4001 4th Ave. S.
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January 2013 
