Minneapolis Star Tribune, Aug. 6
Police reform effort must continue in Minneapolis
Charter Commission made the right call to delay rushed plan, but the need is real.
Minneapolis voters will not be voting this fall on a rushed and controversial plan to remove a requirement that the city maintain a police department. The city’s Charter Commission voted 10-5 on Wednesday to take more time to study the plan, which means it will not meet the deadline to be placed on the 2020 ballot.
The charter amendment written by five City Council members would have replaced the Minneapolis Police Department with a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention that would have emphasized a “holistic, public health-oriented approach” to public safety. The city could have included sworn officers, but it would not have been required to keep a force of a minimum size based on population, as it is now.
The Charter Commission made the right move. City officials, voters and other members of the public need additional time and more details about how a reimagined public safety department would work. As the Star Tribune Editorial Board has argued for years, the city and the MPD must make substantial changes to reimagine policing, root out bad officers and rebuild police-community relations. But Minneapolis needs law enforcement.
Even the five council members who authored the amendment acknowledged that fact when, in a late-hour attempt to sway Wednesday’s vote, they wrote a letter assuring that the “transformed system” would “include law enforcement as part of a multifaceted approach to public safety.”
Yet the guarantee would have been gone, and there was widespread confusion about the council’s alternative vision and where it would leave a city struggling with gun violence and other public safety concerns.
In addition, Charter Commission member Jill Garcia was right to question whether the council’s proposal would have solved the underlying problems that plague policing.
“This is an issue that involves the lives, the well-being, the safety of Minneapolis residents,” Garcia said Wednesday. “This isn’t a bumper-sticker slogan, sound-bite debate. This is something that the city has begun looking at in various times throughout the past several years. The ground is fertile to continue to look at that work and to look at something that prevents the loss of lives.”
The charter change effort played out against a backdrop of rising violent crime in Minneapolis. Though total reported crimes were down 31% in June and 4% by July’s end, gunfire incidents rose 224% and 166% during the same period, according to the MPD. As of July 25, at least 275 people had been shot in 2020, compared with 269 during all of 2019. Homicides have also nearly doubled from last year.
Following the death of George Floyd in police custody, citizens have rightly said “enough” while demanding overdue changes in policing. Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo want change to come, too, and they need the backing of the council and city residents.
The council should work with Frey and Arradondo - not against them - in reinventing the MPD. The community includes not only those who would “dismantle and defund” police, but citizens, business owners and others who have a stake in the state’s largest city and believe a police presence is necessary to truly protect and serve.
This year’s charter amendment effort is dead, but the effort to transform policing in Minneapolis is very much alive and has never been more critical.
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The Free Press of Mankato, Aug. 7
Sports: High School League has solid game plan
Why it matters: High school sports are an important part of youth development and key to physical and mental health.
The Minnesota State High School League plan to modify the high school sports schedule for the coming academic year balances the need for health safety and the need to nurture young people with some normalcy in these pandemic times.
Shifting so-called “high risk” pandemic-spread activities of football and volleyball to the spring makes sense given the close contact required in those sports. Keeping soccer, tennis and cross country in the fall with limits on the number of teams and number of games and matches is a good way to minimize the risk.
Young people get the COVID-19 virus just as much if not more than other age groups, but the science suggests they usually get much milder cases of the virus and can recover more easily. Still, there is risk. That must be balanced against the psychological toll that young people have faced since last March when school, sports and activities were shut down so quickly that it was a shock to a person’s system.
The prolonged stay-at-home orders, the challenge of distance learning and the complete elimination of social activities also has taken its toll on young people. Sports and activity resumption will give them some relief.
Of course, playing football in spring will be different and not as much fun for players and fans alike. Minnesotans will miss watching football on beautiful fall evenings.
But these are challenging times. The novel coronavirus has proven to be vicious, attacking the lungs and other vital organs in life-threatening ways. Some 150,000 U.S. dead in a matter of months is a grim reminder for what we face.
The league rules allow all the teams to play in some capacity. That will be the best result. Normalcy can go a long way in a pandemic.
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Minnesota Daily, Aug. 2
Black Lives Matter is about all Black lives, not any single white ego.
Performative activism hurts the people for whom it claims to advocate.
More than 14.6 million people, plus companies, posted a plain black square with the #blackouttuesday hashtag on June 2, 2020 - seven days after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The point was to demonstrate support for Black Lives Matter.
The trend started as a way of stopping businesses from producing content in order to focus on taking a stand against racism, and, in the music industry, promoting Black artists. But that’s all it was - a trend. Along with the hashtag #blackouttuesday, people were also using #blacklivesmatter, which was being used at the time as a way of sharing information with active protesters.
The qualifying factor between posting black square on Instagram or the link to a bail fund is: which one actually helps people, and which one makes you look good? Are you posting that black square to protest police brutality, or are you doing it because it would look bad if you didn’t?
An ally is someone from a non-marginalized group who uses their privilege to advocate for those who are marginalized. Performative allyship usually results in the “ally” receiving a reward of some kind, often in the form of social capital.
Performative activism, or performative allyship, is doing something solely for the attention you receive from it and not in actual support of the cause. Being in it for the personal gain and being in it for true support and allyship to whichever marginalized group are mutually exclusive, because the latter reason to, as we say, “be in it” knows that empty gestures and words do the opposite of using the privilege of a white platform to amplify Black voices. A real supporter and ally knows that posting a black square is ultimately nothing at all, and it only brings more attention to the white person who wants to feel good about posting it.
This type of performative activism hurts the people it claims to assist because it diverts attention from the communities who need it. Performances, rather than commitment and quiet introspection, also excuse privileged people from making real sacrifices in order to eradicate systemic racism. Unfortunately, just tweeting #sayhername isn’t the key to bringing justice for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Philando Castille and all other victims of police brutality.
If protests are inaccessible to you because of distance, health concerns, work hours, etc., there are other ways to be an ally in ways that really matter. Support BIPOC businesses, donate to bail funds, call out racism and microaggressions in real life, inform yourself and continue your education on the injustices of oppression. And always, always, at protests, put your white body in between Black ones and police. Do not let harm reach the people you claim to fight for. Do things quietly and with no expectation of recognition. Raise others voices up, and challenge yourself to not accept the circumstances that, if you are white, do not harm you but act to oppress others.
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