Why not outlaw uffda! while we're at it. When I arrived on Nicollet Island in 1970, our neighbors to the direct north (St. Anthony East and St. Anthony West) were living in neighborhoods superimposed on much of the original St. Anthony settlement that antedated the American Civil War. The families on the Island who had lived there for two and even three generations let us newcomers know that we were all "Nordeasters".
That was handy because neither the East Bank neighbors nor we were in favor of the interstate extension that had already carved a swath right through these oldest precincts of the inner city and threatened to erase much of the North Tip of the Island. Believe me, those mainland folks were fierce fighters who made life miserable for transportation people right up to Washington, D.C. and anybody else in or out of political office who got in their line of fire. We precious few Islanders cheered and jeered right on cue and there was no nonsense about the vulgate term for our allegiance. Putting on my cultural geography hat for a moment, I suggest that being a "Nordeaster" became a matter of cultural identity that fused earlier individual ethnic identities in response to the "push" factor of a highway plan that meant great harm to these blue collar neighborhoods. Jane Jacobs and company in New York City were earlier examples of a threatened area that fought off none other than Robert Moses and achieved a new parochial cultural awareness for their trouble. The New Yorkers were smart cookies who saw what awful things had happened elsewhere in their city and so were our local upstarts here in the upper Midwest. Our "Nordeasters" saw what had happened to the Rondo neighborhood and to South Minneapolis, learned what they needed to know, and had an eventual success that meant north-south freeway traffic departing the 694 beltway had to find a less well-defended path into the central business district. I'm oversimplifying but the central point remains that the various eastern European cultural strains in the heart of old St. Anthony coalesced and what may once have been a dismissive term among certain descendents of English immigrants elsewhere in Minneapolis became a badge of honor "up Nordeast" in the fight to the death over the I335 proposal. Folks in the "Johnny-come-lately" suburbs probably have no idea what we're talking about. Fred Markus, Horn Terrace, Ward Ten, in the Lyndale Neighborhood _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
