OPINION | Attack on civil rights: Deja vu 1960s, 1930s

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We shouldn’t be smiling, but the impulse is understandable. The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota has put up a $1,000 bounty for anyone who can prove a case of voter fraud that could have been prevented by a proposed Constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot this November.Back up about three paces and look around. The fact that no one will collect on the ACLU bounty becomes irrelevant.What should become clear is that Minnesotans’ civil liberties are under attack on a wide front, a coordinated attack that has far-reaching economic and social consequences for future generations. It is an attack that will make Minnesota society even more divisive and lead to greater class warfare down the road.“It is the civil rights battle all over again,” said Patricia Mack, a retiree who has become a volunteer for the Minneapolis chapter of the League of Women Voters to help people register to vote.It isn’t just black people being singled out now, like a half century ago, she added. “The targets are the young, the elderly and the immigrants.”Amending the state Constitution to restrict people’s lives and livelihood, and make it difficult to vote, all become personal liberty issues that will carry economic baggage for the state.Mack wants to help people potentially harmed by Legislative actions and proposed Constitutional amendments to retain their ability to vote, she said. Continue Reading

Bringing cooperation into the Cities

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Local advocates for cooperatives are celebrating signs that momentum is gaining for legislation that gives cooperative business development a boost in urban and underserved communities like existing programs that serve rural areas.Rep. Keith Ellison (DFL-Minn.) of Minneapolis was among four members of Congress in January to sign on as co-sponsors of a National Cooperative Development Act.This bill has about a dozen sponsors so far. It is expected to gain strength through the coming year, however, as cooperatives and their trade associations participate in promotional events surrounding the United Nations-declared International Year of Cooperatives.“What we would like to see are more programs in underserved communities that operate like successful co-op development programs from (U.S. Department of Agriculture) Rural Development,” said Madeline Kastler, president of the board for the Seward Co-op Grocery & Deli in Minneapolis.USDA Rural Development is restricted to assisting cooperative development work in rural areas and small, rural cities. Separately, USDA works with rural electric and other rural utilities co-ops on development project as well, and they, too, are mostly in rural areas or in formerly rural and underserved communities when the co-ops were started.For these reasons, the proposed federal legislation would create a National Development Center for Cooperatives within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said Peter Frank, a Philadelphia co-op developer who is serving as the lead advocate for the bill.It wouldn’t create a new bureaucracy, he said in an interview. Rather, the HUD program would work through existing co-op development centers, such as Cooperative Development Services (CDS) that is led by developer Kevin Edberg in St. Paul.Minnesota has taken a step forward in co-op development within the past year with a USDA grant to the Agricultural Utilization and Research Institute (AURI) to form a co-op development center to help entrepreneurs start and expand co-ops. Continue Reading

OPINION | Stakeholder-shareholder clashes serve no one

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Minnesotans outside the Red River Valley watch the continuing lockout of 1,300 workers at American Crystal Sugar Co. plants since August with varying degrees of regret, sympathy and mutual worries for the regional economy.This is the first of a two-part series. In part two: How we ignore stakeholder interests, and what some groups are doing to raise the issues.Recently, Minnesota media has moved the coverage away from the plant gates, turning attention to how the lockout is harming communities, schools, neighbor relations, local merchants, taxpayers and everyone else impacted directly or indirectly. We call these people “stakeholders.”American Crystal’s confrontation has transcended from a labor management, union busting battle to a full-scale clash pitting shareholders against stakeholders.This two-part series examines the struggle between the two groups, how we Americans and Minnesotans fail to recognize legitimate stakeholder interests as is practiced in other developed countries, and how inequalities in the capitalist system foster populism and outrage from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Tea Party.The Occupy movement and an expanding number of community and ethical groups are raising awareness of the inequalities, said Macalester College labor historian Peter Rachleff. That is the first step in awakening the public. Continue Reading

Minnesota’s celebrity farmers

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Twin Cities and Northfield area food cooperatives and their farmer-suppliers are featured in a series of videos that are premiering on the National Cooperative Business Association website as part of  the United Nations’ International Yea Continue Reading

Bonding homes, bonding communities

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While big ticket public works projects—light rail, Nicolette Mall, major bridge construction—usually grab headlines in bonding bill news, it’s the smaller maintenance jobs that are critical to sustaining Minnesota’s communities. One community safety net often overlooked in such large scale proposals is public housing.Preparing for the legislative session, Minnesota Housing Partnership hosted groups in St. Paul, Duluth, Bemidji and Elbow Lake to share agendas for dealing with affordable housing, homelessness and related problems.Two themes emerged in these meetings: Maintaining housing creates jobs. Also, when the state has a comprehensive plan to address homelessness and affordable housing, such issues don’t fall on local governments to solve alone.These groups are encouraged by Gov. Mark Dayton’s recommended $32 million in bonding authority for housing programs within his $775 million bonding package. The housing portion of the bonding proposal is incorporated within his economic development recommendations. Continue Reading

Saying “sí” to business opportunities

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Manny and Vicky Gonzalez are reminded each day that it isn’t only Spanish speaking people who stop to purchase Mexican (“tortas”) sandwiches at their two restaurants in Minneapolis.“A lot of Minnesotans have learned that there is more to Mexican food than tacos,” said Manny, who with his wife started Manny’s Tortas along Lake Street in 1999.In the past century, long-time Minnesota families learned there was more to Italian cuisine than pizza, and that Chinese food is regional and far more complex than chow mein. Now, Minnesotans with newly acquired tastes for the Gonzalez’s Mexican sandwiches drive from throughout the Twin Cities metro area to their two shops in Minneapolis’ Mercado Central and Midtown Global Market.    U.S. Census data from 2010, anecdotal evidence about immigrant entrepreneurship, and a recently released study from the Immigration Policy Center show Minnesota is rapidly changing. Days of sputtering along and resisting change should be behind us. New Minnesotans are changing the demographic portrait of the state and communities. New ethnic entrepreneurs are changing the mix of businesses and the products and services being offered in commerce.Hector Garcia, executive director of the Chicano Latino Affairs Council (CLAC), refers to the benefits of this commerce as “cultural complementarities.” The long established Minnesota society learns from immigrants and refugees entering the state in search of opportunities, he said, and new arrivals learn from established businesses, groups and people.What’s more, new Census data show that immigrants now comprise 8.3 percent of the Minnesota workforce. Continue Reading

OPINION | USDA investment stabilizes Minnesota’s countryside

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An improving rural housing market, fueled by federal programs, is part of the countryside’s economic turn around. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development invested nearly $416.5 million in grants and loan guarantees for single-family and multiple family housing, helping 3,495 Minnesota individuals and families become homeowners.These are part of ongoing USDA efforts that blur the distinction between so-called “safety net” and “stimulus” actions that in the past enjoyed bipartisan public support. What’s more, data on people and communities affected show these programs work.“We are one of the best kept secrets in Minnesota,” said Colleen Landkamer, USDA Rural Development state director. “We’re not happy about that. Everyone should know what these programs do and the impact they have.”The linkage between jobs and the housing market has never been clearer than during the lingering slow economic period coming out of the Great Recession. Continue Reading