Former agent Colleen Rowley seeking FBI data on RNC policing

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I was killing time on a back bench of an eighth floor Ramsey County courtroom on Wednesday, waiting with about 50 others for something to happen (all the action in the RNC8 case that day took place behind closed doors, as it turned out), when someone who looked familiar took a seat in the next row. Could it be Coleen Rowley, famed FBI whistleblower, TIME magazine’s 2002 Person of the Year and the Democratic-Farmer-League Party’s 2006 candidate in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District? Indeed it was. I’d met Rowley in 2006, at her campaign fundraiser at my parents’ house. At the time, she seemed fierce and friendly, with a somewhat prim persona akin to her plaid-skirted appearance on the cover of TIME four years before. Continue Reading

VOICES | City’s lack of an affirmative action plan demeans us all

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Affirmative action policies and practices are supposed to assist underserved and underrepresented populations in at least the offering of economic, employment, services, and other opportunities that are made available to White people. The City of Minneapolis, which is the largest employer and purchaser of goods and services as well as spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an annual basis for construction, has not had an affirmative action plan in at least 15 years. The last recorded affirmative action plan that can be found in the City has an effective date of 1989. The Minneapolis Civil Right’s Ordinance section 139.70 clearly states that every department in the City is to submit an affirmative action plan to the city council on a yearly basis. The city council and the mayor are your elected representatives who were elected to represent your interest. Continue Reading

VOICES | Dissent under fire at the RNC

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“Our right to protest the government and its policies is not ‘suspicious behavior’; it’s Constitutionally protected speech.” Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office
I’ll admit it: since the Republican National Convention brought a militarized police occupation to St. Paul, Minnesota. I’ve been shell-shocked. It’s one thing to have predicted the dangers to our civil liberties since the September 11th attacks and quite another to see one’s prediction in action. For eyewitness accounts of the RNC protests, there are several local events:
The RNC Protests: What happened and what can we learn? Continue Reading

My rights versus yours

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In the next few days, the U.S. House is likely to pass legislation that would prohibit employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. But pressures from Republicans and groups opposed to homosexuality have resulted in the Democrats proposing a watered-down bill that would leave out transgender people. Those groups purporting to speak for Christians are purposefully distorting the issue through assertions that religious liberties will be violated if transgender people are given protections to work in jobs that they are qualified for. Minnesota’s experience with workplace nondiscrimination laws, the most progressive in the nation, has shown that conservative religious sensibilities and employment discrimination can coexist. Last week, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., bowed to pressure from Republicans and conservative Democrats and stripped transgender protections from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Continue Reading