Sheila Regan

It is simply amazing to me that in the most hippie neighborhood in Minneapolis—nay, Minnesota—there is not one single cooperative grocery store. I’m speaking, of course, of the Powderhorn neighborhood, home of In the Heart of the Beast’s MayDay Parade, the May Day Café, rain gardens galore, and impromptu backyard music festivals and puppet shows. While the Seward Co-Op isn’t too far away, it just feels wrong that there isn’t a co-op in the neighborhood proper.

Minnesota's Parent Aware rating system for early childhood care and education is supposed to help parents choose quality programs for their children. But a closer look at the rating system reveals some disturbing details:
• Nearly all of the programs rated get high ratings.
• Ratings don't really correlate with how well kids progress in program.
• Hmong providers may be consistently ranked too low, raising questions of cultural competence in the rating system.

Several South High students spoke at a press conference called by Minneapolis School Board member Hussein Samatar on February 19. The students, who had been present last week at a fight involving more than 200 students and police action to stop it, seemed to be alleging brutality and disrespectful language on the part of the Minneapolis Police Department. In particular, a couple of students who spoke at the press conference said that the officer based in the school, James Loveland, called Somali students “animals” and was physically violent toward them. 

I got some hate mail this week. Most of it landed in my spam folder, thankfully, but a few ended in my inbox. I didn’t read every e-mails in full—just the first sentence, or long enough to realize what kind of correspondence it was. These tirades, calling for me to kill myself, or saying that I was a whore or whatever, came from a certain group of white supremacists who were angered by my column last week saying they were irrelevant.