Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/category/uncategorized/page/18/)
I had an appointment in Minneapolis yesterday. On my way back, I stopped at Occupy Minnesota to see if they were still there. They were and needed coffee. So I bought a couple of “canteens” — cardboard boxes full of coffee — at the nearest coffee shop and brought them back, along with a dozen cookies. Buying cookies one by one from a coffee shop is expesnsive. Continue Reading
The police have cleared Zuccotti Park. They have done the same in other American cities. We will see what happens next.
Patrick says this is what the Minneapolis police have done to homeless camps for years. When they find one, they destroy it. Belongings are wrecked or taken away. When people come back to their home, they discover they — who had so little — have nothing now.
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What do Somalis think of dogs, cats and pets?
There are really two questions that I get asked about this, and the answers aren’t exactly the same. The first question is what Somalis think of dogs, and the second is what Muslims in general think of dogs. The overall position of Islam on dogs is complicated, and you’ll hear different opinions depending on who you ask. The way Somalis feel about dogs, however, is more negative. Dogs aren’t part of the culture in Somalia, and the few that are there are wild. Because of this, they are more looked down on than in other parts of the world, and are seen as a (pretty dangerous) wild animal. Continue Reading
There is a small area in the West 7th neighborhood that was hit particularly hard by foreclosures and so the neighbors got together in 2008 and started working together to stabilize the neighborhood. Many of the homes were rentals and several of those were larger homes that were split up into multiple units.
Friday evening there were a couple hundred people at the People’s Plaza for a lively anti-war rally—big banners under a big moon. Occupiers made a mock tent to tease about the law against tents. The police say tents can’t be put on the ground, so they propped theirs on chairs. Continue Reading
As I exited the HourCar on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, all my senses were on high alert. I felt hyper-aware of my suburban lack of street smarts, my camera, my notebook, and my lucky liberal-arts college student air. This place had a reputation, and the message I’d been given long before I got here was “you don’t belong.”
As a freshman at Macalester College, I was ready for a completely new school with intriguing class discussions and a variety of experience-based learning. Continue Reading
Thursday I spent the day making signs to protest the new Hennepin County ban on signs at OccupyMN, which starts Friday. I arrived at 1 pm and thankfully found two women in their 80’s who were great at sign making. One is a WAMM member who uses a walker which carries a sign, “Dissent is Patriotic” and an American flag. Continue Reading
Want to know where the rich people live? How much more it costs to rent in Highland Park than in Frogtown? Whether Minneapolis or St. Paul has a higher percentage of jobs in the finance and insurance sector? All that and more is in the neighborhood profiles put together by the Wilder Foundation using census data from the past two decades.
Last week, I wrote about a proposal to limit student housing or rental housing near the University of St. Thomas. So this week, as I set out to look at the new Wilder Foundation neighborhood profiles, I looked for numbers that tell more of the story about students and neighborhoods. As I looked through the reports, I was amazed at the amount of information available on each individual neighborhood in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Continue Reading