“Just a nobody”: Meeting homelessness without judgement

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One of gospel music’s longest running groups called The Williams Brothers sang a motivational song entitled “I’m Just a Nobody.” The soul searching chorus was embroidered into the title song with the words, “I’m just a nobody, trying to tell everybody, about somebody, who can save anybody.”

This song came to mind as I saw something not unfamiliar to most: a man holding a sign which read “Homeless Seeking Kindness – Bless You.” Continue Reading

Why I Love My Mah-jongg Group

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Five years ago when a close friend told me she wanted to start a mah-jongg group and invited me join her, I immediately said yes. Sure, we were in our thirties, not our eighties, but I liked the idea of getting together with friends for an activity that included neither our children nor our spouses and resembled nothing I had tried with friends before. I also found it appealing that this proposed activity was not a book club, as I’d already been in several mostly-unsuccessful ones in my adult life. I appreciated, too, that playing “mahj,” as it’s more commonly known, would give me something to do with several friends at once that was different from the usual dinner outing for someone’s birthday where you never get to speak to the people on the other side of a long table. My only hesitation on the idea of mah-jongg was that I’d never been good at games, not Scrabble, chess, or any card games. Continue Reading

The Sioux Chef opening highly anticipated food truck

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The city of Minneapolis is anxiously anticipating the opening of The Sioux Chef’s first venue: Tatanka Truck. Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota) made waves over the last year by introducing his unique approach to Indigenous cuisine. Born and raised on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, he attended college at Black Hills State University. Part of his drive to create an Indigenous cuisine, free of processed sugars, dairy or flour, came from just being a chef in Minneapolis since the early 2000s,

“I had been cooking since I was 13 in the Black Hills, in tourist restaurants. And I thought It was silly that there was no Native restaurants,” Sherman said. Continue Reading

American Indian Month Kickoff

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May is American Indian Month in Minneapolis. To celebrate thebeginning of the month and all the activities and celebrations that will follow, people and organizations gathered at Little Earth on Friday, May 1 for a parade through the Phillips Neighborhood. Continue Reading

Rage, Hope, Love Fueling Black Lives Matter Movement

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“The problem is poverty. The problem is racism,” said Rev. Victoria Safford of the White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church. “The problem is deep, deep, old oppression.”

Safford was one of more than 200 people who showed up outside an Edina, Minnesota court to support eleven people who have been charged with a variety of crimes after a December Black Lives Matter rally at the Mall of America. The problems of poverty, racism and oppression are at the root of what the Black Lives Matter movement is fighting against. What will it to take to fix it? Continue Reading

MinnesotaCare should not be eliminated in the state budget

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The Minnesota House passed a Republican-led budget plan last week that eliminates MinnesotaCare, a public health care program that provides coverage for the working poor. Unfortunately, such a plan would harm these individuals the most. The strongest justification that conservatives use for their budget is that the nearly 100,000 Minnesotans currently on MinnesotaCare could switch to MNsure, the insurance exchange set up through the Affordable Care Act. Even with tax credits, poor Minnesotans could pay more under MNsure than MinnesotaCare. Individuals on MinnesotaCare pay between $15 and $50 in monthly premiums for their plans. Continue Reading

Hooray for Mayor Hodges’ Courageous Soccer Stadium Stand!

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Bill McGuire and his sports buddies the Pohlads, who own the Twins, and Glen Taylor, who owns the Timberwolves, want to build a stadium in downtown Minneapolis just for soccer.  And here’s the good news: They want to build it using private money.  And here’s the bad news: They want a rebate on sales taxes and they want a permanent exemption from paying local property taxes. Mayor Betsy Hodges went on record as saying “No,” and she said it in a public and detailed letter:
“There is no need for a subsidy for this facility, or this ownership group, whatsoever. The subsidy they are requesting will have a direct and negative impact on the taxpayers of Minneapolis. “First, the McGuire group is asking to avoid paying their fair share of property taxes—not just for a limited term of time, but forever. “The land where the MN United ownership group proposes to build the stadium is currently privately owned, so it currently pays property taxes [$334,000 a year] that would disappear if the soccer stadium were exempted from taxes. Continue Reading

Shut down the train: Newberger’s concerns about prison visitors and metro date back to 2008

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As we reported in Mention St. Cloud & visions of prison & North Minneapolis pop into Jim Newberger’s head, the Becker Republican gained unwelcome attention from linking North Minneapolis and the state prison in St. Cloud via the North Star Rail. A review of sources reveals that that Newberger’s concerns about trains carrying visitors to the prison from the metro go back to at least 2008.  It appears what popped into his head in his floor remarks was the specific urban neighborhood, rather than the more general “metro.” While Minnesota state representative describes himself as an evangelical Christian, he doesn’t seem very keen on some of Jesus’s schtick in Matthew about how visiting people in prison is like visiting Christ Himself. Continue Reading