Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/category/politics-policy/page/13/)
The Rev. Bill Teska, who leads a small Minneapolis Episcopalian congregation that meets in the University Baptist Church at 1219 University Ave. S.E., and Don Olson, who spent 20 months in federal prison for disrupting draft offices in 1970, led a discussion on Nov. 22, on the role of religion in the peace and civil rights movements of the 1960s.
Many of their old meeting places near Dinkytown in Minneapolis no longer exist.
The Minnesota Child Protection League is at it again. The anti-LGBTQ organization paid for a second full-page anti-transgender ad in the Star Tribune’s Sunday paper this week. The ad comes as the Minnesota State High School League reconsiders this week whether or not to allow transgender high school students to participate in athletics based on their gender identity.“The end of girls’ sports?” reads the ad in bold letters at the top. “Her dreams of a scholarship shattered, your 14-year-old daughter just lost her position on an all-girl team to a male … and now she may have to shower with him. Are you willing to let that happen?”The MPCL published an anti-transgender ad in the Star Tribune last September, just before an October vote by MSHSL to allow transgender students to play sports based on their gender identity.However, MSHSL decided to table that decision because of significant pressure from opposition, and postponed the vote until Dec. Continue Reading
Part of the Forum Communications newspaper chain, Willmar’s West Central Tribune is the only daily newspaper in west central Minnesota. Continue Reading
With the release of a grand jury’s decision not to indict Mike Brown’s killer, many of us are feeling a lot of anger and sadness about the racist systems in place in our country. It warms my heart to see all the Black Lives Matter hashtags and Ferguson protest invites popping up on my Facebook newsfeed.Keep on posting and marching, but listen, there’s something we have to talk about:Money.Read more TC Daily Planet coverage of police misconduct issues.There’s a lot of it given away in the United States every year. Take it from someone who regularly looks at foundation tax returns. There’s a whole lot of money in the U.S. But, the vast majority of it is controlled by white people who are well served by the status quo. And those white people mostly transfer their wealth to cultural institutions that serve other privileged people like them, namely their alma maters.While there was a total of about $335 billion in private charitable giving in 2013, only a tiny percentage of that went towards social justice. It’s important to go to rallies and marches, and sign petitions and share information, but it’s equally important to open our wallets at the same time. Continue Reading
Update: At the Star Tribune, Jennifer Brooks reports ‘Bigotry’ on Facebook costs Big Stone GOP chair his day job. Brooks notes:
The Minnesota Republican Party, which condemned Whitley’s remarks las week, has not yet responded to questions about whether Whitley will keep his postion as the chairman of the county GOP. [end update]
Since Bluestem posted Facebook status, Big Stone Co GOP chair calls Muslims “parasites,” writes “frag em” at Mecca, Minnesota’s branch of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has issued a press release calling for state and national Republican leaders to condemn county chair leader Jack Whitley’s remarks. Continue Reading
So Obama finally showed some backbone and did what he should have done before the election–he acted on immigration. Had he done this before the election as he said he would (if Republicans did not act) then maybe more Hispanics would have voted for Democrats and the November results would have been different. Now we see Republicans engaged in a faux act of anger, declaring that they will get even. The Republicans should be grateful that Obama acted–it takes immigration off the table without Congress having to act, or not act, and therefore it removes a thorny problem for the GOP. But foolishly and predictably the Republicans have protested, only guaranteeing that they will continue to guarantee that Latinos vote for Democrats, perhaps for the next generation. Continue Reading
UPDATE: Whitley appears to have removed his profile from Facebook, following a wave of condemnation from both Democrats and Republicans following Jennifer Brooks’ post about Whitley in the Star Tribune. We’ll be posting about the reaction shortly. [end update]
A status posted today on the personal Facebook page of the Big Stone County Republican chair Jack Whitley suggests that an understanding of the Minority Liberty Alliance’s message of inclusion hasn’t quite taken hold among conservative leadership living beside Minnesota’s western boundary waters. Continue Reading
UPDATE: Heard from the Speaker of the Minnesota House, sadly shortly to be minority leader (replaced by this guy), and looks like some state-specific comments of mine might not hold up. Details here. Continue Reading
Maria Cervantes was among dozens of Latino community members who assembled Thursday night at El Colegio High School in Minneapolis to watch President Obama’s televised announcement on immigration reform.
Just ahead of the G-20 Leaders’ Summit in Brisbane, Australia (November 15-16, 2014), India and the United States announced a breakthrough in their trade negotiations impasse over agriculture. That fight had brought trade negotiations to a crashing standstill in July after the few months of tentative optimism among negotiators that followed the eleventh-hour agreement in at the Bali Ministerial Conference in December 2013. Confidence in the multilateral rules-based trading system had reached an all-time low, and while the response was muted (an agreement between two WTO members is not the same as an agreement among all), the media coverage made it clear the news of the U.S.-India agreement was very welcome in trade circles. Continue Reading