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The 6th Annual Art Sled Rally is Saturday, Jan. 26, starting at 2 p.m. on the western slope of Powderhorn Park between 32nd and 33rd Streets on 10th Avenue. Photo by Nick Lethert
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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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U too
top-heavy
BY ED FELIEN
The Wall Street Journal slammed the University of Minnesota administration for its bloated bureaucracy in a front page article in its Dec. 28 issue.
In the last 10 years the U has hired 1,000 new administrators according to the WSJ. That’s twice the number of teachers hired and almost twice as fast a growth rate as the student body. There were 39 administrators making more than $200,000 in 2001. Today there are 81.
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Raj’s Jungle: a linocut that goes round and round
Article and photos
by Scott Ponemone
Who would have thought that when I went shopping at Maryland Institute, College of Art’s holiday sale last December I’d end up with an 8-foot linocut. Actually, I originally had four 2-foot prints.
After sifting past tables of textiles and jewelry on the lobby level of the Brown Center, I descended the stairs to the auditorium level where student printmakers had set up a long table stacked with prints, but what caught my eye was a huge relief print clipped high up a makeshift wall behind the student salespersons.
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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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‘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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Finnish Sabbath
BY GAIL RAJALA HAYDEN
My father was born in 1914 to Otto Rajala and Alma Johansen. Otto worked the mines in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan until his body broke down. Alma, a mail-order bride, ran away to Minneapolis, leaving behind my 8- year-old father, John, his 6- year-old sister, Toini, and the baby, Ruth. That was a shocking development in the tight- knit Finnish community of Ironwood, Michigan. My grandmother Alma died four years later, still in her 20s, in a Minneapolis sanatorium for tuberculosis. She was buried in a pauper's grave my father was never able to find. This brief autobiographical sketch with its generational trauma was a part of me as I began what would become my Finnish Sabbath.
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Attend to achieve: Everyone plays a role in supporting student attendance
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Bernadeia H. Johnson, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools |
The second semester at Minneapolis Public Schools begins on Jan. 22 and with its start comes a renewed focus on making sure that students attend school so that they can achieve in school. We launched the Attend to Achieve campaign in September 2012 because we know that attendance is a critical foundation to student success, but far too many students are not attending school as regularly as they should. Study after study proves that being in school leads to succeeding in school.
When students attend school they are much more likely to achieve their dreams and enroll in college. We want all students to attend school at least 95% of the time; that means missing no more than nine days a year. Students who attend school 95% of the time do better in reading and math, have fewer suspensions, are less likely to fail a class and are more likely to have the credits they need to graduate. In fact, high school students who attend school 95% of the time are one-and-a-half times more likely to be on-track to graduate on time.
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Why is it so dark at this time of year?
BY JIM HIGHTOWER
The moon sinks low on the horizon, as though it’s trying to hide. Frightened animals flee into the woods, even though nothing seems to be chasing them. Nature has turned topsy-turvy. It can mean only one thing: The legislature is back in session.
I’ve seen enough state legislatures in action—Michigan, for example, Florida, and, of course, Wisconsin—to know that our Texas bunch doesn’t have a lock on lunacy, but we certainly have more than our share of loco lawmakers. Take George Lavender. Yes, please.
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January
Riverside
Community Calendar
Announcements
Loss in the Twin Cities Peace and Justice Community
Maggie Drew, a longstanding peace and justice activist in the Twin Cities died the day after Christmas at the age of 93. She served in the WACs in WWII, and worked tirelessly for nuclear disarmament, civil rights, social justice and against war and violence of all kinds. Maggie and her husband, Bruce, were long supporters of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
Seward Neighborhood Group Seeks Photographs for Book
The Seward Neighborhood Group has received a grant from Minnesota Historical & Cultural Grant Legacy Fund to produce a Seward neighborhood history. If anyone has photos they can lend to this project please contact Dick Westby at 612-722-2853. The history covers from the late 1800s to present. The group would especially like to find a photo of the interior of the old Ebenezer Swedish Lutheran Church (with choirs).
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January 2013 
