About Mary Turck
News Day, written by Mary Turck, analyzes, summarizes, links to, and comments on reports from news media around the world, with particular attention to immigration, education, and journalism. Fragments, also written by Mary Turck, has fiction, poetry and some creative non-fiction.
Mary Turck edited TC Daily Planet, www.tcdailyplanet.net, from 2007-2014, and edited the award-winning Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG, in its pre-2008 version. She is also a recovering attorney and the author of many books for young people (and a few for adults), mostly focusing on historical and social issues.
November 22, 2015 · 7:06 pm
Nekima Levy-Pounds, Erica Mauter, Bill Lindeke, and Karen Wills: these are just a few of the eloquent voices I’ve been reading over the past week. They’ve written through the police attacks on demonstrators on November 18 and through the political and police debates going on all over the Twin Cities media. I know it’s hard to keep up with the news — just compiling the information for this post took me all of Sunday afternoon. So, if you want good information and don’t want to spend all day searching for it, here’s a brief recap of the week’s events, followed by links to and quotes from some of the best of this week’s statements and analyses. Continue reading →
November 17, 2015 · 11:01 pm
Someone called police early Sunday morning. Domestic assault, they said. Paramedics helping the victim, and a man interfering with them, they said. Did he want to talk? To fight? Maybe even to apologize? We don’t know. We do know that police acted, taking Jamar Clark away from the paramedics. Minutes later, the 24-year-old black man lay on the ground with a police bullet in his head. Continue reading →
November 16, 2015 · 9:12 pm
Father Hennepin at the Falls of St. Anthony – described by Scott Russell in The Circle: “The painting shows Father Hennepin at the falls, renaming it after his patron saint. The term “discovers” is wrong. Hennepin stands in a position of authority, towering over the people sitting below him, when in fact he was a Dakota prisoner at the time. At right, the painting shows a half-naked Dakota woman carrying a heavy pack. Her lack of covering is historically inaccurate and offensive, an apparent effort to show her as uncivilized.”
Last week’s blog post on offensive, racist, and historically inaccurate art in the Minnesota Capitol sparked an intense and informative discussion between Joline Gitis, who advocated keeping the art in place in order to “provide important opportunities to discuss painful chapters in Minnesota’s history–chapters that might otherwise be glossed over or ignored” and Scott Russell, who argues that the Capitol is a place where “art should inspire people, not make some feel excluded.” Both offered thoughtful, respectful arguments, in a dialogue that played out on Facebook. I found their dialogue thought-provoking and received their permission to share it here. Continue reading →
November 15, 2015 · 8:40 am
We need stories of hope, as we remember not only Paris but also Beirut and Garissa University in Kenya and Baghdad and Syria. Karuna Ezara Parikh wrote a poem reminding us that Paris is part of a whole suffering world. In the Facebook post of the poem, Parikh writes that “… the words #SyrianRefugeeCrisis are just as devastating as #PrayForParis. It’s time to pray for humanity. It is time to make all places beloved. It’s time to pray for the world.”
Continue reading →
November 13, 2015 · 9:40 pm
Minnesota’s immigrant population — people born outside the United States — is only about 7.5 percent of Minnesota’s population. Nationwide, immigrants make up 13.9 percent of the population, so Minnesota is below average. The number of immigrants is growing, according to a September report from Pew Research Center, which projects an increase to 17.8 percent of the national population by 2065. That would be even higher than the historic high point of 15 percent immigrant population in the early 20th century. Continue reading →
November 12, 2015 · 10:34 pm
Fotolia image
Almost half a million immigration cases wait to be heard in immigration courts. The number of pending cases has doubled in six years and keeps growing. Overburdened judges handle about 1,400 cases each year, far more than any other administrative judges. In each case a person, a family, a mother or father or sister or brother, waits for a day in court. Continue reading →
November 10, 2015 · 10:06 pm
On Monday, November 9, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected President Obama’s 2014 plan to defer deportation for parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents and for young immigrants brought here as children. The president’s plan would have protected about 5 million of the estimated 11 million immigrants present in the United States without legal status. According to NPR, the Obama administration plans to appeal to the Supreme Court. Continue reading →
November 10, 2015 · 9:46 pm
Father Hennepin at the Falls of St. Anthony – described by Scott Russell in The Circle: “The painting shows Father Hennepin at the falls, renaming it after his patron saint. The term “discovers” is wrong. Hennepin stands in a position of authority, towering over the people sitting below him, when in fact he was a Dakota prisoner at the time. At right, the painting shows a half-naked Dakota woman carrying a heavy pack. Her lack of covering is historically inaccurate and offensive, an apparent effort to show her as uncivilized.”
The Minnesota Capitol features some truly awful art. Whatever the judgment from an aesthetic perspective, several paintings inside the building are awful because they are offensive, racist, and historically inaccurate. They show heroic white “discoverers,” backed by priests and angels, bringing Christianity and “civilization” to Indians in Minnesota. Continue reading →
November 10, 2015 · 7:37 pm
Last week, the United States admitted 15 Golden Retrievers, fleeing the hard life on the streets of Istanbul. The dogs were welcomed and given new homes in Minnesota, joining more than 60 others who have been admitted this year. More dogs will be coming, as efforts continue to raise money to rescue homeless dogs from Turkish streets. Meanwhile, one year after the United States launched a program for Central American children to apply for refugee status, not one child out of more than five thousand applicants has made it through the lengthy process to safety in the United States. Continue reading →
November 9, 2015 · 4:34 pm
Women at T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas began another hunger strike at the end of October. Mostly women seeking refugee status, many have been detained for prolonged periods of time in the private, for-profit center run by Corrections Corporation of America. The hunger strike began with 27 women and has grown since then. Continue reading →
Mary Turck