[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Keith says; Machines are not a living thing; they do not die.WM: This is a really uncalled for statement.
Is it possible to be addicted to a Machine?
Dyna barricaded her doors while the Machine ruled her homelife choices; yet still cheers the Machine's choice.
I came to Minnesota in 1972 and to Mpls in Feb.of 73. You may not remember this, but at that time MN was a really Caucasian dominant place. I had never in my life seen so many white--and blond, blue-eyed people--all in one place before and I had lived in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Edwardsville, NYC, upstate NY and LA. In MPLS. African Americans, Native Americans and any other of the then scarce-on-the-ground minorities comprised less than 10% of the state's and, I think, the city's population. If there were organized gangs, they were keeping a mighty low profile and they had to have been white not to stand out too prominently and get picked off like pop cans on a rail fence. The changes in the MN demographic landscape in only 1 and 1/2 generations is pretty dramatic.
From what I understand of the history of Mpls, there haven't been organized gangs since the 1930's. What that means is that the institutional memory of how to contend with gangs was no longer there either in the police departments, the cities of the state, or much of anywhere else.
To dump it on the DFL is hugely unfair. All those were were not DFL didn't have the answers among them either. Nor do they now, though they have learned quite a bit more about organized crime in the interim and have made some headway.
As late as the era when Tony Bouza was Chief of Police in Mpls, there was still tons of denial about whether or not we had organized gangs. I seem to remember that it took Bouza a long time to acknowledge their presence. By 1989 we were up to our knees in semi-organized criminals with more to come. By then the gangs pretty much had the upper hand in some areas of the city. That was a huge change for my neighborhood which was inundated with gangs. We had had criminal activity, the poorer sections of the city always do, but it wasn't all that well organized.
In 1989-90 the Rolling 30s Bloods was formed in the house next door to me. It was hell, pure and unadulterated. It was a huge population growth in homegrown organized criminal gangs and it was made up almost entirely of Mpls. Southsiders.
Add to that sometime in the early 90s, I think, Michigan law enforcement had brought down the Chambers Gang in Detroit and those not rounded up in the beginning fled. Some came here. Talk about mean and nasty and the Detroit Boys pop immediately to mind.
Simultaneously, Mpls. was experiencing a big influx of people from Rust Belt cities who came with the customs of their previous homes, something MN hadn't experienced in a long time and was really unprepared to cope with, mainly, I would contend, because it was so white and so insular.
Now we are in the middle of experiencing a huge immigration wave comprised of people of entirely different cultures of people of color who come here poor and running from war and starvation, rather than a variety of American sub-cultures moving to where there seem to be jobs.
Therefore, it's my opinion that blaming any political party for the state of the city on the level of violence and organized crime, is grossly unfair. Pretty much everyone has been caught equally flat-footed when MN suddenly had to contend with separate realities in such a dramatic fashion.
I guess I will need to ask Shane Price, and Natalie Johnson-Lee, what it ultimately requires to walk away from the machine. Is cleared vision race related?WM: Yes, at this point in history, it certainly is. Not the race of any one person, but the ability to recognize, learn about, and acknowledge that race and culture are two of the greatest influences in creating separate realities among the people who live in Mpls today.
Has anyone else felt like Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man"? It is a healthy exercise, I imagine, to ' walk ' . Gary Hoover should be proud that Megan Thomas described Natalie Johnson-Lee's "run" to the Green Party, or was it FROM a Machine? A sprint indicates a healthy body; the realignment indicates a healthy mind.WM: People have different needs at different times in their lives. If you'll notice, the Greens have a goodly percentage of disaffected and younger ex-DFLers. I think both factors have equal weight in the Greens' move to create a viable third party. It does not infer that the DFL is somehow unhealthy. Having a viable third party is good for us. At the moment the Greens are still becoming viable. The Independents are doing likewise.
Shane and Natalie are invisible no longer; if you are not blinded by a Machine.WM: I wish the DFL had a viable machine. It does not. It hadn't yet understood the value of the little professor who could both energize people to his principles and work within their system. They are now re-evaluating. It's another kind of learning curve. The DFL is up to the job. It's a matter of choosing to do it now.
In the 3rd Ward: Which candidate took risks for his community long before electioneering time? (A: DS) Which candidate, in final victory in the 3rd Ward, will be beholden to a Machine? (A: OM). Which candidate will do a better job over all?WM: I don't live in the Third Ward and the Southside is a vastly different sub-culture from the Northside. I don't want to get into that fracas. I have all I can do to contend with our own fracases (or is that fraci?).
(A: Frankly, I am still doing some research)
WizardMarks, Central
______________________________________ 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
_______________________________________ 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
