OPINION | Support the 99%

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The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that have swept the world have brought important questions into focus. But probably the most important question raised is “Just how much control do we have over our own lives?” The one percent control our banks, our jobs and our government. But, even more important, around the Holiday season, we allow that one percent to control our retail spending. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance: “Studies have found that locally owned stores generate much greater benefits for the local economy than national chains. Big-box retailers, particularly Wal-Mart, are depressing wages and benefits for retail employees. Continue Reading

OPINION | Are they giving away our parks?

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It was just a few years ago that the Minneapolis Library Board gave away our library system to Hennepin County because they could no longer afford to pay for it. It was the first step in transforming a world-class reference library into a pop stand for pulp fiction. Now it seems we’re headed down the same slippery slope with one of the best park systems in the country.We lost the libraries because the library board couldn’t figure out how to pay their bills. They built a massive new main library downtown at the same time Governor Pawlenty was intent on stripping cities of local government aid. They had developed an edifice complex, where a building became more important than their original mission.The park board is having similar problems. People keep giving the park board things, and then the park board has to take care of them.Rajahs in India used to bankrupt a neighboring prince by giving him a white elephant. Continue Reading

OPINION | State Senator Linda Berglin retires

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State Senator Linda Berglin will retire Aug. 15. She was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1972 by a coalition of neighborhood radicals organized by Reverend Bryan Peterson of Walker Community Church. Bryan was very active in Southside neighborhood politics in the ’70s and ’80s defending housing from downtown developers. When he died a few years later and Linda and I were at the cemetery standing by his coffin, with a bulldozer behind it waiting for the mourners to leave so it could deposit Bryan in the open grave, Linda said to me, “I always thought he’d lie down in front of a bulldozer, but I never thought it would be like this.” Linda ran for the State Senate in 1980. Continue Reading

Another murder in Central

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19-year-old Tomika Swoope was walking home from the Southside Deli at 33rd and Chicago where she had bought a Slim Jim for her grandmother. She was outside her home at 32nd and Columbus Avenue when someone drove by and fired about five shots in the direction of her home on Monday, April 25, at 11 pm. One bullet struck her in the head. She was taken to Abbott Northwestern hospital before being transferred to HCMC in very critical condition. She died Thursday, April 28.Neighbors, especially those with small children, have been extremely upset by the recent rash of shootings. Continue Reading

OPINION | Let’s pick on the public employee unions

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Government workers got it easy. Good pay, good benefits and a great retirement package. What’s not to like? Except when the government budget’s got a hole in it because of tax breaks to the rich, and the politicians and the press start screaming about cutting government jobs and slashing wages and benefits. Newly elected Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has to close a deficit of $137 million in the current state budget. Continue Reading