Civil Rights
Native American women are missing and murdered. Will the federal government act?
WASHINGTON — Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind was 22, eight months pregnant, and looking forward to her baby shower the following day when she went missing on a sunny August afternoon in 2017. She had gone to a neighbor’s apartment in Fargo, N.D., where she had been asked to help with a sewing project. She never went home. […]
Marvin Manypenny was a hell raiser for American Indian sovereignty and treaty rights
In 1998, as a candidate for White Earth tribal secretary-treasurer, Marvin Manypenny wrote on the front of a campaign pamphlet: “Tribal sovereignty is vital to the preservation of the White Earth Anishinabeg Ojibway Nation.” On the back: “The rights to govern ourselves is completely and indisputably ours.” Manypenny didn’t win that election — though his […]
Mayor Frey aims to rein in off-duty police work, creates task force
When former police officer Mohamed Noor clocked in for his 10-hour police shift on the July night he shot and killed Justine Ruszczyk in south Minneapolis, he had just come from a seven-hour shift moonlighting as a security guard. More than two years later, Mayor Jacob Frey plans to create a task force to examine […]
Women mayors twice as likely than men to face online abuse, threats of violence
Former Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, the first woman in the city’s history to hold the post in the era of social media, recalls clearly the shift in criticism she received when she went from city councilwoman to city executive. “The number of times I was told I should get raped was extraordinary,” she said in […]
Republicans begin push for voter ID law even after voters rejected it in 2012
Minnesota Senate Republicans, defending a narrow 35-32 majority in the November election, signaled a major push for a new voter ID law in the upcoming legislative session that begins Feb. 11. Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, a Nisswa Republican, released a video on social media channels Friday saying the caucus will advocate hard for a law […]
Lewis stumps for blocking refugee resettlement in Bemidji
BEMIDJI — On the campaign trail for a U.S. Senate seat, Jason Lewis made a stop in Bemidji Thursday night to host a discussion many here say they wish they weren’t having at all: refugee resettlement. The topic has been a flash point since the Beltrami County Board of Commissioners voted 3-2 to not accept […]
Minnesota is projected to lose a seat in Congress. Here’s why that’s a huge deal
WASHINGTON — Minnesota is projected to lose a U.S. House seat in the coming years, new data show — a change that would diminish the state’s influence in national politics and could lead to less money for federally funded projects and services like roads and health care. The North Star State is one of 10 […]
What you probably don’t know about Colin Kaepernick: His faith
I am among what I suspect is a rather small group: Ordained women ministers who also are football fans. In my youth in Oklahoma, I actually played the game — and loved it. In those days girls were relegated to touch football and “powder puff” teams, but I relished the rough-and-tumble and blocking and knocking […]
Daily Reformer: Happy MLK Day
Good morning and happy MLK Jr. Day. Government is closed for the day, but Daily Reformer is not. Gov. Tim Walz was at the 30th Annual MLK Holiday Breakfast at the Armory in Minneapolis this morning and then will host the 34th Annual MLK Day Celebration at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in […]
Newest phase in opioid epidemic: Mix of opioids and stimulants like coke and meth
Minnesota health officials and researchers are tracking a troubling trend in the opioid crisis, even amid a decline in the total number of opioid-involved deaths. A recent rise in overdose deaths involving multiple drugs — like methamphetamine and opioids together — signals that we’ve potentially entered a new phase in the epidemic, due in part […]
Measuring progress among black Americans since Dr. King’s death
On Apr. 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while assisting striking sanitation workers. Back then, over a half century ago, the wholesale racial integration required by the 1964 Civil Rights Act was just beginning to chip away at discrimination in education, jobs and public facilities. Black voters had only […]
America’s public schools seldom bring rich and poor together — and MLK would disapprove
More than five decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., many carry on his legacy through the struggle for racially integrated schools. Yet as King put it in a 1968 speech, the deeper struggle was “for genuine equality, which means economic equality.” Justice in education would demand not just racially integrated schools, but […]