Will this be the year Minnesota takes a huge step forward on water quality issues, or will it be a missed opportunity? 

Gov. Mark Dayton announced recently that he plans to call a water quality summit in late February to address the myriad issues facing the state’s water supply. With this announcement, Minnesotans have been given a tremendous opportunity.

The summit is a chance for the people of Minnesota to have their voices heard, and for state leaders come together behind the information gathered as a part of the summit to put Minnesota on a clear path to clean water. 

There is no doubt that clean water is important to all Minnesotans. In the Land of 11,842 Lakes, water isn’t just a natural resource. It is a part of who we are. When it comes to supporting the health of lakes, rivers and drinking water we pride ourselves on our conservational ways. 

Example: the Legacy Amendment

One need only look at the Legacy Amendment that passed in 2008 to see an example of the level of support Minnesotans have for clean water. We voted to increase our own taxes to make sure that our strong heritage of clean land and waters remained protected. 

Water quality issues are complex, and that complexity can sometimes be a barrier to success. One thing that helped last year’s Buffer Bill ultimately pass was that the goal was clear and understandable. Regrettably, that level of clarity has been a missing component in much of our state’s water quality planning. Over the years we have seen many different plans and goals come and go. With such a lack of clarity and consistency, there has been no way for the average Minnesotan to track where we are, let alone where we are headed.

And when the state has set clear goals, they have not been inspiring. The state’s 2014 Clean Water Roadmap aspired to increase the percentage of Minnesota lakes with “good” water quality by 8 percent over 20 years, leaving 30 percent of our lakes polluted. This is clearly not enough. Nor is it enough to aim for only a 50 percent reduction in the number of drinking water wells contaminated with unsafe levels of arsenic and nitrates. Rather than speak in increments, it is time we start talking about a broader vision with concrete deadlines for reaching meaningful targets. 

The real question: What will it take?

The participants in this summit will be grappling with our state’s most important natural resource questions. Instead of asking what can we get done with the funding, policies, strategies and partners we have today, they should be asking what it would take to most effectively clean up our state’s waters once and for all.

We encourage the summit participants to identify the steps we must take to sustainably manage the quantity of both surface and ground water, to eliminate mercury and plastic pollution, to successfully stop the spread of invasive species, to make sure every Minnesotan has safe drinking water, and to clean up every last polluted lake, river and stream for the enjoyment of future generations.

We challenge Dayton and the Minnesota Legislature to take what is learned at the summit and find a way to use it to unleash the potential of our communities, businesses and every day average Minnesotans to play a role in cleaning up our waters. 

Set a bold state goal

How about making a Clean Water Promise for Minnesota by setting a state goal to solve all of these water problems by the year 2050?

To some, 2050 may sound far away for such an important goal. To others, reaching a goal of this scope might sound impossible. The fact is that reclaiming our waters by 2050 would be a tremendous feat. It also true that for Minnesotans there are few things in which we take more pride than our waters. As safe, clean water becomes an increasingly rare commodity around the globe, we have the opportunity to shore up our abundant supply and create a legacy that our generation can proudly hand off to the next.

Will this be the year Minnesota takes a huge step forward on water quality issues, or will it be a missed opportunity?

Paul Austin is the executive director of Conservation Minnesota. Gene Merriam is a former senator and DNR commissioner. Darby Nelson is a biologist and the author of “For Love of Lakes.” Dave Legvold is a Rice County farmer and environmental educator. 

WANT TO ADD YOUR VOICE?

If you're interested in joining the discussion, add your voice to the Comment section below — or consider writing a letter or a longer-form Community Voices commentary. (For more information about Community Voices, email Susan Albright at salbright@minnpost.com.)

Oh, good.Paul Douglas is now saying, “New 12z model data nudges the storm track farther north and west, putting the Twin Cities back into the zone of plowable snow amounts. The heaviest snows are still likely over southern and southeastern suburbs, where some 5-10" amounts are possible by Tuesday night. Expect a sharp snowfall gradient to set up close to St. Cloud where only a couple inches is expected.  But there's little doubt the PM rush on Tuesday will be a snowy, wind-whipped, white-knuckle slog.” That could seriously affect my happy hour plans.

At MPR, Bill Enderson says, “While the morning commute will have no weather problems, the evening commute is likely to be extremely slow. Forecast snowfall totals for the metro area range from 2 to 4 inches in the northernmost suburbs to 6 to 9 inches on the south side. The cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are likely to pick up around 5 to 8 inches.”

KEYC-TV in Mankato says, “With a powerful winter storm bearing down on southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, Minnesota's Department of Transportation is expecting to close roads as conditions become unmanageable. With whiteout conditions and significant drifting expected, drivers are encouraged to monitor road conditions and avoid travel if possible. Snow plows may be halted from clearing roads once MnDOT indicates travel is not advised. … Jed Falgren, the Area Maintenance Engineer for MnDOT District 7, says, ‘There is a reasonable chance that an event like we're going to see tomorrow that rescue will not be a possibility at that time. If they've got travel plans for tomorrow, really seriously reconsider those. It's going to be a very challenging day for travel in south–central Minnesota.’" And that means you, with the biggest, baddest four-wheel drive unit in town.

Like it was beaten out of them. In the Strib, Neal St. Anthony says, “Three more life insurance companies that owed unpaid claims to policy beneficiaries have settled with the Minnesota Department of Commerce. That brings to nine the number of companies out of 16 examined that have agreed to pay $143 million to beneficiaries. An additional $31 million owed to people who cannot be located will go into the state unclaimed property fund.” There are going to be some upset shareholders.

And what is going on in St. Cloud?KSTP-TV and the AP report, “Police say first responders found two bodies at the Mississippi River in St. Cloud, but that investigators don't believe the cases are related. St. Cloud Police Sgt. Jeffrey Janssen says police got a call Sunday afternoon about a person possibly on the ice. The body was found by a walker at 12:20 p.m. Sunday on the ice near the Granite City Crossing Bridge. … Janssen says officers on the scene found a second body on the rocks. He says it was the body of an unidentified man and appeared to have been there for a substantial amount of time.” So did they stop looking after the second one?

Who is coming back? Peter Cox of MPR says, “Best Buy has a new, but familiar competitor. Long-defunct Circuit City has new owners who plan to open small retail stores and jump into online shopping, with a focus on attracting millennial consumers. But analyst Anthony Chukumba with BB&T Market Capital doesn't expect Circuit City to be any real challenge to Best Buy. Rather, he says they're jumping into the market at a terrible time.” What’s next? Gateway retail stores?

Live by the drill, die by the drill. Says MPR’s Dan Gunderson, “After years of growing revenue, North Dakota state agencies need to trim their budgets in response to a revenue shortfall. Weakness in the oil and agriculture sectors dropped state revenue more than $1 billion below expectations, prompting Gov. Jack Dalrymple to tell state agencies they need to cut their budgets by $245 million.”

Also from MPR, Brian Bakst says, “A senior official at the Minnesota Lottery is serving a five-day suspension and another was reprimanded after a probe into expense practices that already led to the resignation of the agency's director. Meanwhile, Gov. Mark Dayton announced Monday that a former lottery boss would lead the entity temporarily until a permanent replacement could be found.”

A niche issue to be sure. In a Strib commentary, MAC board member and Thomson Reuters CIO Rick King says, “Currently, Delta Air Lines offers the only nonstop service from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. … While enough capacity exists at Haneda [Airport in Tokyo] to serve all U.S. carrier needs and provide competition, Japan has insisted on a controlled, limited opening designed to benefit only Japan’s network carriers and their partners. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has already agreed to this framework that, if adopted, would undermine Delta’s service between U.S. cities and Tokyo, including MSP’s direct flight, and reduce competition on travel to Asia.”

On the Governor’s condition, Esme Murphy at WCCO-TV says, “Political analyst Larry Jacobs said despite assurances, this latest health scare raises concerns. ‘It’s not just one event, it’s a series of events,’ Jacobs said. ‘I think the level of anxiety in the state is higher than it would be normally.’ … Minnesota’s top legislative leaders say they are confident in the governor’s ability to do his job and to recover. ‘The previous issues were relative to back problems and hip problems and those are moving parts. I have shoulder problems myself,’ Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk said.” OK. Good to hear that, I guess.

Off to a crashing start.Marino Eccher for the PiPress: “Deaths on Minnesota roads in January were up nearly threefold from the same month a year earlier, the Minnesota Department of Public safety said. In the first month of 2016, 25 people died in incidents statewide, up from nine in 2015. Over the past five years, an average of 19 people have died in traffic incidents in January.”

One thing seems certain about Chris Thile’s upcoming job as host of “A Prairie Home Companion”: More songs will be written about St. Paul. Thile said as much on Saturday during his first solo flight with the show, for which he was billed guest host. “The idea is trying to write a new one for every one of these,” he announced before launching into “The Mississippi Is Frozen,” a pretty good tune.

About other things, we can venture guesses. The Punch Brothers, or some of the Punch Brothers, will be regulars. (And/or members of Thile’s other band, Nickel Creek. Or maybe both?) Fewer stories will be told, and they will be delivered by guests. APHC overall will be less talk, more music. And there will someday be Chris Thile-related, APHC-specific merch (like an album of St. Paul songs).

Thile (THEE-lee), who’s used to playing for crowds, if not for APHC’s 4 million weekly radio listeners, appeared comfortable in the Fitzgerald Theatre, where we spotted St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and a lot of beards. Some things are still strange to him, including the clock beside his monitor (not visible to the audience) “where time is running out. It seems kind of ominous.” (APHC is a show that starts and ends precisely on time. Toward the end, during the final song, we could see him gesturing “Wrap this up!”)

And there’s the daunting prospect of stepping into Garrison Keillor’s shoes. More than once during the two-hour broadcast, which also streamed live on the website, Keillor’s name came up. “I’m delighted to be here,” Thile said. “I believe Garrison Keillor is writing a book right now.” And “I’m so grateful to him for this opportunity.” Tim Russell – part of the show’s acting company, with Sue Scott and sound effects wizard Fred Newman – made reference to the “tall, shambling galoot.” Keillor will continue as executive producer when Thile takes over as host next season.

We’ve only seen Thile live once before (at the Walker with pianist Brad Mehldau in 2014), so we don’t know if he’s usually a talker on stage, but he seemed perfectly fine introducing and interacting with the regulars and guests, taking part in skits and making jokes.

He followed a crack about Donald Trump (“The only way to slow him down is by increasing the education budget”) with a personal anecdote (“I’m a musician. I was home schooled. By that, I mean playing the mandolin and reading Hardy Boys novels”). He gave us some background on the Bill Monroe tune “Footprints in the Snow” before performing it, then chatted briefly with the Punch Bros. before they all played a breathtaking arrangement of the fourth movement from Mozart’s 14th string quartet. He took the lead in a skit about snow emergencies with Russell, Scott and Newman that required him to say, straight-faced, “Why would I ever put my tongue on an iron railing?”

It was kind of weird seeing Thile do the Powdermilk Biscuit and Catchup and Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie bits. He can do them with no problem, but it made us wonder how much of the original format is there now to ease the transition, and how much will still be around by 2017.

For many listeners, the heart of APHC has been Keillor’s weekly “News From Lake Wobegon” monologue. No one but Keillor could ever do those, and it would be dumb to try. On Saturday, guest Ed Helms (“The Daily Show”) told a story about stalking and catching a cricket in his home. Maybe story duties will fall to the guest comedian. Let’s see if Maria Bamford takes it on during next Saturday’s show. (Keillor returns Feb. 13.)

Courtesy of Prairie Home Productions

Left to right: Chris Thile, Sarah Jarosz, Brandi Carlile and members of the Punch Brothers.

The music throughout was terrific: Monroe’s “Footprints” with contemporary bluegrass prodigy Sarah Jarosz; clever, catchy songs by indie-pop star Ben Folds; that marvelous Mozart; Brandi Carlile’s tear-jerking “Red Dirt Girl,” and her yodeling during “Lovesick Blues.” The Punch Brothers and Carlile’s singers Phil and Tim Hanseroth. Longtime regular Rich Dworsky held it all together at the piano, and the abundance of strings on stage – guitars, banjo, mandolin, bass – was a genuine pleasure. If Thile returns APHC to its roots as a musical variety show – something Keillor told the Atlantic he expected him to do – then bringing in top-notch, amiable guests is the way.

You can listen online to the whole show or segments. Next week’s guests include Paul Simon and Andrew Bird; it sold out soon after it was announced, but you can stream it live during the broadcast or listen later online.

***

The 32 finalists for this year’s Minnesota Book Awards were announced Saturday. There are eight categories and four books in each, chosen by 24 judges from around the state including writers, teachers, librarians, booksellers and others from the literary community.

For Children’s Literature:“Behold! A Baby” by Stephanie Watson, illustrated by Joy Ang; “Dad’s First Day” by Mike Wohnoutka; “Red: A Crayon’s Story” by Michael Hall; and “Ten Pigs” by Derek Anderson. For General Nonfiction:“Asking For It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture – and What We Can Do About It” by Kate Harding; “John H. Howe, Architect: From Taliesin Apprentice to Master of Organic Design” by Jane King Hession and Tim Quigley; “No House to Call My Home: Love, Family, and Other Transgressions” by Ryan Berg; “Secrets from the Eating Lab: The Science of Weight Loss, the Myth of Willpower, and Why You Should Never Diet Again” by Traci Mann.

For Genre Fiction:“The Devereaux Decision” by Steve McEllistrem; “The Grave Soul” by Ellen Hart; “He’s Either Dead or in St. Paul” by D.B. Moon; “Season of Fear” by Brian Freeman. For Memoir & Creative Nonfiction:“In Winter’s Kitchen” by Beth Dooley; “The War Came Home with Him: A Daughter’s Memoir” by Catherine Madison; “Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life” by Karen Babine; “We Know How This Ends: Living While Dying” by Bruce Kramer with Cathy Wurzer.

For the Minnesota category:“Minnesota Modern: Architecture and Life at Midcentury” by Larry Millett, photographs by Denes Saari and Maria Forrai Saari; “Minesota State of Wonders” by Brian Peterson, stories by Kerri Westenberg; “North Shore: A Natural History of Minnesota’s Superior Coast” by Chel Anderson and Adelheid Fischer; “Warrior Nation: A History of the Red Lake Ojibwe,” by Anton Treuer. For Novel & Short Story:“The Dead Lands” by Benjamin Percy; “The Patron Saint of Lost Comfort Lake” by Rachel Coyne; “Prudence” by David Treuer; “There’s Something I Want You to Do” by Charles Baxter.

For Poetry:“Beautiful Wall” by Ray Gonzalez; “Borrowed Wave” by Rachel Moritz; “Home Studies” by Julie Gard; “Modern Love & Other Myths” by Joyce Sutphen. For Young People’s Literature:“The Bamboo Sword” by Margi Preus; “The Firebug of Balrug County” by David Oppegaard; “Isabelle Day Refuses to Die of a Broken Heart” by Jane St. Anthony; “See No Color” by Shannon Gibney.

Of the 32 books in the running, 14 were published by Minnesota publishers, and seven of those by the University of Minnesota Press.

The awards ceremony will be held Saturday, April 16, at Union Depot. FMI and tickets ($50/$500 for a table of ten). Several readings and events will be scheduled before the awards, giving us plenty of chances to see, hear and meet the finalists. We’ll let you know about those.

Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society

Joseph Rolette in the garb of a fur trader, c.1860.

Joseph Rolette was a fur trader and politician during Minnesota's territorial period. A colorful character in his time, Rolette is remembered for the drastic action he took to prevent removal of Minnesota's capital to St. Peter.

Rolette was born on October 23, 1820, in Prairie du Chien, Michigan Territory, in what is now Wisconsin. His parents were Jean Joseph Rolette and Jane Fisher. Rolette's father was a prominent French Canadian fur trader who by the 1820s was employed by the American Fur Company. As a child, Rolette was taken to live in New York by some of his mother's relatives. He was educated at a private school there under the protection of Ramsay Crooks, the president of the American Fur Company. In 1836, Rolette's parents separated but did not divorce, since they were Catholic.

By 1840, Rolette had returned west and started working in the fur trade. He operated in the Red River Valley, conducting trade for his father's partners, Henry Hastings Sibley and Ramsay Crooks. Rolette proved himself a valuable partner when he rebuilt a trading post at Pembina near the Canadian border in present-day North Dakota. He defended the post and was responsible for business conducted there.

In 1842, Rolette created a line of trade carts that ran on the Red River trails. The trails allowed for efficient trade and communication between Pembina and St. Paul. The system of Red River ox carts made the American trade in the region more competitive. They also diverted business from the rival Hudson's Bay Company in British Canada. The commerce Rolette directed to St. Paul helped the city become the commercial hub of the region.

Rolette married a Métis woman from Pembina named Angélique Jerome in 1845. The marriage solidified his connection to the Pembina community. The couple had eleven children. In October, 1851, Rolette's political career began when he was elected to represent Pembina in Minnesota's territorial legislature. His first trip to the legislature took him eighteen days by dogsled. When he arrived, his dogs famously entered the capitol building with him. As a Democrat, Rolette was reelected to the territorial House three times and served until 1856. In January of 1856, he began serving on the Territorial Council and became the chair of the Enrolled Bills Committee.

It was as chair of this committee that Rolette made his most famous contribution to Minnesota history. In February of 1857, a bill to remove the capital of Minnesota to St. Peter passed the territorial legislature. The bill was sent to the Enrolled Bills Committee, and had to pass through Rolette before it could be signed by the governor. Rolette came into possession of the bill on or before February 28, 1857, a few days before the end of the legislative session.

Once he had the bill in hand, Rolette disappeared. The sergeant-at-arms of the council searched St. Paul for the missing chairman. Legislators waited for him to be found and endured a 123-hour session, during which many of them slept in the chamber. Rolette opposed removing the capital to St. Peter and seems to have been aided in his disappearance by some citizens of the city.

Many versions of this story exist. Some state that Rolette spent his time drinking and playing cards with friends in a hotel after depositing the bill in a bank safe. Others state that the hotel was actually a brothel.

The claim that Rolette’s actions “saved” the capital for St. Paul is untrue. In reality, the process of removal continued until a federal district judge ruled the removal act unconstitutional.

In June of 1857, Rolette was elected to serve as a delegate to the first Minnesota State Constitutional Convention. Under the laws of the new constitution, Pembina ceased to be part of the state, and Rolette was no longer a legislator. When the legislature met in December of 1857, Rolette appeared anyway and was admitted. He was elected to office a final time, serving in the Minnesota Senate from December of 1857 to December of 1859.

During the Civil War, Rolette was unable to obtain a military commission, and throughout the 1860s his fortune dwindled. He served as a postmaster at Pembina and as a United States customs officer. His health deteriorated and on May 16, 1871, he died in Pembina.

For more information on this topic, check out the original entry on MNopedia.

Maybe I’m just worn out, but I can’t assign much meaning or significance to Monday’s results in Iowa, so with your indulgence, I’ll just review the facts and the most obvious points of meaning.

On the Repub side, Ted Cruz’s victory is a big blow to at least the growing aura of inevitability around the Donald Trump candidacy. He didn’t blow Trump out, and Trump starts the next race in New Hampshire with a much bigger lead in the polls. Perhaps this shuts down whatever possibility existed that Trump’s amazing run from clown to frontrunner would soon eliminate all opposition to his nomination.

Marco Rubio’s strong third-place finish, far surpassing any expectations based on recent polls, is also a huge jolt of energy for his chances. In the run-up to the results, I heard David Brooks say on “PBS NewsHour” that Rubio need to get 16 percent or more to help himself. (And I thought to myself: Where do these guys get these numbers and the confidence to announce them on air?) Anyway, Rubio got 23 percent, almost tying Trump for second place. The universal view of the TV talkers was that Rubio had drawn a lot of support that had formerly leaned toward Trump, which is a major explanatory factor in the top three finishers and Cruz’s surprising win.

Rubio’s big late surge, perhaps at Trump’s expense, was the biggest surprise of the night on the Repub side. Pressure will be brought to bear on the other so-called establishment Republicans in the race to get out, in favor of Rubio, which could turn this into a more manageable three-way race before too long.

I note in passing that Ben Carson scored 9 percent last night, which is a big comedown from his brief fling with front-runnership. This put Carson in fourth place, but he seems destined to disappear soon. If a key to Carson’s appeal is a bit on the evangelical side, that could represent an area of potential growth for Cruz, the current king of the evangelical candidates.

Mike Huckabee shut down his long-hopeless campaign last night. Rick Santorum was a non-factor.  (Just as an aside, they were the only two guys in the huge field who had previously won Iowa, and surely they thought their past glory would give them some kind of leg up. They were wrong. Iowans are fickle.) Their departures would free up some more religiously oriented support that, according to the theory above, might also strengthen Cruz going forward, except that they apparently have so little support. Huckabee scored 1.8 percent. Santorum scored 1.0. This led to a cruel but true MTV.com headline that read: “God’s still not dead, but Mike Huckabee’s political career sure is.”

But the establishment “lane,” as all analysts have come to call it, is still crowded and several establishmentarians — Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Chris Christie — who believe that a strong showing in New Hampshire will enable them to yet become the establishment choice. The longer they all stay in, the harder it will be for anyone representing that wing of the party to end up controlling the nomination.

Rand Paul has the true libertarian lane almost to himself, yet he finished fifth with just 5 percent. I’d be skeptical that he can last much past New Hampshire unless he pulls a big surprise there. I’m surprised at his failure to make an impact to this point. Caucus states were kind of a specialty for Paul’s father, Ron Paul, back when he was the official libertarian. Not so the son, apparently.

Trump’s concession speech was amazingly unamazing for Trump. Totally gracious. Congratulated Cruz. Showed no anger or even pique. Insulted no one. Predicted he would win New Hampshire (which is still generally expected). This Fox News analysis piece suggests that Cruz beat Trump because, while Trump polled best on a question about which candidate “says what he thinks,” Cruz crushed the field on the question of which candidate “shares my values.” A lot more Iowa Republicans said it was more important for a candidate to share their values than to say what he thinks. Trump wasn’t in the top three in “shares my values.”

Cruz’s victory speech was a mind-numbering 30-plus minutes long. The first two sentences mentioned God. If you would like to watch the full speech, it’s here.

The Democrats

Hillary Clinton led in the counting all night, but not by much, and Bernie Sanders kept creeping up. By the time I shut off the tube, her lead was well under 1 percentage point and none of the networks had declared a winner. Also, on the Dem side, they don’t report an actual vote count, but only the way support translates into delegates to the state convention, which I gather leaves unknowable which candidate had more backers at the caucuses. As of this morning, the vote is Clinton 700, which tentatively translates into 23 delegates to the national convention, and Sanders 692, for 21 delegates.

Neither Clinton nor Sanders actually declared victory in their public remarks. Clinton did say that she was very “relieved” by the result. Sanders called it pretty much a dead heat. Four years ago, the final winner on the Republican side of the Iowa Caucuses (Santorum) wasn’t declared until several days later.

Former Gov. Martin O’Malley, the third candidate in the race, dropped out after the caucuses.

Sanders’ strength in general is with younger Democrats and last night he scored big in college towns. Clinton did well in the most populous county, Polk, which contains the biggest city, Des Moines.

In her remarks, Clinton described herself as a “progressive who gets things done for people,” which seemed like a subtle dig at Sanders, but sooo subtle. She said she was “excited about engaging Senator Sanders in a debate about the best way to move forward.”

She was much tougher on the Republican candidates, although not mentioning their names. She said she has “followed their campaign closely,” she “understands what they are appealing to” (which she called “divisiveness”) and pledged to “stand against it” and not let it “rip apart the progress that we’ve made.”

Sanders congratulated Clinton, thanked O’Malley and then claimed that the results of the evening send a “profound message to the political establishment, the economic establishment and the media establishment” that “it’s just too late for establishment politics and establishment economics.” He made his usual references to “millionaires and billionaires” and the disproportionate share of political and economic power they hold and how much they hog almost all the wealth for themselves and use their wealth to “buy elections.”

It was actually pretty mild compared to his normal stump speeches.

It’s hard to say what impact this dead heat will have on the Dem contest. The most common assumption is that Sanders will win New Hampshire, where he has a substantial lead in recent polls. But Clinton has a big lead in the next state, South Carolina.

It is a common analysis point that Clinton polls much better than Sanders among non-white Democrats. Iowa and New Hampshire are two of the whitest states. So, according to this analysis, Sanders is advantaged in the first two contests but may do less well later. If Sanders had won Iowa and then won New Hampshire, that might have given him momentum that might help him in the later states, but now that Iowa is a tie, I don’t know where that thinking stands.

Last December, Congress slipped into its $1.15 trillion spending bill a measure that “undermines women’s rights to make informed decisions based on the best scientific evidence,” according to a commentary published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

That measure requires health insurers to follow the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force’s (USPSTF) breast cancer screening guidelines from 2002 rather than the task force’s two more recent ones, including its latest, which was issued just a few weeks ago.

The 2002 USPSTF guidelines recommended that average-risk women undergo mammography screening every one to two years beginning at age 40. After an exhaustive examination of the most recent scientific evidence, the task force updated their guidelines in 2009 and again this year to recommend that biannual screenings start later, at age 50.

“Essentially, Congress is requiring health insurers to ignore modern scientific assessments and instead use 14-year-old guidance,” write Dr. Kenneth Lin, a family medicine physician at Georgetown University, and Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at the same institution, in the JAMA commentary.

That action has important ramifications that go beyond the issue of breast cancer screening, they add, for it also weakens the public’s trust in the value of evidence-based science.

Political backlash

Some background: One of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which was passed by Congress late in 2009 and was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, is that private insurance plans must provide “first-dollar” coverage (no co-payments, coinsurance or deductibles) for any preventive service that receives an “A” or “B” grade from the USPSTF. (Those grades mean there’s a “high certainty” that the service’s net benefit for patients is “moderate” or “substantial.”)

Created in 1984, the USPSTF is an independent panel of experts with backgrounds in prevention and evidence-based medicine. They volunteer to assess the best evidence on various preventive services, and then make clinical recommendations regarding those services. Those recommendations are published in peer-reviewed journals (and on the USPSTF’s website), and are periodically updated.

In 2009, the USPSTF gave only a C grade to mammography screening for women aged 40 to 49 who are at average risk of developing breast cancer. This recommendation caused an instant and sometimes vicious backlash from medical groups, such as the American College of Radiology and the Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance, as well as from a few women’s health organizations.

The USPSTF’s updated guidelines were widely (and angrily) misinterpreted, however. Many people believed the task force was saying that women under the age of 50 should be denied access to mammography screening.

“A C grade is commonly misunderstood,” explain Lin and Gostlin. “It does not advise against screening, but rather it indicates moderate certainty that there is small population-level benefit. Clinicians should discuss C-rated services with patients using an individualized assessment of the patients’ risk factors and preference.”

And although insurers do not have to offer “first-dollar” coverage for a C-graded service, that was never really going to be the case with mammography.

As Lin and Gostlin point out, “Importantly, irrespective of USPSTF recommendations, most insurers have offered mammography coverage for women aged 40 through 49 years.”

Wrongly framed

One reason for all the controversy was that the USPSTF guidelines were framed by critics as a form of health-care rationing.

“Yet the Task Force uses a rigorous scientific methodology focusing on net health benefits and does not take economic cost into account,” the two Georgetown professors explain.

Furthermore, the USPSTF is not alone in its interpretation of the evidence regarding mammography screening.  In Great Britain, for example, the National Health Service currently recommends that average-risk women be screened every three years starting at age 50 . And late last year, the American Cancer Society, shifted its recommended starting date for routine mammography from 40 to 45. 

“By declining to acknowledge scientific progress, Congress may do more harm than good to women’s health,” write Lin and Gostin. 

There is also a real risk, they add, that Congress may soon begin to erode the Task Force’s independence.

“The House’s version of 2016 omnibus spending bill (which was not included in the final legislation) would have denied funding for any future USPSTF mammography recommendation,” they explain. “Some members of Congress have gone further, proposing to alter the Task Force’s composition to include ‘stakeholders from the medical products manufacturing community.’”

Political second-guessing

So far, the USPSTF has withstood the pressures on its independence and scientific integrity, but will they be able to continue doing so in the future? 

Yes — if the public demands that Congress stop second-guessing the task force’s independent experts.

“When Congress required [the government] to link insurance coverage policy to outdated public health guidance, it was making a scientific judgment for which it is distinctly unqualified,” write Lin and Gostlin. “In effect, legislators implicity concluded that a rigorous assessment of numerous research studies during the past 14 years is not relevant to women’s health today.”

“Congress’s paternalistic response to USPSTF mammography screening recommendations vividly illuminates the social costs of politically mandated care,” they add. “Rather than benefiting women, political interference with science can discourage shared decision making, increase harms from screening, and foster public doubt about the value and integrity of science.”

FMI:  The commentary was published online in JAMA on Jan. 18, where it can be read in full.

Nearly five months into an emotionally straining push to secure their kindergartener access to a safer learning environment at Nova Classical Academy— where he was being bullied for wearing pink gym shoes and a sparkly backpack — Hannah and David Edwards feel their efforts may finally pay off.  

Board members of the K-12 St. Paul charter school unanimously approved a Gender Inclusion Policy Development task force Jan. 25, with the expectation that a newly developed policy be adopted by May 23. In the interim, the board passed a resolution that explicitly states a number of ways in which gender nonconforming and transgender students will be afforded equal protections and freedoms of expression at school.

“I think last night was a really big deal. We’d been asking them to take a specific position,” David said the next day. “Last night they very clearly stated that, with regard to pronouns, bathroom facilities.”

Both the school and the Edwardses have been facing resistance from the Minnesota Family Council, a Minneapolis-based Christian organization, and like-minded parents who have rallied behind its conservative ideals. The group held a meeting on school grounds Jan. 12. While the school didn’t endorse the event, the meeting shifted the attention away from the well-being of one particular child to the concerns of parents who feel discussing gender in elementary school is inappropriate. Inevitably, the conversation devolved into a debate over gender-neutral bathrooms — the sensationalized topic schools seem to struggle with most.

But the incident at Nova was never really about bathrooms. It’s about bullying and one family’s attempts to create a more gender-inclusive learning environment, even at the elementary level.

A preference for dresses

Hannah and David consider their son gender nonconforming, even though he doesn’t yet use that language to describe himself. As a 5-year-old, he’s more preoccupied with having a say in what he wears.

From a very young age, Hannah said, her son always identified with the female characters in stories. This translated into dressing up as the girl character during playtime and requesting princess costumes to wear not just for Halloween, but for everyday attire.

While they’d always supported his choices, Hannah says they finally had a light-bulb moment.

“Instead of wearing costumes all the time, let’s let him choose his own clothing,” she said. “We took that plunge around his fifth birthday, in July, as school was starting.”

At first, they limited his freedom in choosing his school attire to accessories — his pink gym shoes and backpack. But by Thanksgiving, his pleas to wear the girls’ uniform to school could no longer be ignored.

“He said at one point, ‘My dream is just to wear the jumper to school,’” Hannah said.

By this point, the bullying and name-calling had already begun, largely during after-school activities and during recess.

Their son would come home and tell them about his experiences — like when another student had told him he couldn’t be Cleopatra during playtime. And they saw, firsthand, some of the pointing, snickering and name calling that took place when they’d come to pick him up from school.

“I think we rightly assumed, if we could witness something like that happening it was very likely a larger problem during the [school] day,” David said.

In an attempt to be proactive, they had approached school administration before the start of the school year to flag their concerns. They listed their son’s allergies and academic weaknesses, along with the fact that he identifies as a girl at this point, hoping the school would be better equipped to hedge any potential issues.

They say the school was initially willing to work with them on developing a professional development session for teachers, where they shared a photo slideshow documenting the natural progression of their son’s feminine expression. They also had a book picked out about a boy who likes to wear dresses, to be read in classrooms.

“[Students] need the education piece, on a new topic like this,” Hannah said, noting that kids are apt to have questions about things that look different from what they’re used to seeing.

Everything seemed to be moving along smoothly — just as it had when they brought a book on peanut allergies into their son’s classroom with no issue — until reaction from a parent letter sent home before anti-bullying week threw the book, “My Princess Boy,” into question.

The school’s climate committee was charged with reviewing the book and holding community forums. Thus began the saga of debates at committee and board meetings, which left the Edwardses feeling incredibly frustrated and targeted.

“It pushed us out into the spotlight, as the people who are asking for something even though it’s something all children will benefit from,” David said.

In the media coverage that ensued, they felt their son was publicly outed and nonsupporters have misconstrued their request for an intentionally gender-inclusive learning environment as an extreme action.

“We’re a pretty traditional family,” David said, noting they’ve been married almost 10 years and both have experience teaching at public schools. “There’s really nothing that different about our child either. We’ve accepted how he’s describing himself and the person he’s turning into. That shouldn’t be the exception. That should be the standard.”

The case for being proactive

In media coverage of the situation at Nova, parents opposed to a gender-inclusive policy said they feel uncomfortable having teachers discuss gender with their children at such a young age, before they’ve had these conversations as a family or received any sex-education curriculum.

But those closer to the issue say that the sooner educators begin to confront the gender binary — the socially constructed notion that those assigned female at birth will identify as a woman, express themselves in a feminine way, and partner with a male; and vice versa for men — the better off all students will be.

“I think it’s really critical that we address gender at an early age,” Jenifer McGuire, an associate professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota, says, adding that every child will be exposed to gender nonconforming people through their interactions and the media. “The longer we develop with any mindset, the more and more rigid that mindset becomes.”

While studies on gender nonconforming and transgender youth development in the U.S. are fairly limited, she says one thing is very clear: It’s not healthy to victimize any kids, whether by way of bullying or marginalization.

“When a population, a minority member, is omitted, it puts that person at increased risk because they can’t see themselves anywhere,” she says. “It also puts everyone else at risk because they don’t understand who the minority members are.”

Studies show gender-nonconforming youth are at higher risk for mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidal thoughts and attempts than their peers. In turn, director of the U.S. Department’s Office of Safe and Healthy Schools, David Esquith, identifies feelings of loneliness, fear and hopelessness as the most powerful threats to school safety.

A kid-friendly lesson on gender

Esquith touched on the importance of addressing transgender bullying — which he categorized as an emerging issue — at a professional development conference on bullying hosted at Hamline University mid-January.

In a later session on gender-identity-based bullying, Cheryl Greene dove much deeper into the need for intentional prevention and intervention strategies in elementary classrooms. Greene works as a consultant for Welcoming Schools, a program focused on creating gender-inclusive environments at the elementary level through professional development work with educators. The program is an extension of the Human Rights Campaign.

Greene started out by equipping all attendees with an explanation of the varied nature of gender, which is more fluid than the gender binary box.

“When our kids don’t fit within this box, they are much more likely to be bullied,” she said. “The majority of bullying that happens in elementary school is around kids who don’t fit into the box. Those kids get bullied at a rate that’s higher than any other type of bullying that happens in elementary schools.”

Boys who like to wear dresses, for instance, aren’t the only ones who many be victimized. This group includes boys who like to play chef with kitchen toys, or who paint their nails because they like bright colors.

In the interest of protecting all students from bullying, Greene goes by the motto: If you’re not addressing gender-based bullying, you’re not addressing bullying in general.

In her experience, the best way to go about broaching the topic of gender at the elementary level is by separating it from orientation.

By leaving the more controversial element of sexual orientation out of the equation, educators are still able to touch on the other two elements of gender. There’s gender expression —  how a person presents gender through things like pronouns, hairstyles, mannerisms and styles of play — and gender identity, which is an internalized deeply felt sense of being male, female, both or neither.

“As soon as a child can talk, they know who they are, as far as their gender,” Greene said.  “If their gender identity doesn’t match their [assigned] sex at birth, they know that as well, right away.”

Creating a gender-inclusive learning environment doesn’t have to involve making the leap straight into designating gender-neutral bathrooms, she says. It’s better to take baby steps toward opening the minds of both parents and students, especially in elementary school.

That starts inside the classroom, where teachers can do relatively benign things like address their class by saying “scholars” or “students” rather than “boys and girls.” Likewise, they can be intentional in grouping students in ways that don’t rely on gender, whether it be lining up at the door or playing a game.

Perhaps the most simple, and arguably most impactful, strategy is to equip students to stand up to gender-based bullying they encounter by responding with phrases like “there’s no such thing as boys' toys and girls' toys” or “anybody can wear anything they want.”

McGuire agrees with this approach to getting ahead of bullying early on.

“You shouldn’t constantly be reminding everyone what their gender is,” she said. “It’s no more appropriate to line people up by sex than it is to line them up by religion. An inclusive approach to gender would move away from those things in the first place.”

A growing body of policy

As Nova’s gender inclusion policy continues to take shape, Principal Eric Williams says they’ll be looking at a number of existing models, including St. Paul Public Schools’ gender inclusion policy, which was unanimously adopted last March.

The push to develop a policy in St. Paul Public Schools came from multiple stakeholders — board members, members of student council groups, gender nonconforming students and more — who voiced a need for clarity and consistency, so families could fully understand what they could have access to and staff were clear on the supports available to students as well.

The district’s Out for Equity program staff are tasked with coordinating the implementation of the gender inclusion policy, which began with a professional development training for all educators at the start of the school year. Program Specialist Mary Hoelscher has continued to work with the district’s counseling team to develop a more robust support system for gender nonconforming students.

At the elementary level, students are being exposed to transgender and gender nonconforming people through the AMAZE program, a collection of literature that explores themes like diversity and bullying.

“Many students experience gender-based bullying and harassment, not just transgender and gender nonconforming students,” Hoelscher said, adding this comprehensive approach to exploring diversity speaks to the multiple layers of identity many minority students in the district experience.

St. Paul's new gender inclusion policy dovetails with its racial equity policy [PDF] and bullying prohibition policy [PDF], which was in the works even before the state’s Safe and Supportive Schools Act was enacted in April 2014.  

While staff say the district has certainly experienced growing pains along the way, they are proud of the fact that they’ve taken a proactive approach to addressing these issues.

“I feel, in St. Paul, we are setting the trends that will be picked up by the majority of the rest of the state,” Jon Peterson, director of the district’s Office of College and Career Readiness, said of the district’s intentional approach to ensuring a safe learning environment.

Hoelscher gets a fair amount of requests for guidance from other districts that are looking to develop their own gender inclusion policies. But there’s no quick fix, Hoelscher says. It takes time and collaboration to build a culture of acceptance and to effectively implement a policy. Hoelscher says the district has been committed to its Out for Equity program for over 20 years, so the foundation for a policy was already in place. And the implementation of the district’s new gender inclusion policy has involved the collaboration of more than 12 departments, including the facilities department, which continues to work with students to make sure they have access to a bathroom that aligns with their gender.

“It’s a very holistic approach that St. Paul Public Schools is taking, and that’s what it takes,” Hoelscher said.

It’s hard to measure the impact of a gender inclusion policy, especially given the dearth of data on transgender and gender nonconforming students. A new question on the Minnesota Student Survey that asks students to note their gender identity, however, may soon shed some light on this student demographic.

Gender inclusivity is something the Minnesota Department of Education has taken a supportive stance on. Not only did the department co-sponsor the anti-bullying conference that Greene spoke at. But the department has also co-authored resource materials with Outfront Minnesota, says Craig Wethington, Director of the department’s School Safety and Technical Assistance Center.

All these efforts fall under statewide expectations outlined in Minnesota’s Safe and Supportive Schools Act and Human Rights Act.

At a federal level, protections for transgender and gender nonconforming students are included under Title IX. The Office for Civil Rights has also issued some policy guidance [PDF] to school districts. The office didn’t start tracking gender identity and transgender discrimination in its complaint database until October 2015. As of Jan. 28, the office had received 22 complaints involving transgender students this year.

As policymakers continue to place a higher priority on tracking and addressing the need for more concrete gender inclusion policies in schools, schools can expect to see more supports coming down the pipeline.

“As with other civil rights issues on which we receive questions, we’re considering issuing a guidance that will help schools comply with Title IX,” Esquith says, speaking on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Healthy Students. “What’s prompting this is we’re getting questions from the field and that’s when the department issues guidance.”

Given the building momentum around gender inclusive policies for schools, Nova seems to be embracing this opportunity to take a more proactive stance here on out.

“A policy is a school’s law and it’s our obligation to follow the law,” Principal Williams said. “And it’s the right thing to do. We aren’t just complying, we are trying to welcome and affirm all students, regardless of who they are.”

Let’s hope that Minnesota’s municipal water supplies are in generally good shape for lead contamination, as the Strib reported briefly last week.

But as the fallout from the crisis in Flint deepens around the country – with formerly ignored test results receiving new scrutiny, and the testing itself  drawing new challenges – it’s clear that there’s much murkiness in the monitoring of this problem nationwide.

Also, that the issues of lead leaching from water-supply lines may prove to be especially significant in the upper Midwest, where lead pipe and lead-soldered copper pipe remain most common.

Among the few certainties is that many more cities than Flint probably face a long, costly campaign to ensure that this most basic of fluids is in fact as unleaded as most of us had simply assumed.

“The price tag just to dig up and replace as many as eight million lead service lines into homes and businesses could easily reach tens of billions of dollars,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday (subscribers and pay-as-you-go readers can find the story here).

The task is complicated by the fact that utilities and cities often don’t know where such lines are buried. And tens of millions of other water lines have lead solder or fixtures that also can contaminate drinking water. ...

“It’s going to be a huge financial challenge,” said G. Tracy Mehan III, executive director for governmental affairs at American Water Works Association, a trade group representing 4,000 utilities across the U.S., not including Flint’s. Just 2% of water utilities surveyed by the group last year said they had the financial resources to cover future pipeline upgrades, which would include replacing lead pipes and fixtures.

Slow replacement of leaded lines

The figure of 8 million lead service lines appears to come from a report published last August by the National Drinking Water Advisory Council, a panel that recommends policy to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And it seems to refer both to lead supply lines, which were phased out after the  late 1920s, and to the lead-soldered  copper supply lines which typically replaced them until they, too, were banned in 1988 under the so-called Lead and Copper Rule:

EPA estimates that there were approximately 10.5 million LSLs in 1988 before the promulgation of the LCR and approximately 7.3 million LSLs now.

The panel’s recommendation is that all of those lines be replaced with lead-free substitutes as soon as possible, instead of waiting for major, persistent problems to appear.

The latter approach is currently the norm, and the upshot is that nearly 30 years after they were banned, the number of lead-soldered lines nationwide has declined by only about 30 percent. And according to an excellent report by Wisconsin Watch, whose findings I’ll return to in a moment, the old lines are especially prevalent in nine Midwestern and Northeastern states, Minnesota among them.

While some cities have been forced into large-scale replacement programs – Washington, D.C., is a prominent example – most have opted for chemical treatments that reduce the lead-leaching properties of water passing through the lines.  

The object is to hold the test results below the EPA limit of 15 parts per billion, set shortly after the lead-copper rule was adopted. According to the Strib story,

In Minnesota, the first subsequent round of testing found that nearly 12 percent of the state’s community water systems exceeded that level. But they were still far below some of the extremely high levels recently found in Flint.

Gaming the test protocols

Troubling test results in other cities have made the news in the last couple of weeks – they include Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, all mentioned by the Journal, as well as Milwaukee and New Orleans; Greenville and Durham, North Carolina, as well as 16 Ohio cities including  Sebring– and the fundamental adequacy of the tests themselves has come under challenge, too.

Dr. Yanna Lambrinidou of Virginia Tech, a member of the EPA advisory panel, told the UK Guardian that readings are systematically lowered by deliberate departures from the EPA’s collection protocols.

Based on documents concerning municipal testing programs that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Lambrinidou told the Guardian that several cities advise testers to run taps for several minutes before collecting a sample, which flushes lead out of the lines, or to remove filters and aerators, the difficulty of which might discourage homeowners from bothering to test at all. Some testing programs provide collection vessels with openings so small they are difficult to use.

Many of these steps have been officially, and specifically, criticized by the EPA, she said, but they persist anyway. In Michigan, pre-flushing of pipes was recommended in Grand Rapids, Andover, Muskegon, Holland, Jackson and Detroit, the latter recommending a full five-minute flush.

There is no way that Flint is a one-off. There are many ways to game the system. In Flint, they went to test neighbourhoods where they knew didn’t have a problem. You can also flush the water to get rid of the lead. If you flush it before sampling, the problem will go away.

The EPA has completely turned its gaze away from this. There is no robust oversight here, the only oversight is from the people getting hurt. Families who get hurt, such as in Flint, are the overseers. It’s an horrendous situation. The system is absolutely failing.

For a close-up look at how another Midwestern state has been handling a lead-pipe problem that is no cinch, I highly recommend Wisconsin Watch’s “Failure at the Faucet” series, part of an ongoing examination of water issues in the Badger state.

Where lead is likeliest

Like Minnesota, Wisconsin is one of nine states where supply lines to homes and businesses are most likely to contain lead, according to industry data. (The project does not actually address any but Wisconsin; the lead reporter, Silke Schmidt, told me the other eight are Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and Pennsylvania.)

At one end of the response spectrum is Madison, the first major city in the nation to replace all of its lead service lines, both the public and private portions.  That effort, Schmidt wrote in a piece published yesterday,

[T]ook more than a decade beginning in 2001, and cost roughly $19.4 million. About 20 percent of the cost was borne by homeowners. The city covered half the cost of replacement, up to $1,000, for the 5,600 property owners who participated.

Robin Piper, the utility’s financial manager at the time, said the solution “made the most sense in the long run.” It made the city’s drinking water safe and did not pollute Madison’s lakes with orthophosphate, an anti-corrosive that was the other solution Madison could have chosen for preventing lead from leaching into water.

On the other hand, as the utility’s current general manager, Tom Heikkinen, told her, “It was quite a contentious thing. I’m glad I wasn’t here at the time.”

As of today, across the rest of the state,

At least 176,000 so-called lead service lines connect older Wisconsin homes to the iron water mains that deliver municipal water, according to an estimate by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Milwaukee alone, where 60 percent of the state’s known lead-poisoned children live, has 70,000 lead service lines.

Replacing all of Milwaukee’s would cost somewhere between $511 million and $756 million, according to the city’s water works. Nevertheless, the EPA advisory panel that included Lambrinidou is recommending that the Lead Copper Rule be rewritten to require the nation’s Milwaukees to follow Madison’s example, rather than taking a piecemeal approach in response to worsening test results.

Other notably large concentrations of lead lines cited by Wisconsin Watch are in Wausau, Wauwatosa and Racine, but nobody – not even the EPA – can list with confidence all the cities that have reason to worry.

Miguel Del Toral, a regulations manager at the EPA’s Chicago office, said that after five years of effort, he could only track down written documentation of lead pipes in 113 Wisconsin communities in 47 of the state’s 72 counties. The number of lead pipes outside of these communities is anybody’s guess.

A nationwide EPA survey of 153 public water utilities in 1984 found that “30 percent of the respondents could not offer any estimate of the number of lead service lines remaining in their cities,” according to a 2008 report.

***

MinnPost event: On Monday, Feb. 22, MinnPost’s Earth Journal Circle will present its fourth annual event focusing on substantive discussion of critical issues in the environment. This year’s topic is “Land of 10,000 Lakes: Can We Achieve Water Sustainability?” The speaker is Deborah Swackhamer, former director of the University of Minnesota’s Water Resources Center, who will discuss issues threatening regional water quality and quantity. Earth Journal writer Ron Meador will moderate the Q&A session.

Stepping back for a moment, one of the noteworthy facets of the protests over the police shooting of Jamar Clark this past November was how protest organizers followed a relatively new and effective template for quickly building crowds and media attention.

The marrying of traditional civil rights protest tactics (draw crowds, disrupt routine activity) with the savvy use of social media and direct confrontation with traditional news sources helped organizers control their message in a remarkably effective manner. At the same time, the immediacy and volume of alternative media messaging also presented local newsrooms with new challenges in fully and fairly reporting racially ­charged incidents.

One obvious revolution is the continuing growth in the use of Twitter and Facebook (and, to a lesser extent, other venues) in speaking immediately and directly to core audiences, people primed by established relationships to respond with their physical presence at a moment’s notice — and to serve as instantaneous amplifiers for reaching those who aren’t yet among the organizers’ “followers.” The days of formal press releases sent to conventional news outlets begging for attention has become another vestige of a fast­disappearing era, as is a movement’s dependence on traditional media to report on the most critical elements of any protest.

Nekima Levy­-Pounds, president of the Minneapolis NAACP and a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, has been active in the local Black Lives Matter movement since its inception, and was one of the most prominent spokespeople during the Clark protests. At 39, Levy ­Pounds has feet in both old and new schools of protest tactics and rhetoric.

She says circumventing traditional media, especially local media, is now essential to insuring that the full breadth and depth of the issues motivating a protest are heard, or at least widely available.

One key is drawing in national media as a way to apply competitive pressure on local reporters to improve their game, a tactic made easier in the Clark protests by the intense interest and coverage of the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, Missouri, Freddie Gray in Baltimore and others.

“It’s usually a challenge if you’re relying only on local media to cover major stories of racial injustice,” she said. “And the reason is because most of the reporters are white, and their managers are white, and the audiences they’re reporting for are mostly white. Therefore, they may think they’re being fair, but their reporting reinforces a very mainstream view of protests, for example emphasizing disruption as much if not more than the issues, like chronic police misconduct, something white audiences have almost no personal experience with.”

“Also, you know, the presence of the national media means an opportunity to present a different narrative, because they are talking to a more diverse audience.

“Face it, the media culture here likes to project the narrative that Minnesota such a nice ​place and everyone here is nice​. Even if a reporter has experience with the issues we are talking about, like Reg Chapman [at WCCO­-TV], who lives near the Fourth Precinct, it takes a lot of convincing for the people he works for to accurately report our issues, because they don’t fit the ‘nice’ narrative.” (Chapman and WCCO-­TV’s news director did not respond to requests to discuss their coverage of the Jamar Clark protests.)

MinnPost photo by Ibrahim Hirsi

Nekima Levy-Pounds

Within hours of the Clark shooting, Levy­-Pounds says she turned to her social media contacts at various national news organizations, alerting them of the killing and plans for protests and demands for investigations ­— in otherwise nice, progressive Minnesota — similar to those in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere. The media loves trends, and a protest in Minneapolis bearing all the hallmarks of previous protests has irresistible appeal to news editors.

At MPR, News Director Mike Edgerly can’t quarrel with Levy­-Pounds’ social media focus. “It was very savvy on their part, I thought,” he said. “And that includes the live­-streaming that Unicorn Riot did. That was impressive. And their use of Twitter, which is everywhere now, was also fascinating. We’ve gotten used to monitoring Twitter and other platforms, but the way Black Lives Matter used it, during the days of the Fourth Precinct demonstration was very savvy.

“And their insights and complaints about how journalism organizations in this community operate — led by white people — they were absolutely legitimate and they presented a pretty effective challenge to us, which I think is valuable to good reporting.”

Edgerly, who says he deployed 10 reporters at different points in the Clark protests, isn’t quite as accommodating when Levy-­Pounds lumps MPR in with other local newsrooms. (She remains displeased with MPR approaching her for a story about Black Lives Matter’s appeal to the larger black community. “MPR did a pretty good job, overall,” she says. “But I refused to participate when they called about that. They found a couple voices uncomfortable with our approach. So what? What’s the relevance of that compared to what we were talking about?”)

MPR reporter Matt Sepic echoes Edgerly in his appreciation of BLM’s media strategy: “Ten or ­15 years ago, a group like Black Lives Matter would have sent over a fax and hoped the media showed up,” he said. “This group doesn’t need any of that.”

“Challenging” the media to “get it right” was a persistent message from organizers via social media to protesters, and with those regular reminders, assembled crowds regularly brought the challenge to the cameras and microphones.

Sepic says he personally had no problems covering the protests and interacting with protesters. Although there was, to be sure, plenty of “challenging” of the media happening. “Everyone was really adamant about controlling their message,” he said. “And there was a lot of reluctance to talk with the so-­called mainstream media, although I felt like TV reporters were feeling that more than we were.” (Protesters pointedly refused to cooperate with KSTP-­TV crews, an ongoing response to the station’s infamous“Pointergate” episode.)

The sheer volume of social media presented another problem for newsrooms. “It really adds to the challenge of covering something like this,” says Sepic. “Suddenly there are all these voices on Twitter and you have to decide, fairly quickly, who is and who is not credible. It may be a new world with a lot of new potential sources. But the old rules of journalism still apply. You have to fear hoaxes, and be very careful.”

Over at the Pioneer Press, editor Mike Burbach was a bit daunted by the breadth of information that exploded on social media during the Clark protests, all requiring some kind of vetting by his staff. At the same time, he remains fascinated by the fundamental shifts in the messaging-­for-­media game.

“You watch something like this play out and you have to accept — if you haven’t before — that literally everyone with a phone is now a publisher and a reporter of some kind,” he said.

He recalls being able to watch developments on Twitter essentially in real time, surges of drama and passion as events unfolded across town, a pulse-beat-­by­-pulse-beat narrative available to everyone, but to which — to some extent — his paper’s coverage would be measured. “What it adds up to, I think, is more influence for anyone who best uses all the technology at hand.”

“Like everything else that has to do with freedom,” said Burbach, “it comes with both good and ill. But I like to think more voices is overall a good thing, and this was an example of an explosion of freedom. I’m not sure it makes our job any easier. But it is interesting.”

Sen. Majority Leader Tom Bakk gave his opinion of the Black Lives Matter movement during yesterday’s legislative preview at the Humphrey School. The Uptake’s Michael McIntee reports: “Bakk said ‘I think they probably need to do more — the Black Lives Matter type movement — to identify a specific goal. And I haven’t seen anybody really articulate that yet. And the reason I say that is, to keep any kind of a movement alive — remember Occupy Wall Street? Gone, isn’t it? Right, you can’t find it anywhere. You have to have a specific objective in mind and you have to incrementally — to keep the movement alive — bring forth some successes, incremental as they might be, so that the people that are participating in keeping the issue in front of people feel like their time is worth it, that they’re getting some successes. … So I think that means you have to have kind of a long term objective and a long term strategy with some little mile markers in there where you reach some levels of success. Because all it is is a protest with no measurements about how we’re making some incremental success, it probably will fall apart because the people who are trying to participate will feel like they’re wasting their time if they’re not making any headway.’ ”

Speaking of the legislative session, expect SHENANIGANS: 

"The only thing standing between Rangers and relief" is Republicans, Dayton says. "I'm very disappointed."

— Briana Bierschbach (@bbierschbach) February 2, 2016

Dayton said this portends "a lot of political shenanigans" in upcoming #mnleg session. "It's not very promising."

— Briana Bierschbach (@bbierschbach) February 2, 2016

A golf simulator?The Star Tribune’s John Reinan reports on a housing lawsuit in the south metro: “More than 30 current and former residents of the Concierge apartments filed a class-action suit in U.S. District Court Monday, alleging that owners of the 698-unit Richfield complex have violated fair housing laws in their attempt to take the development upmarket. … The complex at Penn Avenue S. and W. 76th Street was bought last year by Crossroads Apartments LLC and is managed by Soderberg Apartment Specialists, a company focused on turning around troubled properties. … After taking over last year, Soderberg immediately began a multimillion-dollar renovation of the property, including granite countertops, a golf simulator and a pet spa.”

City Pages’ Mike Mullen offers up a fine piece of service journalism under the headline“When and how to shovel: a guide”: “The Twin Cities is expected to get slammed with varying amounts between Tuesday and Wednesday, with totals ranging from four inches to nearly a foot around the metro area. … This leads to the inevitable, miserable moment the morning after, when bleary-eyed people glance out bleary-eyed windows and wonder. Do I really have to shovel? What if my area didn’t get hit as hard as somewhere else? The answer? Yes. Just, yes.”

This may be the most MPR controversy we’ve ever heard of.Under the headline “The adult coloring book controversy continues,” Kerri Miller writes: “Last week, I let my feelings about adult coloring books be known. If you missed it, here's the gist: I think real books trump coloring books, if you're looking for a way to fill your time. … This week, I'm still digging out from under the avalanche of emails and tweets that came my way after I said that. … To that, I say: Bring it on! I love hearing from you about books, whether it's a ‘You go, girl!’ or a ‘Where do you get off?’ And this pile contained plenty of both.” Oh, my!

In other news…

What did you do this weekend? “A Totino-Grace High School student launched a weather balloon 20 miles into the atmosphere over the weekend and captured incredible footage of the earth’s curvature.” [KMSP]

We’re going to do this to all the headshots we run from now on:“Yearbook photo flap settled with a bald eagle” [MPR]

When’s the last time you heard good news about MNsure?“MNsure tops enrollment goal for first time” [Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal]

Don Rawitsch, one of the inventors of the video game Oregon Trail,did an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit.

Minnesota campaign finance numbers for last year are out.The Pioneer Press’ Rachel Stassen-Berger is reporting the numbers.

Beargrease update: “Anderson is first Beargrease musher to hit trail back to Sawbill” [Duluth News Tribune]

Congrats to Minneapolis’ Fair State Brewing Cooperative!They were named one of the world’s best new brewers by RateBeer. Some other Minnesota winners in there too. [The Growler]

Eyeballing that snow? You’re not the only one. John Myers of the Duluth News-Tribune reports that the number of blizzards has doubled in recent decades. Ball State researcher Jill Coleman that from 1960-94, the U.S. averaged nine blizzards per year but since 1995 that number has jumped to 19 blizzards per year. Not surprisingly, most blizzards are found in “blizzard alley” in the Dakotas and western Minnesota, where almost all counties averaged at least one blizzard per year during the study’s 55-year reporting period. While better reporting is part of the reason for the rise, “shifts in global temperature and a more open Arctic Ocean can significantly alter storm tracks (and) add more moisture into the atmosphere." She also noted that blizzards occur in cycles that peak every 11 to 14 years and a secondary peak every 4 years, and the average blizzard is about 32,000 square miles, about the size of South Carolina.

The requirement for vegetative buffer strips between farms and waterways will not apply to privately owned drainage ditches, Gov. Mark Dayton says. Dave Orrick of the Worthington Daily Globe reports that Dayton announced the decision after meeting with Republican lawmakers last week. The buffer strips are to protect water from agricultural runoff and erosion via year-round rooted vegetation along the state’s lakes, rivers and publicly managed drainage ditches. Dayton said he dropped the private ditches part after “threats” to his spending proposals; Speaker Kurt Daudt denied any threats, saying maybe that idea came from lawmakers speaking out of turn. 

Insert your groundhog joke here: On Feb. 2, 1996, Tower set a state record for lowest recorded temperature: 60 degrees below zero.John Myers of the News-Tribune takes a trip down memory lane and writes that the previous record was of 59 degrees below zero at Federal Dam near Leech Lake 93 years ago. In 1996, Kathy Hoppa, then the National Weather Service observer near Tower, recorded the temperature at 9:10 a.m. at the official Weather Service weather station in her backyard. Down the road in Embarrass, weather observer Roland Fowler thought he might have had the record but his National Weather Service thermometers malfunctioned when the temperature hit 53 degrees below zero; it was so cold the alcohol separated in one thermometer.

Speaking of cold weather, some from other states are agog at the fact that for several months each year, students at Bemidji State University find extra parking on Lake Bemidji.Kyle Farris of the Bemidji Pioneer writes that students have been taking advantage of the extra parking space for years. "I wait until you see the really big trucks (on the ice) because if the guys want to risk their really big trucks, I'm fine,” said Sara Janssen, who drives a Mazda 6.  

A report of a suspicious vehicle last Saturday led Rochester police to ultimately uncover a trunkful of dimethyltryptamine, a hallucinogenic drug made with mimosa tree bark.Kay Fate of the Rochester Post-Bulletin writes that when police came to the car parked Saturday in the 2100 block of Second Street Southwest, they found a 21-year-old male who seemed “out of it.” The officer spotted Mason jars in the car containing a brownish liquid with reddish crystals. The driver allowed a search of the trunk, where the officer found the elements to make DMT — which merited a call to the hazmat team, whose members removed the jars. The Winona man was released to his mother.

The Southeast Minnesota housing market continues to steam ahead, writes Daniel Borgertpoepping of the Faribault Daily News. The Southeast Minnesota Association of Realtors finds that 6,000 homes were sold in 2015, up from 5,000 in 2013 and 2014. That, along with a lower number of homes on the market and greater buyer interest, has driven home prices up to create a seller’s market, Borgertpoepping writes. The median sales price also rose nearly 8 percent to $155,000 from 2014 to 2015.

Some town in the middle of the state says it has an identity problem. Jenny Berg of the St. Cloud Daily Times reports that a survey found that people in Waite Park believe the city lacks a distinct identity. Nearly 75 percent of residents of the city, adjacent to St. Cloud, see the city as integrated into St. Cloud's municipal area rather than an independent identity. The survey, conducted by Rich MacDonald, an economist at St. Cloud State University, found that Waite Parkians like their livable neighborhoods, businesses and open spaces. Respondents said the greatest challenges are rising crime rates, growing diversity, too many apartments and traffic congestion. The city council is thinking about creating a new tagline and logo for the city. The current logo has images of a smiley face, baseball player and train, among other things. The current tagline is “The city with a smile.” 

Southern Minnesota has enjoyed the area’s lowest unemployment rate in more than a decade, but the number of unemployed rose last month.Jeffrey Jackson of the Owatonna People’s Press writes that the Department of Employment and Economic Development found that Le Sueur County saw an increase from 3.4 percent in November to 5.3 percent in December. Freeborn County went from 3.3 percent to 3.6 percent, Mower County from 2.4 percent to 2.7 percent, Nicollet County from 2.0 percent to 2.3 percent, Steele County from 2.5 percent to 3.0 percent, Rice County from 2.6 percent to 2.4 percent, Goodhue County from 2.7 percent to 3.5 percent, Dodge County from 2.8 percent to 3.5 percent, and Waseca County from 3.4 percent to 4.5 percent.

An independent investigation found no other accusations against former WSU men's basketball coach Mike Leaf.The Winona Daily News  reports that WSU President Scott Olson said investigators “found no evidence of discriminatory act ... any kind of abuse of students at all." The investigation also concluded the university and athletic department acted appropriately. The investigation did not address the complaint itself -- made by a current player who accused Leaf of making multiple advances on June 20. The investigation cost WSU $25,073.

John LaDue, the 19-year-old accused of plotting an attack at Waseca High School, will be placed in a state-operated facility after he’s released from jail. The Austin Daily Herald reports that LaDue was to return to his Waseca home to live with his parents until officials found room for him at a state-run facility, but the state was able to find a bed Wednesday, hours before LaDue was set to walk out of jail.

On Jan. 26 I decided to check out Bernie Sanders. Sanders made a campaign stop at the St. Paul RiverCentre that drew 20,000 people.

Paul Udstrand

To be honest, I’m flabbergasted that this 73-year-old white guy who seems to frequently lose his hair comb is attracting these huge crowds. You don’t need me to tell you about Bernie Sanders; I won’t discuss his speech. My mission is to tell you what I discovered about his supporters.

I’d say 60 percent to 70 percent of the people attending this event were 30 to 35 years old or younger. Bernie is resonating with the young. The crowd appeared to be split more or less evenly between men and women, but there weren’t a lot of people of color to be seen.

This wasn’t a scientific survey of any kind, but I did have lengthy conversations with several attendees; I wasn’t looking for sound bites. I asked which message is resonating the most? To my surprise, no single message stood out as the main attraction, and more important, people were able to discuss all of the issues in depth.

One 17-year-old talked at length about single-payer health care. He mentioned its efficiency and how it can be accomplished by simply expanding Medicare. When I pointed out that it meant additional taxes, he bounced back without missing a beat: “Yeah, but it’ll save most Americans around $5,000 in health-care premiums.” So I asked if health care was his main attraction to Bernie and to my surprise he said “no” and started talking about the financial sector and the fact that Bernie has no super-PAC. Then he spoke of Bernie’s credentials as a “progressive.” Cognizant of the fact that I was talking to a 17-year-old I asked: “OK, but what’s a ‘progressive’ ”? His response: “Someone, unlike Clinton, who looks beyond the status quo and wants to push liberal agendas to the next level.” That’s as a good a definition as I’ve heard.

Climate change, consistency

A young woman said that climate change is a huge issue for her generation and Bernie is the strongest voice in favor of clean energy: “He was against the Keystone Pipeline from day one.”

The fact that Bernie is a progressive, and has been his whole political career, actually came up in almost every conversation I had. An 18-year-old I talked to said: “Look, this is America, it’s supposed to be the greatest country in the world. We can do anything, yet we can’t have a single payer system?” I met a 32-year-old who’s voted for Republicans his whole adult life. I asked him about Bernie’s progressive status and he said: “Yeah, that’s just it, he’s been consistent his whole life. I’d rather vote for someone who’s stood for something consistently than someone who’s pretending to be a conservative … whatever THAT is these days.”

When I asked people about Bernie’s age they talked about his passion and energy and the lack thereof from quarters like Hillary Clinton. I must say, having seen him, I was impressed by his energy level on stage. Sanders is an energetic and animated speaker. And remember, he’d been in Duluth earlier that day. Maybe he napped all the way from Duluth to St. Paul, but still. Regardless, here again, the support for Sanders seems to go a little deeper; it’s not just about his energetic stage presence. Several people spoke of his lifelong passion for positions that he’s fought for his whole political career. His supporters are looking at that consistency and passion and deciding it says something about his integrity and honesty.

His strength lies in his complete package

At the end of the day either the votes will be there for Sanders or they won’t. I do see some problems for Hillary Clinton. We don’t know yet how broad Bernie’s appeal can be, but he did well in Iowa on Monday. Once people are for him, they’re all-in and Clinton’s not going to peel them away. Furthermore, there is no magic bullet that can be fired at Bernie. His strength lies in his complete package, so even if one can slam one of his ideas (I think Clinton might get some traction with the idea that reopening the health-care debate is scary thing to do, for instance), you can’t sink the whole package.

It remains to seen how broad Sanders' appeal may be. We can say for sure that he enjoys strong and deep support among his current supporters and his message resonates in depth on everything from climate change to health care. No matter how you look at it, Sanders is currently a force to be reckoned with. If he gets his message out, and it resonates on a much broader scale with voters, he could indeed “win.”

Paul Udstrand is a local writer and photographer; he blogs at Thoughtful Bastards.

Want to add your voice?

If you're interested in joining the discussion, add your voice to the Comment section below — or consider writing a letter or a longer-form Community Voices commentary. (For more information about Community Voices, email Susan Albright at salbright@minnpost.com.)

Progress in the prompt release of police videos?In the Star Tribune, Chao Xiong reports,“Minnesota law enforcement agencies have historically refused to disclose video footage of officer-involved shootings early in a case, repeating a similar refrain: Doing so could taint the investigation into whether officers acted legally in killing someone. But that may be slowly changing as scrutiny here and across the country forces authorities to modify long-held practices.”

Here’s an early collision count from yesterday’s storm. From KSTP-TV: “ The snow storm has caused 370 crashes statewide from 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., according to the Minnesota State Patrol. Of those crashes, 36 caused injuries, two of which were serious. There were also 309 vehicle spinouts and vehicles off the road, the state patrol said. As a comparison, during a typical weekday with no major weather effects, there are about 50 to 75 crashes statewide, according to the state patrol. There are very few spinouts or vehicles that leave the road on a typical weekday, the state patrol added.”

KMSP-TV’s story says, “The state health department reported Tuesday health officials are ‘concerned’ over a 63 percent jump in syphilis cases among Minnesota women from 2014 to 2015. According to a news release from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), preliminary data for 2015 shows syphilis cases in women were up 63 percent compared to 2014, and it’s primarily among women of child-bearing age in all racial and ethnic groups, pregnant women included. ‘Minnesota has not seen this many reported cases of syphilis in women in more than 20 years,’ said Dr. Ed Ehlinger, Minnesota Commissioner of Health.”

I’ll worry when they fill the spaces with Panera and Dunkin Donuts. Stribber John Ewoldt reports, “Len Druskin and California Closets and Russell + Hazel are the latest locally-owned retailers to leave the Galleria. California Closets left last month, saying in an email that it is temporarily doing business out of its Bloomington offices until a new location can be confirmed. … Russell + Hazel announced Tuesday that it too is leaving the Galleria as soon as June.”

US Bank CEO Richard Davis talkedwith the AP.

Q: Some banks began charging more for loans as soon as the Fed acted. Why haven't they also offered better savings rates to customers?

 A: The value of deposits right now is not high, so if I paid you more for deposits to incentivize you to bring your money here I can't do anything with it anyway, because I can't make the loan I want to make. If a bank decides to go ahead and start using those deposits to make loans, they're going to have [to move] into riskier loans to get higher rewards, going into mid-prime or sub-prime loans. It might be a good idea if they really know what they're doing, but as you recall, it's exactly what got people in trouble last time. Banks started to get greedy and get outside the bounds of good discipline. We aren't going incentivize new deposits, but at the same time we won't lose them, so if there were a pricing war, we'd probably respond to that so that we wouldn't lose our customers. Deposits are nice to have, but not as critical as they will be one day.

And that’s why we have mattresses.

Who exactly is going to be in the sauna?Sarah Horner of the PiPress writes, “A tiny portion of St. Paul is expected to be hit with an unprecedented heat wave this weekend. Temperatures will hit 170 degrees inside a mobile sauna that will open to the public Friday at St. Paul’s Como Regional Park, according to Molly Reichert, a member of the University of Minnesota School of Architecture faculty and one of two masterminds behind the Little Box Sauna. Community members will be able to reserve a 90-minute sweat session in the sauna through Feb. 25 free of charge … .”

From KMSP, Maury Glover and Rachel Chazin report, “An 84-year-old woman from New Germany, Minn. received a letter from her church saying she's no longer welcome, and will no longer be able to be buried next to her husband who passed away last summer. But her church says it's all a misunderstanding. Darleen Pawelk had been a member of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in New Germany for more than 50 years, but recently she hasn't seen eye-to-eye with the congregation. ‘I just thought it sounded like some kind of scare tactic,’ daughter Brenda Mason said. Over the weekend, Pawelk received a certified letter saying since she hadn't attended four services in the last year, she would no longer be considered a member in good standing.” That sound you hear? Furious backpedaling.

Is the champagne chilled? Do NFL executives have ample limo parking? Is the sushi fresh? Says Tim Nelson at MPR, “Seven members of Minnesota's Super Bowl host committee are in San Francisco this week, checking out that city's preparations for the game. … The Minnesota host committee hasn't disclosed its budget, but recent games have required as much as $50 million in private funding to win the game from the NFL. Mokros said ‘fundraising is going well,’ but didn't put a dollar figure on the effort so far.” Reservations at Saison are tough with connections.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard this. Allison Sherry of the Strib says, “Minnesotans poured more than $1 million into Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2015, but new campaign finance records show that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders began gaining rapidly late last year. On the Republican side, Minnesotans gave more than $1 million, sending the most to retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. … Real estate mogul Donald Trump, who tops national polls and came in second in Iowa earlier this week, took in $8,762 from Minnesotans.” Your support was yuge.

Faster than New Yorkers? Come on!Marino Eccher of the PiPress has this story. “Minnesotans are the second-fastest talkers in the nation, according to a new study from analytics firm Marchex. The company combed through more than 4 million recorded consumer calls made in the past few years — the type where you’re told the call may be monitored for quality and the like — for speech patterns. It found that on average, Americans speak between 110 and 150 words per minute. Oregonians talked the fastest (the study didn’t say how fast). Minnesotans were No. 2, followed by callers from Massachusetts, Kansas and Iowa. … The biggest talkers? That’d be New Yorkers. According to the study, a caller from New York will use 62 percent more words than one from Iowa to conduct the same conversation.” I knew they had to be there somewhere.

Speaking of New Yorkers, Mukhtar Ibrahim at MPR says, “A New York-based advocacy group is suing two federal agencies over a controversial counterterrorism program focused on Muslim communities in several states, including Minnesota. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law said it went to court to challenge the United States Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security after exhausting other efforts to get records on the Countering Violent Extremism program, or CVE.”

Documentaries, even about fascinating people, can be deadly. Too many talking heads and grainy stills. Then there’s “BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez,” which has its Twin Cities premiere this week at Intermedia Arts. Filmmakers Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon did it right, turning in a powerful, inspiring work about an important artist now in her 80s whose story we should know.

A poet, activist, professor, and performer, author of many books and winner of numerous awards including the PEN Writing Award, the American Book Award, the Langston Hughes Poetry Award and the Harper Lee Award, Sanchez came out of a rough childhood to become a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, fight for the inclusion of Black Studies in university curricula and speak out fearlessly, often in raw language, on injustice and inequality, racism, sexism and war.

“We had to slice up many a thing,” she says in the film. “To scrape the veneer that was on America, the veneer that was on Harlem, the veneer that was on the entire country. As we scraped, we got to some real blood.” Poet Haki Madhubuti observes, “One of the attractions that I and other men had to Sonia was her stuff was stronger than ours.”

The film explores Sanchez’s short-lived relationships with the Black Panthers (she dubbed Eldridge Cleaver a “hustler”) and the Nation of Islam (she didn’t like how they treated women), and her moves from teaching position to teaching position. Wherever she taught, she encouraged students to transform the institution, and her activism kept her off the tenure track. She was once asked (probably more than once), “Do you know how big you would be if you hadn’t been political?” That was never an option for her.

“BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez” includes interviews, several spoken word performances (some with live jazz and dance), readings by fellow artists and admirers, and appearances by Questlove (of the Roots), rapper Talib Kweli, poet Amiri Baraka, actor Ruby Dee, performer Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) and more.

It also gives us a glimpse at “GIRL Shakes Loose Her Skin,” a new play by musician and composer Imani Uzuri and playwright Zakiyyah Alexander that comes to Penumbra in the spring of 2017, so watch for that.

It does not, however, delve too deeply into Sanchez’s personal life. Unless we missed it, she doesn’t even mention poet Etheridge Knight, to whom she was married briefly in the late 1960s. Knight lived in Minneapolis for several years in the 1970s.

Co-presented with the Black Documentary Collective, “BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez” screens Thursday through Saturday at Intermedia Arts as part of its Catalyst Series. 7:30 p.m. all nights. FMI and tickets ($7 advance/$9 at the door); 612-871-4444. Thursday includes a pre-show reception (6:30 p.m.) with DJ Chamun, J. Otis Powell, Joe Davis and Tana Hargest of the Givens Foundation, and a post-show discussion led by the Givens’ Erin Sharkey. Both Friday and Saturday include pre-show poetry readings inspired by the life and work of Sanchez. 

***

Minneapolis artist Michael Sweere has been selected as the 2016 Minnesota State Fair Commemorative Artist. One thing that sets him apart is his choice of materials: reclaimed and salvaged items found in thrift stores, chipped plates and dishes donated by friends, tin canisters saved from recycling bins and discarded paper packaging, all of which he uses to create colorful, intricate mosaics and collages. He doesn’t like to waste things.

Here’s a bit on Sweere from last year’s “MN Original.” Since then, he was also chosen to be one of the 34 Minnesota artists commissioned to create work for the new Vikings stadium.

Courtesy of Michael Sweere

Michael Sweere’s “Land of Lakes”

His State Fair art will recycle a transit pass, a paper hat and a fan on-a-stick, as a few examples. The final work will be unveiled at the State Fairgrounds in June. A poster, a limited number of signed prints and other merch featuring Sweere’s art will be available later this year.

The picks

Tonight (Wednesday, Feb. 3) at the U’s Ferguson Hall: “Brecht and Weill Together and Apart.” The first thing to know is that five schools and departments at the University of Minnesota – the School of Music; School of Music Opera Theatre; Department of Theatre Arts and Dance Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch; and Institute for Advanced Study’s Brecht Research Collective – have joined forces for a Weill Brecht Festival that starts tonight and ends April 17. This kick-off event is a lively introduction to Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, with keynote speakers Elizabeth Diamond and Kim Kowalke and a panel discussion moderated by Nautilus Music-Theatre’s Ben Krywosz. Cast members from “Threepenny Opera” and “Lady in the Dark” will perform excerpts. In the Lloyd Ultan Recital Hall. 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Photo by Kevin Sprague

“Women of Will”

Thursday at the O’Shaughnessy: “Women of Will.” With “Pericles” at the Guthrie and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” due at the Jungle, the timing is perfect for some “bonus content” to Shakespeare’s plays. Actor, dramaturg and founding artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, Tina Packer probably knows the Bard’s female characters better than anyone. Part masterclass, part performance, this acclaimed program deconstructs and conjures the most famous ones, tracing their chronological evolution and examining Shakespeare’s growth as a writer. Nigel Gore is Romeo to Packer’s Juliet, Petruchio to her Kate. Directed by Eric Tucker. 7:30 p.m. FMI and tickets ($14-$34).

Thursday at Westminster Town Hall Forum: Jim Wallis speaks on “America’s Original Sin: Racism and White Privilege.” A theologian, activist, author and commentator on ethics and public life, Wallace views Trayvon Martin’s killing, and Michael Brown’s, and the Charleston church shootings, and Sandra Bland’s death as parables, and America as a nation founded by near genocide and slavery – our original sin. His latest book, “America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America” is a personal and prophetic challenge. At Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Minneapolis. Noon. Free. Music begins at 11:30 a.m. with Thomasina Petrus and Thom West.

Friday at Magers & Quinn: Julie Gard and Rachel Moritz read from their books “Homes Studies” and “Borrowed Wave.” More good timing, since both Gard and Moritz were just named finalists for this year’s Minnesota Book Award in the Poetry category. 7 p.m. Free.

Friday at the Ted Mann Concert Hall: Wind Ensemble Presents The Roaring Twenties: An Age of Change. The first in a series of Weill Brecht Festival performances includes the “Threepenny Opera Suite” and other selections by Kurt Weill, plus music by Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Jerry Luckhardt conducts. 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Photo by Megan Curran de Nieto

Bentonite Me Baby

Around Christmas last year, Megan Curran de Nieto was walking through the aisles of the St. Paul Midway Target store when she spotted a container of Bentonite Me Baby on a shelf. 

The product is a brand of powdered clay that, according to its label, can be used as a hair mask (for hair that feels “light, clean and soft”), a face mask (for a “clearer complexion and soft skin”) or internally (to “aid in colon and detox cleansing”).

“The jar just caught my eye,” said Curran de Nieto.

But her interest wasn’t as a consumer. Curren de Nieto is director of community health programs at CLEARCorps, a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization that helps communities and individual families reduce their exposure to lead. At the time of her shopping trip to Target, Curran de Nieto was working with local health officials to assist a family with stubbornly high levels of lead in their blood.

When she saw the Bentonite Me Baby product, Curran de Nieto remembered that the family had told her they had been ingesting bentonite clay, although a different brand, for health reasons.

And, yes, as strange as it might sound, eating clay for “detoxification” purposes has become a bit of a fad in recent years, even though there is absolutely no scientific evidence that the practice enhances health.

Troubling results

“I purchased the jar and sent a sample of it to a lab we work with,” said Curran de Nieto.

A couple weeks later, the lab report came back with a disturbing finding: The sample of Bentonite Me Baby taken from the Target shelf contained 29 parts per million of lead. 

To put that number in perspective, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permits only 0.1 parts per million of lead in candy likely to be consumed by children.

“That finding scared me,” said Curran de Nieto. “We all know that this is not a product that is marketed to kids, but a pregnant woman could have this in their home.”

Elevated levels of lead in a pregnant woman’s blood pose dangers, for the lead can be passed from the mother to her unborn baby. Pregnant women with high levels of lead are at increased risk of having a miscarriage and of giving birth prematurely, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, their babies are more likely to have damaged brains and kidneys and to develop learning or behavioral problems.

Curran De Nieto immediately contacted officials at the Minnesota Department of Health, who quickly passed on the lab test’s findings to the FDA.

On Jan. 29, after conducting its own laboratory analysis of Bentonite Me Baby, the FDA issued a warning to consumers about the product, citing its "potential lead poisoning risk."

“Consumers should not purchase or use ‘Bentonite Me Baby,’" the FDA stated. "Anyone who has used this product or provided it to a child should consult a health care professional immediately.”

That same day, Target removed the product from its shelves, both in stores and online, according to an e-mail statement sent to MinnPost from Target spokesperson Joanna Hjelmeland.

A confusing response

In a press release issued last weekend, Bentonite Me Baby’s manufacturer, Alikay Naturals, insists that it “never provided recommendations or recipes for the internal consumption” of Bentonite Me Baby, and that the product “is not marketed as a food or consumption product.”

That’s a confusing statement given what appeared on the product’s label last December, when it was photographed by Curran de Nieto:

Internal: Works to aid in colon and detox cleansing to remove harmful toxins from the body, which helps many things including raising energy levels.

For its part, the FDA makes clear in its warning to consumers that no confirmed cases of lead poisoning have been linked to Bentonite Me Baby. Nor, said Curran de Nieto, have Minnesota health officials determined that bentonite clay contributed to the high levels of lead among members of the family she was assisting last fall.

User beware

No other clay “detoxification” products have yet been tested for lead, however. And it’s not clear that they will be. That’s because “alternative medicines” are barely regulated in the United States, and are not required to prove either their effectiveness or safety before they go on the market. Thus, there’s really no way of knowing for sure what’s in any of these products — until an organization like CLEARCorps gets suspicious and tests it or until it seriously harms or kills someone.

That’s why consumers should be extremely wary of using them.

Photo by Megan Curran de Nieto

On Jan. 29, after conducting its own laboratory analysis of Bentonite Me Baby, the FDA issued a warning to consumers about the product, citing its "potential lead poisoning risk."

“Be very aware of anything that you’re taking, and carefully consider if that product is serving you in your best interest,” said Stephanie Yendell, supervisor of the health risk intervention unit at the Minnesota Department of Health.  

And don’t assume a product is safe simply because some version of it can be traced back to ancient cultures. 

“The way such medicines were prepared a thousand years ago is very different from the way they are prepared today in an industrialized setting,” said Yendell.

FMI: For details about why eating clay for therapeutic purposes is medical mumbo-jumbo, I recommend an article published a couple of years ago in the Daily Beast by Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, an infectious disease specialist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “Eating clay might not be in the top five dumb fads championed by showbiz celebs and then glamorized for general consumption (Scientology, anyone?),” he writes, “but it’s still up toward the leaders.”

Standing before a room full of more than 250 Twin Cities business leaders yesterday morning, Minneapolis Public Schools Interim Superintendent Michael Goar announced a bold initiative on behalf of the district. Instead of providing 50 paid summer internship positions for disadvantaged youth, the district would stretch itself to accommodate 100 paid internships.

Capitalizing on this momentum, he challenged others in the room to follow suit, much like an auctioneer calling out for higher bids.

Those who pledge more internships stand to profit the most — not monetarily, but in equally important areas like employee engagement, as well as consumer and talent pool insight.  

Supporters of the STEP-UP Achieve youth employment program, which is part of the City of Minneapolis STEP-UP program, spoke to these benefits at the breakfast recruitment drive for summer employers.

With a goal of securing 750 paid summer internships for 2016 youth participants, program organizers announced that 100 Twin Cities employers have pledged 626 positions. They’re still aiming to increase the number of internships by 20 percent this year — hence, the push to recruit new employers and increase commitment from current employers by the April 15 deadline.

Mutually beneficial

Once all of the internship positions are locked into place, STEP-UP Achieve staff will turn their attention to preparing this year’s batch of 750 youth to succeed in their professional settings, which run the gamut from Fortune 500 companies to nonprofits and local small businesses.

The employer network is diverse. The pools of interns who compete for these positions is even more diverse.

Nearly 90 percent of these interns live in poverty, 94 percent are children of color, and roughly half are first or second-generation immigrants, Richard Davis, STEP-UP co-chair and president and CEO of U.S. Bank, said during opening remarks yesterday morng. The program gives them the resources they need to overcome these barriers to employment.

In return, the interns hold the promise of serving as a solution to the 183,000-person work-force gap projected to hit the Twin Cities by 2030. 

"Our youth hold the keys to the future of our city, our region and our state,"Mayor Betsy Hodges said, pledging 50 internship positions with the city. "Their success is our collective success and the role each supervisor plays in their professional development is crucial to their future. I am very thankful for the strong commitment of each of our STEP-UP partners."

One of the program’s longstanding partners, Xcel Energy, has developed so much respect for the program that it’s nearly doubling the number of paid interns it accepts this year, from 13 to 25.

“At Xcel Energy we’re in the midst of a tremendous work-force change,” Ben Fowke, the company’s chairman, president and CEO said. “Half of our work force will retire during the next decade. So where will we find our next generation of skilled workers? Right here in Minneapolis. We literally have these assets embedded in our community. STEP-UP Achieve is a smart business decision and a great tool to help us find and train these new workers and then keep them right here in Minneapolis.”

To date, one of the company’s interns has stayed on as an employee. The others left to further their education, Senior Vice President Judy Poferl said. The company’s next focus will be on attracting former interns back to the company.

“One of the things we’re very interested in is how do you maintain those relationship so that when they’re ready for a full-time work experience, they think of us as a good employer,” she said.

Outstanding alumna: Bisrat Fekadu

Honored as the program’s 2016 Outstanding Alumna, 25-year-old Bisrat Fekadu accepted her award during a round of applause by front-row notables like Mayor Hodges, Gov. Mark Dayton, CEO of Generation Next and STEP-UP founder R.T. Rybak, President and CEO of the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce Todd Klingel and retiring President and CEO of Achieve Minneapolis Pam Costain.

Born an Ethiopian refugee in Sudan, she came to Minnesota with her parents when she was 1 year old. She heard about the STEP-UP Achieve intern program through the Trio Upward Bound program and decided to apply after her freshman year at South High.

She landed a job with the University of Minnesota catering services, where she learned to navigate her first real professional role.

“I really appreciate the responsibility I had,” she said. “It instilled in me a sense of responsibility, integrity and the professionalism it takes to succeed.”

A Gates Millennium Scholar, she went on to study neuroscience at the University of St. Thomas, becoming the first person in her family to graduate from college — with honors, no less. She’s now completing her fourth year as a Mayo medical student, with hopes of pursuing a career in family medicine to serve at-risk populations, like immigrants and young women.

STEP-UP Achieve gave her the confidence boost she needed early on to take charge of her future. But she said the path to medical school required a lot of diligence and assertiveness on her part as well. 

Now that’s she’s beginning to speak with employers again, she’s finding there’s lots of interest in the unique assets she brings to the table, including her native language skills and cross-cultural perspective.

And much to her mentors’ delight, Fekadu says she’s committed to staying in the Twin Cities as a professional.

“I want to be a bridge for my community, to the clinic, to the hospital,” she said. “That’s the best way to provide care.”

The idea of hosting a mental health film festival at the Basilica of St. Mary happened organically, almost on a whim.

The massive, landmark Catholic co-cathedral, home to some 12,000 members from 56 ZIP codes, has had a mental health ministry for nearly a decade now, said Janet Grove, Basilica ministry coordinator. The 30-member ministry was founded by a group of parishioners who have family members with mental illness or live with mental illness themselves. They work together to educate the church community about mental illness and confront misconceptions about people who live with a mental health diagnosis. 

The decision to host the festival was spontaneous, Grove recalled: “At one of our meetings, we were talking about outreach, and a few of the group members came up with the idea of hosting a film festival. Without much hesitation, we all said, ‘Let’s just try it.’ Turns out it’s been a really good fit for us. It’s one the highlights of our congregation’s mental health work.”

Grove said that the festival has maintained that same natural, community-driven feeling in the four years since its founding: That’s one of its appeals.

“The festival has really come out of the committee and their desires,” she said. Films are selected in part to spark conversation about mental health topics. “The post-film discussions are really what’s so incredible. We’ve seen such different perspectives on all of the films. Nobody’s afraid to say, ‘I didn’t like that at all.’ And that’s so important.”

Discussion helps break down barriers and misconceptions about mental illness, Grove said. A few years ago, when the theme was “‘Children, Youth and Young Adults with Mental Illness,’ the festival staged a revival of the 1980 film “Ordinary People.”

“After all these years, the film still really holds up,” Grove said. “After the film, the discussion centered around whether Mary Tyler Moore’s character was a good mother or not. Some people thought she was spot on, that she did what was best for her son. And others said, ‘How could she behave like that?’ That led to a great discussion about mental illness in a family.”

Selection process

This year’s festival theme is “Mental Illness and the Arts.” Each year, in preparation, Grove, an avid film buff, searches for contenders, and then selects around 10 films for a group of committee members to screen and rank.

“Usually I get about four or so people who are interested in watching the movies and taking notes and telling me what they feel about it,” Grove said. Grove and her family also review the films.

Films are selected for their content and connection to the year’s theme. Just because the films are screened in a church doesn’t mean that they have to be squeaky clean.

“We have shown R-rated films,” Grove said. “We are not afraid of that. Two years ago, for instance, we watched ‘Silver Linings Playbook.’ We selected the film because it felt like a strong portrayal of young adults and their experience with mental illness. The committee members agreed that it was a good choice.”

The festival always kicks off with a documentary, followed by three feature films of varying vintage. Documentaries are an important part of the mix, Grove said, because they get viewers thinking about a topic in a different way and help to introduce the year’s theme. Feature films expand on the theme — and get viewers to think about the topic from unique perspectives.

Roadside Attractions

"Love & Mercy" director Bill Pohlad

It’s especially exciting when someone who has been intimately involved in the making of a film is able to appear at the festival. This year, Minnesota native Bill Pohlad will introduce his film “Love and Mercy” about Beach Boy Brian Wilson and his struggles with mental illness. Pohlad will also lead a post-film discussion.

“Bill is member of the Basilica,” Grove said. “When I approached him, he was more than willing to take part in the festival.”

The festival’s featured documentary is “Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness.” The film’s director, Philip Brubaker, and producer, Deirdre Haj, will lead a post-film discussion, along with representatives from Vail Place, Interact, NAMI Minnesota and the Basilica’s Mental Health Ministry.

“The film was made by a filmmaker who is an artist and who suffered a tremendous bout with depression,” Grove said. “In the film, he follows eight artists who all went through the same hospital. The hospital decided to create a gallery that features artwork from patients in the hospital.”

Other films featured include “Iris,” starring Jim Broadbent, Judy Densch and Kate Winslet, about writer Iris Murdoch’s struggle with early-onset Alzheimer's, and “The Soloist,” starring Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr. and Catherine Keener.

“It’s the true story of a friendship between a Los Angeles Times news writer and a gifted musician who had a mental health break and has become homeless,” Grove said. “The friendship that that developed between these two men fits nicely with the Basilica’s overall mission and our dedication to ending homelessness.” 

2016 Mental Health Film Festival lineup

All films are screened at the Basilica of St. Mary, 1600 Hennepin Ave. Minneapolis. All are free and open to the public. 

• Thursday, Feb. 4, 6 p.m. “Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness” (2008). Post-film discussion led by director Philip Brubaker and producer Deirdre Haj.
• Thursday, Feb. 11, 6 p.m. “Love and Mercy” (2015). Introduction and post-film discussion led by director Bill Pohlad.
• Thursday, Feb. 18, 6 p.m. “Iris” (2001). Featuring a post-film discussion.
• Thursday, Feb. 25, 6 p.m. “The Soloist” (2009). Featuring a post-film discussion.

MinnPost photo by Andy Sturdevant

An indictment of all four professional men's teams. South Minneapolis, sometime last year.

Maybe you’ve seen these around town, while crossing a street, or waiting for a bus: agitprop posters, printed on 8½ x 11” copier paper and clearly created in Microsoft Word, banged out with fonts like Algeria and Impact, decrying various aspects of the Vikings’ management, finances, stadium, and general place in the wide, wide world of sports. 

These public condemnations are accomplished in a blur of condescending Mad-magazine-style nicknames, relatively sober analysis, Strib commenter humor, sports-talk-radio bravado, and a great deal of deep historical perspective. They call the new Vikings stadium “the Zigirat, eighth wiener of the world,” and site of the “‘End Times’ Stupor Bowl.” They consistently refer to the DFL as the “CFL.” They laud '60s-era Vikings GM Jim Finks as “the best general manager in the history of sports.”

These messages are always unsigned and uncredited. I’ve seen them all over, from Chicago Avenue to Snelling Avenue, and many points in between. Usually they’re taped to utility poles with packing tape, in sets of two or three. They’re not laminated or otherwise protected, so they only stay up for a few days before the elements ruin them. They’re not wheat-pasted up, or stickered, or weatherproofed in any significant way – this leads me to believe either the creator has some concern for their long-term impact on public infrastructure, or they’re just working with a budget where a tape gun and printouts are the most economical way to go. 

I don’t know who this person is, but I think he or she is a sort of folk hero.

MinnPost photo by Andy Sturdevant

"The Zigirat."

What differentiates this individual from, say, any other poster artist or wheat-paste agitator is the purity of the mission. These posters don’t, as far as I’ve been able to tell, credit a creator, or link to a website where one can learn more, or anything else. They exist as pure agitprop, an attempt to sway hearts and minds without directing the viewer to take any specific action. There’s no clear profit motive, no clear organizing aspect. It’s just pure expression: Here’s what I think, here’s why I’m right, there you have it.

And sure, you can find this kind of commentary all over the Internet, no problem. In some ways, the rhetoric seems like it was born, or at least perfected, on the Internet, principally in those portions devoted to the discussion of sports, and football in particular. That’s a world so alien to me I’ve never even pretended to be conversant in the language. In some ways, I’m not the audience for these things.

But in another way, I’m the perfect audience. It’s not the sort of argument I really encounter in my own cultural bubble; if someone thinks the new stadium was a bad deal and an example of corporate avarice run amok, I’m inclined to think, well, they probably don’t really care about football, either. The really interesting thing about our poster artist here is that he or she clearly adores the Vikings as a franchise and institution and their history and all the rest of it, but still hates the stadium deal and the way the team is managed, and has the historical perspective to back up those viewpoints. A lot of the time the stadium question seems to be framed as People Who Love Sports vs. People Who Don't Like Sports.

MinnPost photo by Andy Sturdevant

A timely commentary on Deflategate. "I only watch football because it provides so much time to exercise."

That’s what being out in the public sphere should be like – getting out of your bubble.

What differentiates these from any random Strib commenter is that the creator has set out to place these posters physically all over town, consistently, for years. There is a truly single-minded commitment to getting the message out there that’s pretty unique. I wish I had more photos of them – I never seem to catch them in their pristine state, and when I see them, I’m usually catching a bus or otherwise in a hurry. They have changed over the years – it’s not the same ones, over and over. One of the first I saw was the tribute to Jim Finks, and noticed it had been updated recently (“Jim Finks Redux”) with current information about the stadium.

But again, the lack of context and anonymity is strange and, in this age of nearly compulsory self-promotion and personal branding, almost heroic. If you plug distinctive phrases from the varying screeds into Google, there are a few hits that come up on long-abandoned Wordpress blogs that seem to have been created by the same person, but there’s not really enough information even there to provide any firm answers.

MinnPost photo by Andy Sturdevant

"Jim Finks Redux." Perhaps the best articulation of our subject's complex mythology and worldview: shady political dealings, rampant greed, lost opportunities.

My MinnPost colleague Bill Lindeke has written often of “public characters,” individuals whom urban theorist Jane Jacobs identified as “anyone who is in frequent contact with a wide circle of people and who is sufficiently interested to make himself a public character.” Not all these characters, of course, are uniformly pleasant or even fun to be around. Some stories of public characters, he writes, “can make cities seem almost too nice, as if the crazy diversity of people didn’t really prickle up and create friction.”

These posters serve as a physical version of that friction. We’re surrounded by rogue pieces of visual culture everywhere in the public sphere – I’ve written about some of them. There’s a wide diversity of types of media and degrees of intrusion, but most of it seems to fall into pretty predictable categories. It’s musicians, designers, artists, record labels, events, bar nights, new movies, lost dogs, sneaky national brands, guitar lessons, the sorts of cultural, political, artistic and moneymaking projects you find in urban environments. But it’s always interesting to come across a different type of voice – one that doesn’t exist in an echo chamber, but is in conversation with the world around it, in whatever idiosyncratic way. 

That’s why I’m always so excited to come across these posters in the wild. I don’t know to what degree I agree or disagree with the various viewpoints, but that’s pretty immaterial here. Wherever this person is, I hope they keep at it. I need to know what the anti-stadium wing of the Vikings base is up to, and this is about the best way to find out.

The 2016 Minnesota legislative session may have gotten off to an early start after all.

Negotiations over a measure to fund capital projects through the state, better known as the bonding bill, have already started, with the governor partially retreating last week on one of his 2015 victories: a law establishing protective buffers between farmland and state waterways. He said Republicans preemptively threatened to block his clean water priorities in 2016’s bonding bill if his administration didn’t stop mapping private ditches. 

By then, Dayton and legislative leaders had already been in tense negotiations for months over several other major policy issues, including addressing the state's racial and economic inequities; assistance for ailing industries; and complying with the federal Real ID act. The most recent development came Tuesday morning, after the governor conceded that three months of negotiations had not lead to a breakthrough on a proposed special session aimed at addressing those issues.   

The flurry of activity isn't atypical for lawmakers — when the Legislature is in session. But they're still five weeks out from officially convening on March 8, and some Capitol watchers say the early work could help lawmakers get off to a quick start in a shorter-than-usual 11-week session. Yet others — including Dayton himself — see the early politicking as a bad omen for the prospect of getting much of anything done this spring.

“It portends a lot of political shenanigans [this session] and a lot of hot air about doing what’s right for Minnesota when people are making their own political calculations about what’s right for their own political caucus or cause,” Dayton said.

Another day, another call for a special session

There’s a good reason it often seems like the Legislature never really adjourned; negotiations among lawmakers have been ongoing since they tied up the remaining budget bills in a special session last June.

In July, Dayton proposed another special session of the Legislature to aid ailing resort owners and businesses on Mille Lacs Lake, where a walleye shortage drastically affected the fishing season. But after several working group meetings, legislators didn’t agree it was necessary for legislators to pass aid for one industry in one part of the state.

Then in September, state lawmakers were surprised to learn Minnesota was still not in compliance with the federal Real ID Act. Facing a January deadline that could complicate air travel for millions of Minnesotans, Dayton proposed a special session to fix the issue. When the federal government pushed the deadline back, though, legislators said that issue could also wait until regular session.

At the same time, the mining economic situation was worsening on the Iron Range, with several facilities idling or closing its doors and workers faced indefinite unemployment and expiring benefits. And in North Minneapolis, racial disparities and tensions were boiling over the death of Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old unarmed black male who was shot by police in an encounter.

So in November, Dayton and Democrats in the House and Senate proposed tackling all the outstanding issues in a one-day special session. When the idea fell apart, both sides said the other party was to blame. 

DFL Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, who hails from the Iron Range, said Republicans were refusing to help his constituents. “Republican inaction on unemployment, racial and economic disparities should be a loud and clear signal to Minnesotans — if you are in dire straits, you cannot rely on Republicans to take your needs seriously.”

MinnPost photo by Briana Bierschbach

Speaker Kurt Daudt

Republicans argued the crowded agenda complicated matters too much. On Tuesday, Republican House Speaker Kurt Daudt released a statement saying he had been near an agreement with Democrats on an extension of unemployment benefits for rangers and a provision that would have lifted a ban on Dayton’s commissioner of the Department of Public Safety to talk to the federal government about Real ID compliance. 

But on the racial disparities portion, Dayton and Republicans were deadlocked over a Republican’s push for tax credits for private school tuition.

“Lawmakers are near agreement on REAL ID and an unemployment benefits extension,” Daudt said. “To date, the governor still has not specified how he would to spend $15 million to address racial disparities, which remains the sole holdup to agreement on a special session.” 

By Dayton’s account, Republicans threw some new wrinkles into the equation late in the process. Senate Minority Leader David Hann said Monday he wouldn't sign an agreement on the parameters of a one-day special session, a requirement for Dayton. And late Monday afternoon, Republicans asked the governor to agree to $272 million in unemployment benefit tax cuts for businesses in exchange for their support for a special session.

“Republicans have just been jacking this around shamefully,” Dayton said. “Why does there have to be some 10-to-1 business tax cut to induce them to do the right thing?”

More of the same during session? 

Republicans have said they’ll take up unemployment benefits and Real ID in the first week of the regular session, but Dayton’s not optimistic about what the previous six months signal for the upcoming session. 

He said Republicans never wanted any special session in the first place and did anything they could do to “slow walk” the idea to death. An in an election year, he expects more of the same when the session actually convenes. 

“I sit down, and they talk, and then they do something that’s totally the opposite,” Dayton said.

Dayton’s not on the ballot next fall, but all 201 legislative seats are. As Dayton spoke to reporters Tuesday morning, fundraising numbers for state political funds and candidates were popping up on the state’s Campaign Finance and Disclosure Board, totalling millions of dollars already raised for the campaign season.

Last session, political gridlock led two high-profile legislative priorities to be shelved: Democrats’ plan to raise the state’s gas tax to pay for transportation projects and Republicans’ plan to cut state taxes. This session, there’s a projected $1.2 billion budget surplus, and both sides are renewing their calls to enact those goals, using the same arguments as they did last year.

“It’s not very promising,” Dayton said. “Minnesotans said they wanted divided government, and they got divided government. In an election year it’s going to be even more based on political calculations.”