Finding a Green Way to Govern

This winter the people of Minnesota experienced an unprecedented and broadly condemned action by Homeland Security Department (DHS) police forces and its so-called “Operation Metro Surge.”   Thousands of the over 400,000 people in my hometown of Minneapolis, and thousands more in the greater metropolitan area and throughout the state, had their lives upended. Federal police killed at least two, and likely three, Minneapolis residents. Their killings of Renee Good, and Alex Pretti were recorded and viewed by millions of people. Victor Manuel Diaz was arrested in Minneapolis in January and died in ICE custody in Texas. “Anyone who has witnessed this occupation in our community, or seen the footage online, knows that none of this has made us safer, as the federal government is claiming. Instead, it has caused irreparable damage to our community,” said Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarity in February. There have been widespread and credible reports that federal agents have a...

  This December, 2025, Southside Pride newspapers hit the doors and stores for the last time. Ed Felien, Powderhorn neighbor, husband, father, grandfather, sometimes contrarian, chronic malcontent, often humorous, self-identified Maoist and consistently prolific writer, announced his retirement and the end of the community paper he has published for the past 35 years. “Before I say goodbye,” he wrote in that last issue, “I need to acknowledge a debt I owe to the thousands of you who read this paper. For 35 years we have sent out our messages of radical peace and love in the hopes that someone might read those messages and go out and do something about it.”    There are many opinions about Felien and many Southsiders who will miss the paper. On Facebook, his grandson, Cooper Gatzmer, described the 87-year-old as "… a totally stubborn muckraking journalist with some extreme and hyper specific bias for leftist politics in south Minneapolis,” and a “really cool guy." ...