News Day

The 1968 exhibit opened October 14, to a cheerful crowd, many of whom remembered the year in different ways. At the button-making station in the lobby, a couple ordered up competing Gene McCarthy and Richard Nixon for president buttons before heading on to the rest of the exhibit. Cheerful young people, (over)dressed in “hippie” paraphernalia, guided visitors, some of who were older people wearing their own resurrected finery.  Upstairs, enjoying chili in the members’ lounge, one man held forth on how “we need to go back to the 1950s when there was real freedom and the government couldn’t tell anybody what to do, couldn’t force people to get medical treatment for a kid with cancer. That’s a violation of freedom.” Shades of the Tea Party … or was it the John Birch Society? Continue reading →

Local community councils scored a win with the St. Paul City Council’s October 12 decision to veto St. Paul Port Authority plans for a single-story warehouse/office development just a few blocks from the Central Corridor. The Union Park District Council had appealed earlier approval of the plan by city staff and the planning commission, over opposition by Union Park District Council, St. Anthony Park Community Council, and the Desnoyer Park Improvement Association. The St. Paul Chamber of Commerce denounced the city council decision. Continue reading →

Did you know the first printed news in the Americas was published in Mexico, in Spanish, more than a hundred years before Ben Franklin and English-language newspapers? And that the first printing press on the continent was brought to Mexico City in 1535? I didn’t know, until I listened to Felix Gutierrez, a professor of journalism and communication at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, when he visited the University of Minnesota in September as a guest of the journalism school. He’s an impressive scholar, and the pre-eminent historian of Latino media in the United States. Continue reading →

As I sat in the office working on a New Normal story, I heard chanting outside. Though I couldn’t make out the words or see the crowd, I knew that several groups had been organizing around foreclosure issues and Wells Fargo, so I grabbed the FlipCam and went on outside to cover what was — sure enough — a crowd chanting, “They got bailed out, we got sold out!” Continue reading →

“The State of Minnesota is facing a crisis requiring the declaration of a ‘State of Emergency.’ Paraphrasing the 1968 Kerner Commission Report, the United States is ‘moving toward two societies, one black, and one white — separate and unequal.'”

This blunt warning is part of A Crisis in Our Community: Closing the Five Education Gaps, a report on the racial disparities in education in Minnesota. Continue reading →

Take a book, leave a book — that’s the motto of the Little Free Library, an organization begun by Todd Bol in Hudson, Wisconsin. The Little Free Library arrived in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood in St. Paul in September, thanks to Sage Holben, who is supervising the Little Free Library at 4th Street and Bates, when she’s not working in the Metropolitan State/St. Paul Public Library a few blocks away.

“These libraries are ‘planted’ in front of homes and become part of a neighborhood investment,” Holben explains. “People can take a book and replace it when done, and/or add others.” She thinks this is the first and only Little Free Library in St. Paul, though she has heard that there might be one on Portland Avenue. Continue reading →

Carla Olson and John Schatz stood in front of the fenced-in, weed-covered site at 650 Pelham Monday morning, holding a sign and inviting people to sign a petition opposing the Port Authority’s current plan for development of the property. Continue reading →

Minnesotans are joining the OccupyWallStreet crowd this weekend, in at least two ways. First, there will be an OccupyMN event at the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis. Originally scheduled for the Federal Reserve Bank, the event was rescheduled to “reclaim the Government Plaza as the ‘People’s Plaza.'” The occupation/demonstration/event begins at 9 a.m., and you can keep up on late-breaking developments and changes at http://www.occupymn.org (Twin Cities Daily Planet reporter Ibrahim Hirsi will be there to cover whatever happens.) Other Minnesotans are heading to Washington to occupy Freedom Plaza in an ongoing protest. Continue reading →

Minnesota student test scores came out this week to the usual fanfare of attention, including sounding of alarms by school critics and trumpeting of successes Minneapolis and St. Paul school districts. The Minnesota Department of Education produced a really pretty Powerpoint that shows … not much change. Continue reading →

You are sitting on a bench in a mall, waiting for a friend to join you. As you wait, you write in a notebook, look around at other people, check your watch to see how much longer you have to wait.  And then the security officers arrive to question you, because writing in your notebook is suspicious behavior. After prolonged questioning, you are released, but a report is sent to local police, who will keep your record on file for 20 years in a file headed “suspicious person.”  The national security police may also have been notified that you have been stopped as a “possible terrorist.” Continue reading →