Minnesota Voices

Minnesota Voices is a TC Daily Planet feature that highlights individuals from many different places in our community. They are not just the usual voices who are quoted in news stories and appear on editorial pages (though those people may appear from time to time), but artists, business owners, community organizers, teachers, and more.

Minnesota Voices stories are, above all, interesting and personal. These stories are NOT dry, formulaic, or the same old, same old message that a lobbyist or advocate has given sixteen times already. Minnesota Voices focuses on who people are and what they do in the world, and on what motivates their lives. For information about writing a Minnesota Voices article, click here. 

MN VOICES | Tireless women needed

By Patricia Torres Ray, Minnesota Women’s Press

When I moved to Minnesota over 20 years ago, I was a young immigrant who had arrived in the U.S. thinking that everyone here lived well, like the Americans I grew up watching on TV. It did not take me long to learn that, though Minnesota was a rich and prosperous state, there was deep and abiding poverty here, that communities of color bore the brunt of it, and that children of color carried the heaviest load. 

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MN VOICES | Toua Xiong, Immigrant of the Year

By Mary Treacy, TC Daily Planet

Minnesotans' penchant for farmer's markets surges to the surface each spring.

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MN VOICES | Majdi Wadi and Holy Land in Minneapolis

By Mary Treacy, TC Daily Planet

Immigrants have always discovered, then defined, Northeast Minneapolis.  Still, in a neighborhood that boasts of its ethnic heritage, Majdi Wadi is mythic.  For more than 15 years Northeast residents have flocked to his Holy Land bakery and deli on Central near Lowry for hummus, cheese, olives, dates, nuts, pita, olive oil, and an array of delicacies, unknown to many locals, but treasured fare for the Muslim community. 

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MN VOICES | The other Twins, Char and Judy Madigan

By Mary Treacy, TC Daily Planet

Char Madigan, Hope Community founder, in 1977.

Char and Judy Madigan, aka "The Twins," don't play baseball, live in pricey digs, or sign $184 million contracts.  The Madigan twins are twin sisters by birth and Sisters of St. Joseph by vocation. For those who are homeless, immigrants, in need of food, health care, justice or a port in life's storms, Judy and Char Madigan are the Twins.

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MN VOICES | Two lifetimes fighting racism

By Caitlin Burgess, TC Daily Planet

"There is no such thing as races," Dr. Herbert Perkins said.  "There is only one human race." 

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MN VOICES | Billie Young - Grand lady of Grand Avenue

By Lauren Ernt, TC Daily Planet

"I think everyone feels that they want to make where they live a better place." In this matter-of-fact tone, Billie Young explained her life-long history of community involvement. Never content to just sit at home and do nothing, Young's commitment to working to improve the community around her seems almost as natural as breathing. 

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MN VOICES | Remembering Minnie

By Deborah Locke, Fond du Lac News

Last July in Albuquerque a tall, thin, noisy woman walked through the hotel glass doors, hollered my name, hollered the name of someone else, hugged a man, and hugged me, all the while doing that Indian nose nod thing to everyone in sight.

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MN VOICES | Eric Jolly: Public science leader, private man of faith

By Karen Hollish, TC Daily Planet

Dr. Eric Jolly, president of the Science Museum of Minnesota, pauses on an interactive display of the human hand. Photo by Karen Hollish.

Dr. Eric Jolly's eyes still showed his fatigue from a whirlwind work trip to Germany, but when it came time for him to show off some of his favorite things in the museum, the Science Museum of Minnesota president promptly perked up and transformed into teacher mode. He giddily zoomed through the Cell Lab, where children can don lab coats, gloves and goggles to study their saliva's enzymes. Then he raced through the basement-level vault, where volunteers and scientists probe ancient fossils, and where other carefully cataloged treasures wait in metal cabinets to be explored. 

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MN VOICES | Poet Diane Glancy speaks for the voiceless

By Kristal Leebrick, TC Daily Planet

Poet and novelist Diane Glancy says her work gives a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves: Sacajawea, the Cherokee who walked the Trail of Tears in 1831, the Ghost Dancers who held out hope that a messiah would help them get back what they had lost. Her role as a writer, she said, is "to portray the human experience." 

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MN VOICES | Katie Stephens Spangler has a dancing heart

By Deb Pleasants, TC Daily Planet

First impressions are crucial, which is why when Katie Stephens Spangler started her own Irish dance school at 23, she knew she needed the right name. "I always knew rince (rink ah) meant dance in Gaelic," said Stephens Spangler. After a little research she found the perfect phrase to compliment it-na chroi (nah Kree), or of the heart. On February 27, Rince na Chroi celebrated its seventh anniversary with its annual "From Our Stage to Your Heart" performance. Now, in the midst of preparing her dancers for the hectic St. Patrick's Day season, she paused long enough to share with this reporter why she thinks her school has touched so many hearts. 

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