My own experience with the resident council at Horn Terrace and on the Lyndale Neighborhood Association steering committee is perhaps helpful here. Set aside the DFL bashing. Set aside impatience with the Green Party's fascination with "mountaintop yodeling". Our daily reality where I live is multi-generational, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural. Educational levels range from illiterate to post-graduate. We have a lot of contact with service agencies, police, fire and medical personnel, MPHA's many employees, and tons of volunteer involvement. This is without doubt an immersion experience in diversity and we work it out.
There are folks around town who wade right into these diversity issues (that Wizard references so well, see below) and that are such push factors at Horn Terrace. R. T. clearly works on this. Horn's nearby southside council members - Niziolek, Lilligren and Zimmermann - our state legislators - Berglin, Clark, Walker - Met Council member Hornsby and County Commissioner Dorfman are all over these demographic realities. Our interests are well served by these elected officials and they move among us in a familiar way in an atmosphere of mutual respect. I have the feeling that citizen participation and representative democracy are working as well as can be expected in Horn's immediate vicinity. However, the leading personalities and experienced habitu�s of the voluntary political parties are either not wrapped that tightly around these ideals (the so-called "DFL machine" and their kissing cousins in the Stonewall DFL caucus and Progressive Minnesota, fire-breathing Republicans, NRP neighborhood elites who cross over into political party involvement) or are held back in the real world by excesses of political purity (the Green Party, New Unionists, other voices on the left - and the right - not given to the necessary art of compromise). The Third Ward contest is a serious test for both candidates and their partisans because the winds of change are blowing just as hard on the other side of downtown Minneapolis as they are on either side of Lake St. I trust that the mindset in Horn's vicinity about inclusivity will have its influence elsewhere and I expect that the next round of political party conventions will also touch on these new realities/new faces in our midst. Beware the politics of business as usual and a happy new year to all! Fred Markus, Horn Terrace, Ward Ten, in the Lyndale Neighborhood Wizard wrote: 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. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.431 / Virus Database: 242 - Release Date: 12/17/2002 _______________________________________ 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
