Category Archives: Uncategorized

The terrorists win when they make us become more like them.

They win when we imprison Uighurs at Guantanamo for years and then, finally admitting they are not guilty of any conceivable charges, keep them in prison because they now have no place to go. (And, of course, it’s unthinkable to make amends by admitting them to the United States and providing counseling and rehabilitation to make up for what they have endured.)

They win when a whistle-blowing MP is arrested and his computer and Blackberry and papers are searched and seized.

They win when national political conventions become an automatic occasions for beefing up security forces and crying “the communists are coming and they are going to destroy our country!” Oops — showing my age. Today’s security motto is “the anarchists are coming and they are going to destroy our city!”

The War on Terror followed the War on Drugs followed the Cold War. War rhetoric provides excuses for super-patriotism, denunciation of enemies foreign and domestic, and a host of “war powers” enshrined in the Smith Act, the Patriot Act and presidential, above-the-law directives on surveillance.

Time for a change.

Tis the season to shop, which I have never considered a great pleasure. MOA is my idea of torture, and I’m a conscientious objector to Walmart.

Walmart and McDonalds are among the few businesses not struggling as we head deeper into the recession. As people tighten their belts and cut spending, they “down-scale” their expenditures, and these two giants both profit from their down-scale images.

I do like giving gifts, and not everyone needs another loaf of cranberry bread. Luckily, local options abound. Black Dog Cafe hosts a local craft sale for artists and near-artists today (November 29). Ginkgo Coffeehouse has a similar event on December 13. Ten Thousand Villages offers fair-traded gifts from around the world, with Mennonite values supporting local artisans and benefit nights supporting Minnesota non-profits.

Turck’s Trees, my brother and sister-in-law’s tree farm offers a gift shop in addition to trees, wreaths, hayrides and reindeer. Steve and Joan have been raising trees on the family farm for decades, and the shop features lots of locally-made consignment crafts.

Supporting locally-owned business and local craftspeople and artists and bakers and coffee-makers keeps my dollars circulating in the local economy. I feel neither an obligation nor a desire to contribute to Walmart — or Wall Street.

Koko lives at Turck’s Trees.

I know that a cappuccino costs more at Blue Moon or A Fine Grind than it does at McDonalds. But that’s not the point. I save money by brewing my own coffee or tea most of the time. When I go out for coffee, I want to see local art instead of plastic clowns. I want to chat with a barista who lives in my neighborhood, not a drive-through squawk box. I want to sit down in a comfortable chair, and see who else comes through the door.

As Minnesota 2020 reports:

Each $1 spent with a local, independent business keeps 68 cents at home and circulating in the Minnesota economy. About 43 cents of the $1 spent at national chains that do not have headquarters in the state stays behind to boost the local economy. …

[I]f Minnesotans spent 25 percent of their holiday shopping budget on Minnesota made products, the impact would ripple through the economy like a tidal wave and have small and local business people hiring more employees. That would make more than a $2 billion infusion into the state economy. Even a 10 percent increase in purchases of local products would stimulate employment and increase entrepreneurs’ purchases from local suppliers.

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Geoffrey Canada wants to save all the children. In the Harlem Children’s Zone, a “97-block-laboratory in Central Harlem,” the Harlem Children’s Zone programs run from Baby College through high school, providing effective (and expensive) support to parents and children with the goal of changing the lives of poor children. Canada’s vision goes beyond the Harlem Children’s Zone, to the hope of creating a model that can be replicated in other neighborhoods, other cities, other places where class and race conspire to defeat families and destroy the hopes of children.

Paul Tough covered the Harlem Children’s Zone for the New York Times. this book provides an admiring — but not hagiographic — portrait of Canada and a clear-eyed look at the successes and the failures of his project.

But Tough goes beyond the Harlem Children’s Zone to summarize the national debate on race, poverty and education, with particular attention to competing views published since the 1960s. He identifies two competing explanations:

One explanation blames powerful social and economic forces beyond the control of any individual. This belief holds that it is the very structure of the American economy that denies poor people sufficient income, and so the appropriate and just solution is to counter those economic forces by providing the poor with what they lack: food, housing, and money. The opposing explanation for American poverty is that it is caused by the bad decisions of poor people themselves and often perpetuated by the very programs designed to help relieve its effects. I fthis theory is correct, what the poor need is not handouts but moral guidance and strict rules.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, James S. Coleman, Charles Murray, William Julius Wilson … Tough reviews the reports, and then asks the right questions.

In some ways, the verdict is still out on the Harlem Children’s Zone and whether it can truly transform the culture of poverty in a community. Even if it does, larger questions about cost and replication remain. The questions take on new significance in view of the campaign statements that Barack Obama made in 2007:

If he were elected president, Obama went on to say, “the first part of my plan to combat urban poverty will be to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in twenty cities across the country.”

View all my reviews.

Growing Up White: A Veteran Teacher Reflects on Racism by Julie Landsman

rating: 4 of 5 stars
In her newest book, Julie Landsman looks unflinchingly at her life, from childhood through college, marriage, teaching and retirement. She recounts early experiences of race and racism, growing up in Connecticut, Massachusetts and, for a few years, in Texas. In college during the sixties, she began to engage issues of race — and gender and class. Activism “lit a fire under me,” she writes, and it is clear that the fire continues to burn.

Landsman’s stories illuminate today’s continuing racism. While acknowledging the progress made over the decades, she clearly describes the continuing significance of racism today. Her students feel the racism in their daily lives and in their classrooms. Adult friends, too, experience it.

“What all this makes clear, as when black friends are stopped for no reason walking to church in a ‘good’ neighborhood, when Latino friends’ children are automatically placed in lower track classrooms, when brown skinned kids are followed in stores, while their white friend are left alone, was this: my black friends continue to experience this country differently.”

After decades of teaching, Julie Landsman distills her life experience and her teaching experience into lessons for other teachers. In Growing Up White, she re-tells some stories from A White Teacher Talks About Race (2002, Rowman & Littlefield), and adds many more stories, all drawn from her life experience.

While Landsman writes about racism, and encourages white readers to identify and acknowledge their own racism, she does not want her readers to wallow in guilt.

Guilt is a way to center the problem in ourselves, to claim attention for our sense of shame. We can get so caught up in this shame that we cease to focus on the world around us. We can miss reasons for whole families’ homelessness, or the effects of the closing of public spaces, libraries, parks and what this might mean for our students and their families. In guilt, we get to turn inward and stay there.

Her aim is clarity and understanding, followed by action. Each of the short stories, framed as 45 lessons, end with reflection questions and suggestions for in-school applications. Those reflection questions and suggestions are also collected in one place in an appendix.

While I liked the smoother narrative structure of her earlier book better, this lesson-reflection-suggestion structure may work well for the classroom teachers who are the intended audience of this book.

One quibble: the book deserves better editing. When I read that what students read can have a “radical affect” on them, or see a reference to “Laura Ingles Wilder,” (p. 41) I am momentarily derailed. A decent job of editing would have caught such errors and corrected them. I’ve been on both sides of books, as an editor and as an author, and I know how much good editing can do for a book.

View all my reviews.

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre

rating: 5 of 5 stars
The wanted man at the center of LeCarre’s latest becomes a deeper mystery, even as more is revealed at every turn of the plot. Set in Germany, the book pulls in Russia, Chechnya and Turkey in its opening chapters. The storyline moves from international banking to Islamist intrigue. As the multi-national cast of characters struggle to make sense of the political twists and turns, none gets a full story of what is happening, and the key characters’ motivations are a complex blend of each one’s individual psychology and political commitments. Refugees, a human rights lawyer, a banker, master spies of the old school and their post-9/11 politicized masters struggle to survive, to preserve integrity, to win the game, as they tumble toward an all-too-believable conclusion.

View all my reviews.

As the economy tanks, it’s tough to know where to start covering it. Today’s announcement that Intermedia Arts is closing its gallery and laying off all full-time staff is one example of the human consequences of the recession, and the impact on our community. Last week Neighborhood House announced a 18 percent budget cut, which might play out in various ways. One way: 18 percent of their 75-person staff would be 10-15 people. At Teatro del Pueblo, the doors are staying open but all staff are taking cuts in hours. The Home of the Good Shepherd is closing, due to lack of funds to support its mission of sheltering homeless women. That means another 11 people without jobs. These are just a few examples of the impact of the recession on local non-profits.

Then there is the drumbeat of media news–most recently the Star Tribune’s offer of more “voluntary” buyout packages. Sure, the individual buyouts are voluntary, but the threat of bankruptcy looms over everyone, and the Strib has specified positions where it would welcome volunteers, including metro columnists (think Nick Coleman, Kathy Kersten, James Lileks and CJ) and editorial cartoonists. The buyout memo comes after last week’s cuts at KSTP-TV and continuing media lay-offs across the country.

Nationally, more than half a million jobs disappeared in November, with official unemployment rising to 6.7 percent. Minnesota’s November unemployment figures will be out later this week.

We are working on a story about St. Paul Ford plant workers, laid off until January without pay. We will be telling other stories of local people, companies and organizations hit hard by the recession. If you have a story to share, contact me at editor@tcdailyplanet.net.

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Virgil Flowers is back, and a more interesting character with each new book. The premise of this book seems a little far-fetched, but the action is fast-paced as ever. Virgil gets to chase the murderers while Lucas Davenport frets over the upcoming arrival of the RNC in MN. The characters are well-drawn, complex and sympathetic (including the bad guys). As usual, even the minor characters have interesting voices.

View all my reviews.

by Mary Turck • 10/23/08 • The Strib and the PiPress give strangely different accounts of an RNC-related guilty plea.

Star Tribune: A 23-year-old Michigan man has admitted to plotting to detonate a homemade bomb in the tunnels near the Xcel Energy Center, hoping it would cause a power failure and prompt cancellation of the Republican National Convention.

Pioneer Press: Although he pleaded guilty, he said he intended the explosives to be used only for “self-defense.”

“By encouragement, I mean it was made very, very easy for me,” he said. He said the informant drove him to various stations to get gas.

Star Tribune: On Aug. 22, DePalma allegedly made two jugs of a homemade napalm-like substance for use in the Molotov cocktails. He was seen traveling to a remote location in Rosemount to allegedly assemble and test the Molotov cocktails.

Pioneer Press: DePalma made five of the explosives. He and the government informant blew up two to test the design, and the FBI seized the other three.

Pioneer Press: The judge noted that under federal sentencing guidelines, DePalma could be sentenced to 46 months to 57 months in prison and be fined as much as $100,000.

by Mary Turck • 10/8/08 • Army Col. Michael Boatner admitted October 7 that active-duty U.S. military were sent to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention. Col. Boatner, the future operations division chief of USNORTHCOM, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that the army was “up there in support of the US Secret Service. We provided some explosive ordnance disposal support of the event.”

Col. Boatman denied that the army did any intelligence sharing. “They were just doing routine screens and scans of the area in advance of this kind of a vulnerable event,” he said. “It’s pretty standard support to a national special security event.”

This discussion follows the publication of an Army Times article last month announcing training of a U.S. Army unit for domestic operations under the control of U.S. Army Northern Command.

Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, expressed grave concern: “Now the Pentagon is doing sweeps of areas before, you know, a political convention? That used to be law enforcement’s job. That used to be domestic civil law enforcement job. It’s now being taken over by the Pentagon. That should concern us.”

The disclosure of U.S. Army operations at the RNC highlights the still unanswered questions about security forces there.

The RNC was designated as a national special security event. When the Secretary of Homeland Security designates a National Special Security Event, ” the Secret Service assumes its mandated role as the lead agency for the design and implementation of the operational security plan. The Secret Service has developed a core strategy to carry out its security operations, which relies heavily on its established partnerships with law enforcement and public safety officials at the local, state and federal levels.” (Secret Service web site)

Security forces deployed at the RNC included Hennepin and Ramsey County sheriff’s departments, Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments, the University of Minnesota police department, Minnesota Highway Patrol, National Guard, suburban and rural police, and out-of-state police. The Secret Service was here. The FBI was here, and active in raids on homes before the convention. And now it’s official — the U.S. Army was here as well.

The latest disclosure highlights many still-unanswered questions about security at the RNC:

• Who gave the orders for raids on private homes and the political headquarters of protesters? We know the FBI was involved, but what was the nature of their involvement?

• Who ordered the arrests and detentions of journalists and harassment of photographers in the weeks before the convention?

• Who searched the computers and cell phones and cameras of those who were detained?

• Where did the information seized from computer hard drives and cell phones and camera memory cards end up?

• What federal agencies now have the name-and-address information and the photos of people who were temporarily detained but never arrested or charged with anything?

And then there’s the $100,000 question: Will the investigation headed by former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger even address these issues?

by Mary Turck, 10/2/08 • The media’s job is to report the news, and that includes reporting inconvenient facts that contradict the “official stories” about the RNC.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher declared September 24 that the city of St. Paul endured “eight hours of chaos and mayhem” and that if police had not acted forcefully, “this town would have been destroyed” on September 1, the first day of the Republican National Convention. (St. Paul Pioneer Press, 9/25/08; Star Tribune, 9/29/08)

These uncritical reports of Sheriff Fletcher’s news conference show a failure of reporting. Instead of simply repeating the sheriff’s heated rhetoric, journalists need to look for evidence and report whether his statements are accurate.

One example illustrates the need for more careful reporting. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press article, Fletcher said that police had shown great restraint and that officers in riot gear were not deployed until about 3 p.m. I was on the streets of downtown St. Paul by early afternoon on September 1. So were hundreds of other journalists, and hundreds of police in riot gear. I have videos and photos of police in riot gear lining the streets at 12:30 p.m. I am willing to bet that Star Tribune and Pioneer Press photographers do, too.

Photos from my video at 7th and St. Peter at approximately 12:30 p.m. on September 1

Sheriff Fletcher apparently missed the riot gear deployment. If he is wrong–by three hours–about when police in riot gear were deployed, then what else is he wrong about? That’s a basic question that the media need to ask and answer. Our job is to ask questions and find the truth, not to uncritically report the words of public officials.

Chaos and Mayhem?

What, exactly, is the “chaos and mayhem” that Sheriff Fletcher is talking about? What, exactly, is the “extensive damage to the city” that the Star Tribune editorial page (9/3/08) said was justification for “an appropriate show of police force”?

I have seen no reports of injuries to police or convention delegates, only of injuries inflicted by police on protesters, journalists and bystanders. Police booking records reveal no reports of guns fired or bombs exploded. News stories tell of half a dozen broken windows, maybe a dozen cars with flat tires, and miscellaneous damage to trash containers and newspaper boxes.

After the convention, the Minnesota Daily (9/8/08) talked to U of M police chief Greg Hestness, who had four officers detailed to the RNC. According to the report, “Hestness said the RNC protests were far tamer in his opinion than the protests following the 2003 Gopher hockey riots when ‘strictly alcohol-fueled’ students took to the streets starting fires and causing damage all over the University.”

Of the 280-plus people arrested on September 1, only three were booked on charges of criminal damage to property. Of the 700-plus people arrested in St. Paul during the RNC, only 13 have been charged with felonies committed during the four days of the convention. (Eight more — the RNC Eight — were jailed before the convention on charges of “conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism.”)

Challenge to the media

When the media reports–and we should report–that Sheriff Fletcher claims to have saved the city of St. Paul from destruction, then we also need to report facts that enable the public to decide whether or not they believe him.

At the Twin Cities Daily Planet, part of our mission is to dig for enough facts to raise challenging questions. I wish we had a research staff to dig deeper and get all of the answers, but we do not. I think the big guys — the mainstream media — should be assigning researchers and reporters and digging deeper for information such as:

• Who was injured during the RNC and what were the injuries?
• Exactly what property damage occurred?
• How many people were arrested, and what happened to each of them?
• What was the command structure of the security forces assembled for the RNC? What was the role of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security?
• What was seized in searches of residences and the Convergence Center during the pre-emptive raids before the RNC?
• What residences have been searched AFTER the RNC, and what has been seized in these residences?

At a minimum, raising the questions lets people know that the full story has not been told. But the mainstream media has an opportunity to do much more. They have the opportunity — and the resources — to reclaim journalism’s role of finding and speaking truth, rather than acting as stenographers for power.

Mary Turck is the editor of the Twin Cities Daily Planet.