It was a perfect day for the MAP project. The weather was beautiful, the crowd at Lake Orono Park was diverse and talkative; not a single person said no when we approached them. Most of the people we met had lived in the area a long time, some for 40+ years. The Independence Day celebration was a tradition, with something for everyone: carnival rides, bingo, a lumberjack show, petting zoo, and the firing of a real cannon every half hour.
Kelly Gaspard (center) with family and friends. Education is No.1
Oldtimers and newcomers wanted to talk about the pace of development. The traffic is terrible, they said, even just through town. They are eager for completion of the rail line and they advocate investment in both roads and mass transit.
Blake Commutes 1 1/2 hours to Burnsville
Developing more and better jobs in the area would keep Elk River and surrounding towns from continuing as bedroom communtieis for the Twin Cities . But some people fear that local competition to offer incentives to prospective new businesses may be defeating one purpose of increased development, that of easing the property tax burden on homeowners. Long-time residents especially are disturbed by the rising property taxes, and we talked to some young people who would like to stay in the area, but fear they can’t afford to. Many people say crime has become commonplace. A retired couple told us their expensive lawn furniture was stolen in the night, and a young couple said their cars were broken into right in their driveway.
Holly Pendergrass and Matthew Salk. Can they afford a house?
We are hearing some familiar refrains everywhere we go. People say they’d pay more taxes if they had more say in how the money was spent. Education is a priority everyone seems to agree on. A unanimous concern is a perceived lack of respect among young people. When we ask why this is happening, many people say because parents are too busy to properly discipline their kids. In Elk River, long commutes contribute to the problem.
Carey Moschau. Enjoying retirement.
People also had good things to say about the rapid pace of development. Some celebrated the new diversity in the population of the old towns, and some like having more conveniences and big stores in the neighborhood.
Ramona Doebler Development is a double-edged sword
One couple said they were giving up on Minnesota They have a toddler and part-time jobs that don’t pay well. In order to get aheard, they’d need help with day care, rent or food, help that has not been forthcoming despite numerous appeals to Sherburne County. So they’re headed for Florida where they hope jobs are plentiful, rent is cheaper and winters, at least, are easier.
Nichole Englund and family. Moving on.
We were invited to Jordan New Life Community Church this morning. It’s on 25th and Logan, the neighborhood where there are supposed to be gun shots and drug deals day and night. It was tranquil this morning, the service uplifting, and the building air conditioned. The congregation was multiracial, with many young people from the suburbs on a mission to show their support.
Rev. La Andriamihaja
We spoke to the pastor outside. He knows problems in the neighborhood are deep and intractable, but he wants to start by building bridges with people who should be allies. For instance, Rev. La Andriamihaja is frustrated by the tension and animosity between African-Americans and African immigrants. He’s working with the Council of Churchs an two-way cultural education that would build up both communities.
Adrian Kemp
Adrian Kemp is a parishioner and another community leader. An executive with a telecommunications company downtown, he chooses to stay in the neighborhood and confront directly anything he sees as threatening behavior. He speaks with contempt of sound-bite politicians who show up only for TV cameras. He knows the problems are systemic and acts on his belief that they can’t be solved unless two populations get more hope and more leadership; young people and their fathers, many of whom are incarcerated. So he takes it upon himself to go to schools and prisons and talk to people about how to be proud and aware of the pitfalls of street life. He says poor women are heroic if they can get their African-American sons educated, keep them out of prison and off drugs. He says his mother is a hero.
Then we hit I-94 and drove to Rogers. Was it ever sleepy on the holiday weekend. Lucky for us the antique stores downtown were open, and the women with booths there were in a mood to talk. Kathy Zegar raised her family in Hanover, along this corridor that’s become the definition of urban sprawl. She’s feels the old lifestyle slipping away and wonders if the traffic jams and pace of development will ever let up. The schools and the social infrastructure arent keeping up, and she says she would pay more taxes if that would help. But she hates the new stadium tax and thinks a lot of the new development deals are good for business and bad for people. She’s fed up with politicians.
Kathy Zegar
Across from the railroad tracks, Jeanine Allen was also open for business on the holiday weekend, but we didn’t see any customers at her garden center, and she had plenty of time to talk to us. High gas prices have hurt her and other small businesses, she says. She’s interested in putting wind farms in Rogers, more teachers in schools, building up personal retirement accounts, exploring single-payer solutions to the health insurance crisis and…running for state representative. She says she has voted for Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Greens, but now that her children are grown, she feels obliged to act on her ideas through the political process.
Jeanine Allen
Well I have to admit it’s getting lonely here on the Voices blog. But we’re giving out lots of business cards, so those who check us out should have something to see, even if it’s just posts from me. We changed congressional districts Thursday. We’ll be back in CD 5 tomorrow, but Thursday we made our first venture into CD 3, the area Jim Ramstad represents. Alan and I live in the East Metro so we drove west with some trepidation about traffic and getting lost. There was some of both, but not a lot.
We visited with a private business consultant, a small-business owner, staff and volunteers at a food shelf, errand-runners and people relaxing with friends. It was a beautiful day and, except for the food shelf group, most people we asked thought life was pretty good.
We always seek people’s personal circumstances and concerns before asking about any of the issues on the list Bill Morris made as a guide. On Thursday, some people had to think hard to find something they wish worked better. Here’s what all three of them came up wishing for: Civility, respect, dialogue (ok, so they called it by different names, but it was basically the same thing.) They feel alienated from policy because politicians have made it so acrimonious. Some people also blamed religious fundamentalists for polarizing issues where common ground might be found.
Chris Amundson with friends and Alan in Wayzata
One of those people was Chris Amundson, who’d taken a day off his executive job with a hi-tech company. He was relaxing with out-of-town friends at a Starbucks. When I went up to introduce myself, I thought I was interrupting a meeting. Chris was checking email on his Blackberry, one of his friends was on a cell phone, and the other was on her laptop. But Chris explained they were just hanging out. Then he said he wished people took more time for their friends and more breaks from their fast-paced lives. He was serious. It was funny. Maybe you had to be there.
He is disturbed not just by the accelerated pace of life, but by the expanding population. He solved his commuting problem by moving into one of the new-construction developments that are ubiquitious in the West Metro, but he is also concerned about their toll on the environment.
He described himself as more conservative than liberal, because he feels an erosion of moral values, and thinks conservatives are more mindful of them. But when he said public education was a mess, and we asked him whether he’d pay more taxes if that would improve it, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.
The people at the food shelf reminded us that more than 20 percent of the population of many West Metro communities live in poverty. Annette Poeschel is the director, and spoke from personal experience about the difference a helping hand can make when people are desperate. She is determined that the food shelf not be an enabler of dependence for clients, but a means to self-sufficiency.
Annette Poeschel, Executive Director of the ICA food shelf
The food shelf is administered by the Intercongregational Community Association, so it was interesting to talk with staff and volunteers about engagement through their faith communities, though they all thought government should be doing more to ease the disparity between rich and poor.
Vernon Benson, food shelf volunteer
We spent nearly an hour with Mike Kelly, the charasmatic baker who, with his wife Ruth, owns the Great Harvest franchise on Minnetonka Boulevard. He is proud of his nutritious product, the relationships he’s built with his customers over 10 years, and also of the good jobs he provides to 16 local residents. He pays health insurance costs, despite 25 percent annual increases in costs. He’s worried about his ability to continue , but is optimistic that the issue has become so serious, a change in the health care sytem is imminent.
We interviewed a dozen people in Fridley and North Minneapolis. Our first stop in Fridley was the seemingly all-purpose community center, where driver’s ed classes, day care, and a Vounteers of American senior lunch program were just a few of the activities underway. At a park across University Avenue we talked to senior volunteers at a safety camp for grade schoolers. At Moore Lake, we had a fascinating conversation with an interracial couple with three children who had moved to North Minneapolis from a town in Georgia, but were spending their spare time in Fridley because it feels safe and they hope to move there when they save enough money to get their own place.
What the seniors and the couple had in common was concern over crime. It’s serious, and it’s affected their lives. Aubrey Ringdal said an acquainance was beaten nearly to death in Northeast Minneapolis and someone stole flowerpots from her stoop in Spring Lake Park.
Aubrey Ringdal
The young couple said the neighborhood where they’re staying is unsafe, with regular gunfire, even during the day.
They want more police on the streets, and some of them want programs to productively engage young would-be troublemakers. Most people said this is government’s responsibility, but Father Don Schwalm said private charities could and should help too.
Father Don Schwalm
Other seniors testified to the hardship of paying soaring health care costs on fixed incomes. For some it really is a choice between food and necessary drugs.
We also spoke with Mardell Hadley, a stay-at-home mother of young children, who wishes they could participate in more educational and recreational programs. They can’t afford them on one income, but she feels staying home with the kids is worth it because her priority is giving them strong Christian values.
Mardell Hadley
In North Minneapolis we stopped at Sumner library and spoke with a middle-aged African-American woman who had been raised in the projects, but raised her own family in Golden Valley. She looked across the street at the mixed-income new development that had replaced the projects, and wondered whether the immigrants who live there have more advantages than young black families ever did.
Last we spoke with one of those immigrant families, Somalia-born parents of four young children. Abdi Ismail is a bus driver in college to become a nurse: his wife stays home with the kids. They live in subsidized housing, but the waiting list for a three-bedroom voucher is years long, and with just two bedrooms, they are way too crowded.
We’re halfway through the 5th Congressional District. We have spent one day downtown Minneapolis and another on Lake and Bloomington. The Citizens League has designated target cities, and we are headed to St. Louis Park. It’s 4:30 Wednesday; westbound I-94 is clogged. We exit at Cedar, where we see a woman on the shoulder holding a “Homeless - Need Help” sign. Alan suggests we pull over.
She is Gina Gono, a 42-year old Ojibwe from Leech Lake. At first, she has few complaints. She says many people are generous and usually give her enough money to keep herself and her friends in vodka; $7.45 a liter. She gestures north, toward a liquor store on Cedar. “What about food?” we ask, and she tells us she eats at St. Stephen’s shelter.
Gina Gono
Soon two of her friends join the conversation, talking about how they watch out for each other in the homeless camp they share. “If I pass out, they’ve got my back,” says Roland Anderson.
Gina tells us she loves her life and also hates it. Loves it because “I’m free.” Hates it because alcohol runs it. We ask what would help. More food, she says, and more sharing from Native Americans who benefit from casinos. On the address line of our consent form, she writes “2525 Cardboard Box.”
We drive down Franklin around Lake of the Isles and Alan is awestruck by the magnificent homes. He hasn’t seen this part of Minneapolis. Dog-walkers and joggers are enjoying the splendid evening. We talk with two of them, Gay Joel and Tom Dobmeyer. They are jogging buddies, mental health professionals in their fifties, and they share many views. They deplore the war in Iraq and worry that funding it comes at the expense of health care and education.
We get to St. Louis Park about 6:30, and now it’s I who am amazed. I haven’t been down this stretch of Excelsior Boulevard in years. Trader Joe’s is there and an attractive four-story condo development so new I can smell the varnish through the open windows as we walk down the street. The lush city park sits just north, and here we interview the first of several content residents. Richard Swenson has a good job with a big firm, and chose to live in St. Louis Park because of all its amenities, especially for people raising kids like he is. He is concerned about the environment, but mostly he is pretty happy with life and work.
Some here tell us they oppose the war, and echo the concerns we’d heard at Lake of the Isles, about inadequate public schools and environmental degradation.
The Illuris
We meet an Indian couple at a gas station, on their way from Hopkins to Uptown for dinner. They’re newlyweds and newcomers. He works in IT for a big company. They’re glad it’s finally summer. They were surprised and pleased to find an Indian community in Minnesota of about 25,000, and they tell us a Hindu temple will open in the Twin Cities in a few weeks. They’re not sure where, but they will find out.
A mile or two west on Excelsior we meet Cindy and Bill Scattergood, a 50-ish couple who’ve come to Miracle Mile to shop at Half-Price Books.
Bill Scattergood is a 35-year employee of a major corporation that underwent a merger a few years ago. He misses the local management and feels torn between his personal values and those imposed by his new bosses. The company makes high-profile charitable contributions but its policies exploit poor people, he says. He is also disturbed by the accelerating pace of life, the isolation people feel from one another and the growing disparity he perceives between haves and have-nots. He puts himself at “the upper end of the have-nots.” He is grateful for the security of his job, but anxious about the world, and working hard on “centering himself,” he says.
The Scattergoods
His wife Cindy tells us she is worried about their younger daughter, 22 years old, working in retail, but unable to make ends meet. She moved to her own apartment three months ago, but called her mother last week because she was hungry and couldn’t afford groceries. Cindy Scattergood said many of her daughters’ friends are still living with their parents because they can’t support themselves. She wonders what will happen to this generation, raised with lots of toys but insufficient skills for coping with the low-wage, sink-or-swim world they’re encountering.
We went to the corner of Lake and Bloomington expecting to find diversity, and we did. Lake Street was being torn up and paved, and some neighbors said they were annoyed by the noise and debris. But it was also the last day of school at nearby South High School, and the teenagers were in a boisterous mood.
We had only a few hours and we did four interviews that were vividly distinct from each other.
First we talked with Mary Brinkhaus, a middle-aged woman who said she was at the corner visiting friends, and spent most days “lying around the house.” She gets Social Security disability payments, food stamps and medical assistance and said she’s grateful for programs that help people “in poverty.” She’s had problems with drug addiction for many years, and trouble making ends meet, especially during months she spends money on crack. “I’ve always had an addictive personality and I became addicted to drugs. I can’t tell you why but I can tell you I’ve made some pretty bad choices and that’s why I am here and I’ll take responsibility for it.”
Mary Brinkhaus
She said it’s government’s job to take care of all its citizens. She has nothing to complain about, she said, but she feels badly for friends who work for low wages and don’t have the medical care she does. She said her neighborhood has become both more frightening and friendlier in the last few years, a phenomenon she can’t explain.
We talked to Mary Brinkhaus outside Mercado Central, the bustling indoor mall on the southwest corner of Bloomington and Lake. Inside, we found Lenay Olsen on her cell phone. A junior at UMD, Olsen is confident her Spanish major and her love of children will land her a job as a Spanish teacher. She told us she’s passionate about Spanish culture and thrilled with the new diversity she’s finding in Minneapolis. “This Spanish mercado place is really awesome. And the Global Market is awesome. I think diversity is the key to the world. If people are missing any point it’s that we live with other people, you should learn to get along with those people.”
Lenay Olsen
Olsen is living with her parents in Fridley, where she was raised. She said Fridley’s growing population means more programs for high school students and more development, a good thing. She was proud to report that her church embraced newcomers by tailoring services to diverse cultures. She doesn’t think about politics much, and said she voted for Bush because her boyfriend told her to. Asked whether government affected her life, she had to think for a minute. Then she said she was glad government scholarships were paying a large part of her college tuition.
Bernie Hernandez-Chavez
Lots of people in the Mercado declined to talk to us. But Bernie Hernandez-Chavez was hanging out with his buddy in a shop that sells CDs. Well-read and opinionated, Hernandez-Chavez told us he doesn’t vote because there’s no difference between the parties. “People don’t vote directly for anything. There is no choice. You choose a or b and neither of them is any good.” He told us he’s felt racial discrimination his whole life because of his Puerto Rican accent. He thinks humans are more emotional than rational, and need a miracle or “a strong leader” to solve their self-made problems. He doesn’t trust the government at all, and believes it is aligned with big corporations against regular people.
People at the Mercado and also at the DFL convention last week said we had to talk with Ramon Leon, the executive director of the Latino Economic Development Center. What he had to say was moving and provocative; I’ll post a summary and quotes here tomorrow.
I learned a lot from listening to Ramon Leon, who runs the Latino Economic Development Center from an office on the second floor of a renovated building on Lake Street, across from the Mercado Central. He came to Minnesota in 1991, and with others he met in church, began to address the problems that plagued the then-tiny Latino community in Minneapolis. Their idea was to use economic development to break through barriers of racism, and impediments to access to education and health care. The result was the Mercado Central and a vital, growing neighborhood that Leon says has $300 million in buying power and potential for to make enormous economic contributions state-wide.
“If we are generating jobs, and we are improving the tax base and we are improving the neighborhoods, we are a benefit to the community.”
It’s not just that immigrants take jobs others don’t want. Leon says their new communities are key to Minnesota’s vitality because they bring buying power, a tax base and per-pupil money to school districts that need it.
By making life difficult for undocumented immigrants, Leon says communities are hurting themselves. “We are a lot safer in our communities by knowing who lives and works in our communities, not by not knowing…They don’t have access to a driver’s license, which forces them to do other things like driving without insurance. People who don’t have access to government i.d. carry cash and they are easy targets for criminals.
Leon’s case has been hurt by politicians who say undocumented immigrants are criminals. Especially in greater Minnesota, Leon has found people who are fearful because that’s how Latinos have been labeled:
“It is the natural way to react when you don’t know people. We have a shared responsibility to let people know who we are, why we are here and how they can benefit from our energy and our determination to succeed. We are no different…their ancestors who came to this country for the same reason. The only difference is, we are a different color.”
If the Republican refrain was “self-reliance,” the Democrats we interviewed were concerned about particular issues and how government could help.
John Heer, a father of two teenagers from Edina, is an engineer in the energy industry who has been concerned about global warming since he heard scientists discuss the problem at the University of Minnesota 15 years ago. He described it as “the biggest issue we were doing nothing about even though we have the tools TO do something.”
For Mary Moriarty, a psychotherapist from Maple Grove, health care policy had become a matter of life or death. “The Republican agenda has harmed a lot of my clients. They are not able to get insurance coverage. I’ve had patients be suicidal and not have any sessions at all allowed.”
Jennifer O’Rourke
Jennifer O’Rourke is a mother of two young children. She wasn’t a delegate, but was at the convention recruiting volunteers and funds for Erin Murphy, the DFL-endorsed candidate for Matt Entenza’s seat. She’s also a lobbyist for the League of Cities. Personally and professionally, she appreciates the accessibility of elected officials in Minneapolis, but admits she doesn’t know her neighbors well, and worries that people are so busy they’re becoming isolated. “I think it’s important to get to know your neighbors and I think it’s important to reach out to your world whether it’s your church or the community that’s offered because you hang out at the park a lot and your kids play Little League. I think it’s important to engage yourself in society.”
Vincent Carraher comes from a long line of proud Democrats. His grandfather was a delegate to the 1932 national convention that nominated FDR. He believes in bipartisan dialogue, but worries that lightning-rod issues like abortion keep people from discussing more important policy questions. “We don’t get anything back from the feds the way we used to. Young people, think of the debt you young people are going to have. I had my day in the sun but you folks are getting clobbered.”
Veronica Burt grew up on the South Side of Chicago, came to the University of Minnesota twenty years ago, and is now lead organizer with the Central Corridor Equity Coalition. Many of her friends grew up in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul, and saw their neighborhood decimated by I-94. Their experience informs her activism on projects that involve large investments of public funds, projects like light rail. “We try to identify projects where there’s a large concentration of African-Americans who would be impacted and a number of times impacted adversely unless we do the kind of education and organizing in the community to hopefully try to leverage benefits for local constituencies.” Her approach is a combination of grass-roots organizing and policy analysis that takes the long view. Her approach in a nutshell: “What is it that people want and how is that we can get it to them, and start from a basis of a win-win philosophy. I think if you start from that basis you’ll have a lot more patience in trying to figure out how your piece is a part of a puzzle as opposed to thinking that you need the entire puzzle.”
Vernonica Burt
Thinking of our visit to the Republican convention last week, we asked most people whether they talked about issues with Republicans, and, if they did, where they found common ground. Perhaps the most interesting response was from the engineer, John Heer, who told us he and his Republican brother-in-law disagreed fiercely about the war in Iraq, but agreed that consumption taxes were a viable way to make policy, especially when it came to energy.
To sum up, we could say that if the Republican catchphrase was support for self-reliance, the Democratic one was concern over an eroding safety net.
Margaret Flower is mother of two children and an occupational therapist from Hastings. She moved from Wyoming but was born and raised in the Chicago area. She’s a self-declared conservative who said she believes that her conservative values come from her family who taught her that if we did something wrong, we needed to pay for it.
She said she’s an advocate of responsibility, both at the personal level where we should be accountable for our own actions, and at a governmental level.
She said she is a staunch defender of America’s current healthcare system calling it, “the best in the world.”
Janice Smith is a resident of St. Paul. As a rental property manager she is personally concerned about rising property taxes in Ramsey county that she sees as symptomatic of inefficient spending in government. “It comes to the point that some people can’t stay in a house that they own because if (the property taxes) go up 20 percent, that’s quite a bit.”
She said she has spent time working for government and the city of St. Paul where she was a social worker in housing working with low-income groups to help them find subsidized accommodation. “Housing is just extremely important,” Smith said. “Where you live becomes some things in your life.”
“I think there are people that do need help, and it’s in our best interests to try to help some people along the way so that they can become more productive individuals eventually.”
Dean Urevig, 42, is a real estate agent and mortgage and loan officer who does architectural work. He said he has been a Republican activist for 25 years. He said he sees the Republican party as being aligned with his belief and support of self-sufficiency.
He explained his understanding of this concept as not relying on government or other people, “because government and other people can let you down.”
His said his work leads him to be concerned about rising property taxes, and the cost of home ownership. His father was a school superintendent, his wife is a teacher in Minneapolis and he spent time as a teacher in the Dunwoody College of Technology. He said a lot of the problems he sees with education stem from an over-burdensome administrative system, “the non-classroom part of education has just expanded,” Urevig said.
He said he listens to a variety of media sources but it doesn’t tend to inform his views on public policy. “I don’t listen to too much of what anyone else has to say,” Urevig said.
Carleton Crawford is the chair of the 5th Congressional District Republicans. He works as a draftsman in a small Minneapolis firm. He grew up Mound, Minn.
He said he has a preference for limited government. “If a problem needs to be solved, I’m much more interested in seeing if the private sector can handle it, with government program as a last resort,” Crawford said.
He said he is interested in strong foreign policy and strong military this comes from his admiration of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy stance towards Russia in the Cold War. This is also based on his concern for security, and his view of America’s role in the world.
Referring to the state of partisan politics, Crawford said he thinks parties are there to engage in the debate.
He said the parties are about change, and if you are changing something, you are probably going to get in an argument along the way.
