“You have the right to peacefully demonstrate, but you can’t block traffic, and oops we disappeared the sidewalk.”
Blong Yang’s Embarrassing Sham of a Public Hearing
Minneapolis Police cleared out the protesters from street in front of the 4th Precinct this morning. Below is an account of the public hearing that was carefully orchestrated to justify it.
Yesterday, the Minneapolis City Council’s Public Safety Committee took up the seemingly routine procedural matter of amending their meeting agenda. Council Member Palmisano–with a wink and a nod from committee chair Blong Yang who represents the area that includes the 4th Precinct–proposed they allow public testimony regarding the ongoing protests occurring in front of the 4th Precinct over the shooting of an unarmed man named Jamar Clark. This last minute addition to the agenda made it practically impossible to give testimony on the topic unless you were already present for the meeting.
Fortunately for opponents of the 4th Precinct protest, committee chair Blong Yang (and presumably others on the committee) made sure to invite a specially selected group to give testimony painting a uniformly negative picture of the protest (complaints of traffic, parking, crime, smoke, drugs, drinking, etc). The committee’s lone voice of dissent was CM Cam Gordon, who worried “if we take up this topic now, what about people who would have come if they knew they had an opportunity to give public comment and may not actually be here now?”
And surely those folks would have come, because on November 19th a group was turned away by the City Council and prevented from giving testimony on the very same topic. They were denied a chance to speak because it would have meant bending the rules. That’s fair enough and all according to the rules, whether you agree with it or not. But you couldn’t blame Cam Gordon for being “especially surprised” by yesterday’s “last-minute decision to open time up and to be addressed by the Police Federation president and a few, seemingly forewarned or invited residents.”
The man from the Police Federation whom Gordon singles out, is Lt. Bob Kroll. As a union president, Kroll is duty-bound (perhaps understandably so) to push the idea that his fellow officers are innocent of wrongdoing in the shooting death of the unarmed Jamar Clark. But Kroll has been particularly outspoken, using his platform not just to defend cops, but to go after the protests themselves. Speaking of the 4th Precinct protesters on television, he said that “we need to silence that vocal group of activists.” On talk radio he called the 4th Precinct protest a “local version of Benghazi.” That Yang’s committee would elevate the already well-amplified voice of Lt. Kroll, while going to great length to exclude dissenting voices, is disturbing.
Kroll, who is infamous for accusations of racism and brutality, called for Yang’s committee to “pull your mayor back and quit mis-micro-managing the police department and let people with experience on how to remove unlawful protesters in.” Before adjourning, Chair Yang indicated he was ready to forcibly end the protest: “I think we’ve taken a really good tact in terms of asking nicely, asking for voluntary removal. At some point it just has to be a little bit different than that because that tactic has not worked.”
There isn’t a rule against leaving an item off the committee’s published agenda and adding it at the last minute. I’m no parliamentarian, but there’s probably not a rule against stacking the room with your supporters, inviting a controversial police union leader to testify, and using that one-sided feedback to justify heavy-handed tactics against a peaceful protest. While it may not be technically against the rules, it is “embarrassingly undemocratic,” as Cam Gordon put it. Forget democracy, it was just plain embarrassing.
Even worse is this detail from Gordon’s aide Robin Garwood, who recounts how Yang had previously rejected the suggestion of allowing public testimony at their committee:
“I actually asked the committee chair more than a week ago whether it might be fruitful to open up some time on the committee’s agenda for a discussion of the Clark shooting and related protests, and was told in no uncertain terms that that would not happen.”
Council Members Yang, Council President Barb Johnson and their allies are sending the message that protesters stationed in front of the 4th Precinct should not expect to receive a fair and open airing of their grievances in front of the City Council. Bending the rules of the established political process so shamelessly against protesters seems like the wrong way to go about convincing them to give up their civil disobedience.
Students Purposely Excluded from Some Neighborhood Boards
There was an article yesterday in the Minnesota Daily (a student newspaper) with the subhead: “Few students apply to neighborhood board organizations in Minneapolis.” I was surprised to see the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association (MHNA) characterized as one of the two “best at involving students in decision-making.” This can’t be true because, unlike the vast majority of Minneapolis neighborhood organizations, MHNA has written policies into their bylaws that appear designed to exclude students from the process.
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| Marcy-Holmes is frighteningly young. |
Despite their large student population, MHNA has decided to hold elections in June, a time when many students are out of town. This is on purpose. MHNA’s president admitted as much in 2011: “my view is that the Marcy-Holmes annual meeting was moved to the June time frame to minimize student participation, especially in elections.” Students and other reformers have been asking the organization to change the timing of their election for at least the last 10 years with no results.
This invaluable bit of neighborhood history from Christopher Meyer explains it very well:
In June 2004, approximately 90 people packed into a crowded room to partake in the annual election meeting of the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association, the organization designated by the city of Minneapolis to represent the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood. Neighborhood meetings are typically low-key, casual affairs, but this one was monitored as thoroughly as a U.N.-supervised election in a Third World republic. Representatives from the League of Women Voters scrutinized the credentials of all attendees. To be eligible to vote, they would need to be certified members of MHNA (which required the submission of a valid membership registration at least 30 days prior to the meeting) and they would need to present a photo ID as well as proof of residency in the neighborhood. The MHNA board also hired a parliamentarian from the city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program to ensure that all proceedings were conducted legally. They even hired an armed beat patrolman to maintain security in case matters got out of hand.
What issue could possibly have been so contentious that the board apparently felt the need to prepare against the possibility of violence? In short, reformers were trying to amend MHNA’s bylaws in order to make the organization more accessible to student residents. The previous fall, a group of students had worked with an MHNA representative to prepare a list of amendments designed to enable greater student participation. The biggest change the reformers wanted was to change the month of the annual meeting — when elections for board officers and directors are held — from June to October. The reason was obvious: Students are less likely to be around during the summer. Despite this fact — or as I suspect, because of it — the association voted to reject the schedule change as well as every other student proposal.
“Length of residency” requirements are another tactic for discouraging student (transient!) participation. Only three Minneapolis neighborhood associations have residency requirements of six months or greater to become eligible to serve in elected leadership; of those, two have massive student populations: Marcy-Holmes and Prospect Park (the third organization is the Whittier Alliance, which is 90% renter). How do most Minneapolis neighborhoods handle the residency issue? The Linden Hills Neighborhood Council is a good example: all residents are members, and all members can be elected to the board of directors.
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| Membership requirements of the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association. |
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| Linden Hills is typical of vast majority of Minneapolis neighborhood orgs. |
I serve on a neighborhood board with a college student who never attended a neighborhood meeting until the one where he was elected. He is supremely qualified and dedicated. He managed to convince a room filled with longtime residents to vote for him. Now he’s getting stuff done like no other board member in the history of board members. If someone impressive and capable wants to be involved, why screen those candidates out of the process? What’s the harm in letting the voters sort it out?
White Terrorism Becomes Cliche
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| White gunman stalks Muslim woman in Texas last week. |
Last Monday night, four men showed up to the Black Lives Matter protest outside the Minneapolis Police Department’s 4th Precinct and shot five unarmed black protesters. This was after a week of similar visits from white men—armed with guns, cameras, and racist commentary—streaming live video to the internet for the entertainment of their fellow racists.
It’s become a cliche after such attacks to ask overly timid headline writers, “What if the white guy with a gun was a brown guy with a gun?” When armed men in masks menace unarmed civilians; when these men post video of themselves delivering hate-filled messages and flashing weapons; when this ends in a mass shooting… This describes an act of terrorism.
Here’s why it matters. We treat terrorism differently than other violent crimes. We go to much greater lengths to protect ourselves from it, and to punish those responsible. We see some greater value in stopping politically motivated acts of violence which are intended not just to maim and murder, but to intimidate whole populations.
I worry we’re not taking seriously enough these threats from well-armed whites with a political axe to grind. The Thursday before the 4th Precinct shooting, a video was posted online showing two men in a car, driving to the Black Lives protest. The driver held up a handgun while promising to engage in some “reverse cultural enriching,” finally signing off to his viewers with the phrase “Stay white.” Sitting in the passenger seat was Lance Scarsella, who returned to the protest with three other men on Monday, the night of the attack. These are the four men now under arrest in connection with the shooting.
Minneapolis Police had four days prior to the shooting to track down the two men in the video. The driver was correctly identified by name in a comment on the “Black Lives Matter” Facebook page three days before the attack. As a resident of south Minneapolis, it took me five minutes to retrace the route taken in the video—right back to the driveway they pulled out of—using a basic knowledge of local landmarks and Google Street View. If it was a priority, these details should have led police to Scarsella.
As MPD’s union head was comparing the Black Lives Matter protest to “Benghazi” on talk radio, the job of intelligence gathering was left to an unpaid social media detective:
Scarsella, Gustavsson and Macey, along with the man who was questioned and released, are featured in several videos of a now-deleted YouTube page. The page’s banner featured two dozen men — some masked — holding weapons, along with a pair of Confederate flags. The videos were deleted by Monday afternoon, but they had been archived by Minneapolis-based researcher Tony Webster.
I’m a big Tony Webster fan, but we shouldn’t have to rely on the work of a skilled volunteer to track and archive the online activities of the violent white extremists who threaten our city. It’s just too big of a job.
Since 9/11, domestic terror attacks by white Americans have killed anywhere from two to five times as many people as those carried out by jihadists. We often hear about the social media prowess of ISIS; far less publicized is the degree to which sites like 4chan and reddit are an increasingly effective recruiting tool for a new generation of white nationalists. Though the idea of white terrorism doesn’t seem to break into the headlines, police from across the country are aware of the threat: a 2015 NY Times national survey of law enforcement agencies identifies right-wing terror as the top threat facing American cities.
I assume there are people in positions of authority who are aware of these facts, but recent events do not inspire confidence in local law enforcement. The racial and religious diversity of the Twin Cities makes them a tempting target for hate groups. Let’s be sure we’re focusing our anti-terrorism efforts, both locally and across Minnesota, beyond the usual suspects.
Uptown Secures 50 More Years of Drive-Thru Banking
A Google search for “do people still go inside banks?” shows that, for some of us, physical banks are a thing of the past. Which means you might not be aware of the dangers of car-free banking. Read on, for a story every parent should see.
Yesterday, the Planning Commission considered Wells Fargo’s plans for a new branch building at the corner of Lake and Humboldt. The building would replace the bank’s existing structure built in 1973. The maximum number of car parking stalls allowed for the proposed building is 17. Wells Fargo wants 36.
A representative for Wells Fargo cited safety concerns, for employees and customers, as one reason the Planning Commission should allow double the parking maximum. Commissioner Ben Gisselman also had questions about safety:
When we’re talking about bank transactions, I feel like there is some argument that perhaps customers–I don’t know if this is legitimate or not–but perhaps customers do want the safety of having their vehicle there.
@happifydesign @mikesonn from watching that meeting, I gather it’s hugely dangerous to do your banking without a getaway car nearby.
— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) November 17, 2015
Considering the neighborhood context (frequent transit, multiple bikeways, walkability, density, the transportation preferences of nearby residents), Commissioner Nick Magrino expressed “surprise” that all 27 Wells Fargo employees at the site are driving themselves to work: “I think it’s probably possible that you’re sort of inducing some of that demand from the employees by having free parking available on site.”
The Planning Commission denied the request for 19 additional car stalls. They also required that three bike parking stalls be added at the bank’s Lake and Humboldt entrance. As a result of these two decisions, several long-time residents probably made dramatic Facebook pronouncements about moving to St. Paul.
The Planning Commission also voted to continue the tradition of drive-thru banking in the heart of Uptown. The new drive-thru will be two lanes, which is considerably smaller than the existing building’s seven-lane monster.
Sam Rockwell, the lone commissioner to oppose the drive-thru, noted that the Hennepin-Lake area is a Pedestrian Overlay District, and the first rule of Pedestrian Overlay District is don’t talk about drive-thrus. Rockwell also pointed to the fact that the area has the fourth highest bicycle counts and the third highest pedestrian counts in the city. [to watch his entire remarks, visit SamRockwellSpeech.com]
It’s impossible to say whether the Millenials of tomorrow will make virtual banking transactions from a retractable kiosk mounted on the titanium-alloy ceiling of their driverless Space-Ubers. But even if we can’t know what banking will look like a decade from now, we do know that Uptown might be stuck with the banking equivalent of a VCR, in the form of a one-story drive-thru bank that could last 50 years.
Based on your past purchases, you might also like:
Rockwell’s Travel Guides – Drive-Thru Banking in Minneapolis
Better Know a Pumpkin: Andrew Johnson
I took Ward 12 Council Member, and recent jack-o’-lantern, Andrew Johnson on a historic walking tour of our very historic Lowry Hill East Historic District. He agreed that it is a beautiful neighborhood and that it should never change. Afterwards he sat for a series of softball questions in Mueller Park.
I was eager to hear his thoughts on Linden Hills. He described, with awe in his voice, that he’d never seen anything like the recent 43rd and Upton appeal at the Zoning and Planning Committee. He was particularly impressed with the Linden Hillers’ determination to blow through time limits and ignore repeated requests to wrap up. He remembered being surprised by a chant of “this is not what democracy looks like” in response to speakers being told they wouldn’t get a second try at the microphone (sadly, this was not captured in video of the meeting).
We talked about his proposed animal control ordinance, which is strangely controversial. He said his intention is to modernize a wide range of policies relating to animal care and shelters. According to Johnson, the existing policies are “cobbled together” and in need of overhaul. In formulating the proposal, they’ve held two public meetings and consulted with groups that advocate for the humane treatment of animals.
The proposal is full of potentially cumbersome regulations requiring pet owners to provide:
- Adequate food, water, and shelter
- Access to care, treatment, and transportation to veterinary care
- Appropriate space and exercise
- Access to care to prevent pain and suffering
We spoke about his legendary thirst. He claims he only used this giant mug one time on Channel 79 (implying that somehow I’m the weirdo for catching him). He took frequent sips from the comically large mug during our interview. After some examination, I believe he is telling the truth when he says it’s not a water pitcher stolen from a pizzeria. He emphasized over and over that he is still “re-hydrating” weeks after his Linden Hills experience.
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| I let Andrew hold my pumpkin, he let me touch his giant mug. |
We talked about his Tweet-battle with home improvement icon Nicole Curtis. He renewed his challenge for her to release the disturbing emails. I got the impression he was prepared to take all the credit for running Curtis out of Minneapolis and back to Detroit, but he didn’t come right out and say it.
In response to a question about the recent setback for the Working Families agenda, he mentioned his hope that something could still be accomplished on sick time and fair scheduling, but in a way that accommodates some of what he sees as legitimate business concerns.
2015 Sexiest CM Alive pic.twitter.com/kOLYWoFQzl
— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) August 21, 2015
Coming up next in our Better Know a Pumpkin series: City Historian and Planner John Smoley(!).
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| Smoley for President logo carved into the backside of Pumpkin Andrew. |
We’ll ask him: Why is our historic district so small? What does he have against Queen Annes? Did he really get his PhD in “Missile Silos”? And also, why isn’t our historic district bigger?
Great Moments in “Oops, I Missed My Turn”
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| Sometimes buildings get in the way. |
No helmet, no reflective clothing. smh. https://t.co/1kC6Z4GLoM
— § (@section_sign) November 1, 2015
A driver crashed a vehicle into the dry cleaner at 2500 Hennepin early Sunday morning. It’s happened before, in far more spectacular fashion, just one block north. In 2005, the driver of a van nearly demolished the building at 2400 Hennepin (which still houses Sudz Salon, as well as newer occupant Spyhouse Coffee).
News coverage of the 2005 crash reprinted below—as always, without permission.
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| Wedge newspaper, April 2005 |
Photos below from Garrick Van Buren.
Full story from the March 14, 2005 Star Tribune:
A van crashed into a hair salon at 24th St. and Hennepin Av. S. in Minneapolis on Sunday morning, leaving a gaping hole in the storefront and causing the second floor to partly collapse.
Emergency crews responded to the Sudz Salon at 2400 Hennepin about 8 a.m. and extracted the van’s driver from the wreckage. A medical condition likely caused the man to veer off Hennepin, hit a traffic light and then smash into the salon lobby, said Paul Nemes, a captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.
The driver was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center with non- life-threatening injuries. No one was in the salon or neighboring businesses when the accident occurred. An upstairs apartment was severely damaged, but salon employees said no one lived there.
“Oh my god,” said salon manager Krysta Schrader. “I’m just worried about my employees’ livelihood. It’s devastating.”
Although much of the salon’s rear half remained untouched, Nemes said that most of the building is a total loss because its structural integrity was compromised; it will be demolished.
Schrader said the salon will try to lease a temporary space as soon as possible.
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| 2400 Hennepin was stitched back together. |
Wedge Living: Halloween Crafting & Recipes
There have been some spooky rumors going around about Council Member Andrew Johnson and his mysterious animal control ordinance. This guy is jack-o’-lantern material.
Is @CMAndrewJohnson proposing to round up and euthanize all unleashed cats, lizards, ferrets, weasels, and red hens? https://t.co/qQ9crcJBy7
— MRRderouSVLD (@MRRSVLD) October 17, 2015
wedgi-How Tutorial
Step 1: Bring Andrew Johnson to meet some of your friends from Linden Hills.
Step 2: Create a template from his reaction.
Step 3: Pull out the guts of your pumpkin, and save them for later.
Step 4: Print out the template and attach it to the pumpkin. Trace by poking holes through the template.
Step 5: Carve out the white space, and scrape the surface off the grey-shaded areas.
RECIPE: Uncle Wedgie’s Extra-Burned Pumpkin Seeds
Now it’s time to cook your pumpkin seeds. Google around for a sriracha-based recipe. Make sure this recipe calls for you to cook the seeds for way too long, and at much too high of a temperature.
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| Sriracha, vegetable oil, soy sauce. |
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| Perfect. |
When the smell of burning pumpkin seeds becomes alarming, your seeds are done. Force-feed them to Pumpkin Andrew like a heavy dose of Linden Hills, giving him a good reason for that horrified expression.
UPDATE: Humans and gourds can coexist.
Clearing Things Up
Some Twitter disclaimers have become necessary:
- Pay no attention to that library stamp. I am not a licensed librarian, nor an employee of the Hennepin County Library.
- wedgelive.com has never published a Special Senior Edition. And I never will–no matter how many accusations of ageism are thrown my way.
- My tweets are not trapped in February 1983, waiting for Doc to help them get back to 2015.
- 877-WEDGE-LIVE has too many digits to be an actual phone number, though the first 10 digits will probably connect you to something–maybe an attractive young woman who is just waiting for your call.
- Chet Wedgely is a fictional character I created during my recent Linden Hills coverage.
- The current @WedgeLIVE avatar is not intended to be a factual statement.
- “Wedge DEAD!” is my spooky Halloween name, not a spinoff of popular AMC zombie drama The Walking Dead.
Might be necessary to stop signing my blog posts & start pretending to be an anonymous citywide coalition of concerned neighbor-reporters.
— Wedge DEAD! (@WedgeLIVE) October 22, 2015
Not LHENA-Sanctioned
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| FYI |
LHENA had a board meeting last night. As you may know, I am a board member. During the meeting we learned of two grievances. The individuals attached to these grievances were unnamed (a “grievance” is a new process LHENA uses to resolve complaints lodged against the organization or individual members).
One grievance had to do with a pizza-related social media post (I immediately recognized this as one of my tweets). The other grievance was something else that happened on social media–no content was specified (I also recognize this as one of my tweets).
Hey two mystery grievances just came up at this board meeting. Sounds like they’re against me and my social media.
— Wedge DEAD! (@WedgeLIVE) October 22, 2015
The pizza grievance was dismissed. The second grievance remains a mystery to be resolved later. While I don’t know who’s behind these grievances, I can guess from whose Facebook posse they might be coming. I think the strategy here is to lodge as many frivolous complaints as possible, establish your crew’s reputation as an incredible cast of goofballs, and then really lay the hammer down when I’m least expecting it (save this sentence for a future grievance).
At the very end of the meeting, during the “new business” portion of the agenda (I’m new here, but I gather that’s where you need to watch out for an ambush), someone handed me this motion: an accusation that I used an account with the name “Wedgelive/Wedgedead” to fool people into thinking I’m the official LHENA Twitter account and a demand that I remove all traces of the Wedge newspaper from my website and Twitter. At least half the board was visibly and vocally irritated to have this pile of unexpected nonsense dumped in their lap after a two-plus hour meeting, right as they thought they’d be able to go home.
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| Totally urgent, emergency, last-minute motion. |
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| Exhibit A: “Today’s Header.” Distributed at last night’s meeting. |
Someone thought this motion was a reasonable thing to write, and print out, and show to a dozen other people. Someone seconded this motion, and a handful of people would’ve voted for it, but it was tabled and sent over to the LHENA grievance committee–where I’ve racked up three tweet-grievances in my young career. And this item will probably linger well into 2016. These people are not right. Here’s what one board member said shortly after the meeting, in a private message:
To briefly summarize the history: LHENA published and delivered the newspaper to every home in the neighborhood for free beginning in 1970. I was one of two people involved in a project to digitize the Wedge newspaper late last year. I made the archive freely available here. I did not contact LHENA to ask for permission. I used the archive as the source for a series of posts about Wedge history, like this LHENA episode from 1993, which I recommend. It’s relevant reading.
In April, I ran for the LHENA Board of Directors and delivered a speech at the annual meeting almost entirely premised on the fact that I had digitized the paper: “I gave you an archive of the Wedge paper, vote for me.” I won.
At the May meeting, my blog was made a surprise topic (not listed on the agenda; strange that this keeps happening). I was accused of mistreating a “single mom” (more on that here), and concerns were raised about newspaper copyright. In July, the board settled concerns over the copyright issue by deciding to neither give permission nor demand I remove the archive.
And now we’re talking about it again in October, ostensibly because I changed my Twitter header image to something I found amusing and visually interesting. The Wedge newspaper is one of the most historic/wonderful/hilarious things about this neighborhood. It’s an ongoing source of surprise to me that devoted defenders of the newspaper’s legacy aren’t glad to have it accessible from their phone.