‘Cover Stories’ Archives
Community Safety Alert Issued Regarding Out-of-State “Treatment” Transfers
By THE MINNESOTA INDIAN WOMEN’S RESOURCE CENTER The Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center (MIWRC) and local community leaders and advocates are issuing a public safety alert to ensure the safety of our relatives—both unsheltered and sheltered—amid growing concerns of outside entities targeting vulnerable individuals with false promises of out-of-state substance use treatment. “This is a public safety issue. It’s time the normalization of violence against one another comes to an end,” Over the past several months, we have been made aware of multiple reports indicating that our unsheltered relatives who are in active addiction have been targeted, approached, and recruited by outside sources claiming they can transport them to treatment-filled facilities outside of Minnesota. While the exact number of individuals taken out of state is currently unknown, the pattern is alarming and requires immediate public awareness. Native Americans make up a small [...]
Fire and Ice
By HARVEY WINJE December 20th -- Now in its second year, the Winter Solstice Lantern Parade brought light and delight to South Minneapolis on the longest night of the year. Community lantern making workshops and the parade event are organized by Phillips’ own Semilla Center for the Arts and Barebones Puppets, along with In the Heart of the Beast Theatre, and Artstart. PHOTO: Laura Hulscher This Wendell Phillips quote was a response to a friend, Brother May, who had asked, “Wendell, why are you so on fire?” after a fervent speech against the moral outrage of slavery. Phillips’s reply highlights the immense challenge he and other abolitionists faced in changing the deep-seated apathy, indifference, and resistance to their cause. The “fire” represented his passion and moral clarity, while the “mountains of ice” symbolized societal inertia and opposition to abolishing slavery.There is societal inertia and opposition to “Peace if possible, Justice at any [...]
WHAT WE CARRY
By ATLAS OF BLACKNESS ARTWORK: Saint Grim Last month, Atlas of Blackness presented “What We Carry” at the John and Denise Graves Foundation’s Creating Change Gallery, an intimate exhibition featuring the 2024 Black Scholar Fellows. Over many months, these young storytellers, artists, and cultural workers traced the emotional, structural, and historical forces that shape Black life in the Twin Cities. Their work examines the weight held in our bodies and families, the memories our cities ask us to carry, and the moments that refuse silence. Centering Black mental health, the complexities of Black motherhood, the long shadow of loss, and the quiet transformations that make survival possible, this exhibition insists that these experiences are not marginal or private. They are primary sites of knowledge and power, especially for women, nonbinary people, and Black youth coming of age in an uncertain time. Curated by Lucina Kayee and Patience Zalanga, “What We Carry” honors [...]
