Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/ryan-virden/)
Every school I have taught at has been in Minneapolis. As such I have taught in the city with the largest opportunity gaps in the country. Let that sink in. Continue Reading
For 18 days in 2015 the community occupied the Minneapolis Police Department’s Fourth Precinct in North Minneapolis. During those 18 days, the community defied commonly held beliefs about the necessity for police. Continue Reading
We love to debate education. We gather in our corners and collect all the relevant facts and figures to come out swinging the next round. Continue Reading
The vibe in Broadway Pizza always puts me at ease. It’s just full of real people. The waitresses actually ask questions and joke without sounding like they are reading from a script. They remind me of my mom back when she was slinging plates. The bartenders talk to folks at the bar and laugh with them. Broadway Pizza’s location in the heart of North Minneapolis was the perfect place to meet a candidate running to represent Ward 5 on the Northside: Jeremiah Ellison. Continue Reading
The mock election results belie a more complex level of youth engagement within the world of politics, in not only who youth say they support but also in how they choose to participate. Continue Reading
I stopped at the corner trying desperately to remember the potholes and broken concrete I knew as a child. I creeped the car – like I would have back in the day – down the now perfectly manicured road with its “vintage” appeal, missing the cracked and crumbling concrete. My family came to Minneapolis after being forced out of St. Cloud by folks who thought that two blind people could not be adequate parents. For as long as I can remember, 216 Fifth Ave. Continue Reading
The first thing I was taught about race was that it didn’t matter. Like so many others I was taught to ignore the color of a person’s skin and to judge people on the “content of their character.” This was the extent of my racial formation. This color-ignorance became the dominant approach after the Civil Rights movement, and has only gained steam in the supposedly post-racial world the election of Barack Obama ushered in. The problem with color-ignorance is that it erases the reality of racism and leaves white folks incapable of understanding the experiences of people of color, and therefore incapable of contributing to justice in meaningful ways. Nothing illustrates this inability better than the phenomenon of respectability and what it signifies depending on your race. Continue Reading