Local & State

Despite some critics’ assessment that he wasn’t visible enough, Minnesota U.S. Senator Al Franken says he stayed busy during his first term in Washington…

Taxpayers nationwide pay an estimated $8 to $21 billion each year to keep juveniles in jail according to a December 2014 Justice Policy Institute report, …

Small, quaint, intimate, private, relatable — words to describe the space and the open house held by the Sexual Violence Center in North Minneapolis. Annex Teen Clinic, UROC, and the Minneapolis Police Department were all a part of the many groups and organizations that attended this event held January 13.

The Black population in Minnesota has increased by at least six times since the Council on Black Minnesotans (COBM) was founded in 1980.

Approximately 2,000 people gathered in St. Paul for a four-hour, four-mile Reclaim MLK March as a part of a national day of action taking place in cities across the country.
The march ended with a candlelight vigil for Marcus Golden, who was fatally shot by St. Paul police on January 14.

Bloomington presses ahead with effort to recover ‘lost revenues’

Despite written pleas by local and national elected officials and a petition with over 40,000 signatures against it, the City of Bloomington has announced it will seek “lost revenues” from 10 people associated with last month’s Black Lives Matter Minneapolis demonstration at the Mall of America.

Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson, who filed charges last week, is seeking restitution, including at least $25,000 in police overtime, stated a Black Lives Matter Minneapolis press release last week.

University of St. Thomas Law Professor Nekima Levy-Pounds, one of the 10 persons charged with up to eight misdemeanors, told the audience at the January 15 Council on Black Minnesotans’ (COMB) Day on the Hill in St. Paul, “I was charged…because I have been outspoken against police misconduct [and] police brutality.” She characterized the action as “prosecutorial overreach and misuse of taxpayers’ dollars.”

Levy-Pounds, in a brief MSR interview after her scheduled appearance at St. Paul’s Christ Lutheran Church, said that the charges against her, if she were found guilty, carry a maximum penalty of two years in prison and an $8,000 fine, which “is retaliatory in nature because I have been outspoken in the media about the tactics being used by Johnson and Mall of America.”

Bolder Options, at 2100 Stevens Avenue South in Minneapolis, has been offering mentoring programs and services to youthful first-time offenders and truant students for more than 20 years. Kari Davis, Bolder Options’ chief operations officer, explained that “We’re an activity-based mentoring program, where we use running, biking and swimming.” She also said that program participants […]

Billy Collins was first male E.D. in St. Paul, second in the nation William “Billy” Collins soon will begin his next phase of life. The longtime YWCA of St. Paul executive director is set to step down in April after 20 years of service. “I want to get away from working 50-60 hours a week,” […]

There are several definitions for the word “community” according to Webster’s Dictionary. They include “a unified body,” “people with common interests,” and “society at large.”

These definitions seem to get at what the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once referred to, first in a speech at a church conference in Nashville, Tenn. in December 1962, and then reiterated a few months later in a published article he wrote for Religion and Labor in May 1963.

All humankind is part of a community, wrote Dr. King. “At the heart of all that civilization has meant and developed in “community,” King points out, “is the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother… Man could not have survived without the impulse which makes him the societal creature he is.”

Tragic incidents in Ferguson, New York City, Cleveland and elsewhere in 2014 have joined together Blacks and other people of color, as well as non-people of color, to loudly protest for change, for full respect of all in areas of justice in America. Do the emergence of these protests in the streets and public places of America serve as a cry for what the late Dr. King often suggested — assuming a responsibility for our brothers?

Project offers ‘an amazing chance’ for high school students of color’

Post-Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) classes allow Minnesota high school juniors and seniors to earn college credits that can be applied at most local colleges and universities around the state. These classes are offered on college campuses and are available “to all pupils in grades 8, 9, 10 and 11,” says the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) website, which also points out that most classes are only open to high school juniors and seniors.

December 4, 2014: In response to the Eric Garner ruling demonstrators organized an event that made its way to City Hall in Minneapolis. Between 1:20 and 2:30 pm, around 130 demonstrators took to 35W and closed it off. The march went from the 35th street exit on 35W and headed north to downtown Minneapolis. Photos for […]