‘Miscellany’ Archives
Beyond the 4th of July
Raise Your Voice By Peter Molenaar The 15th of every month is “alley time” for those who submit articles, yet the fire crackers persist late into the night”¦ disturbing little children and disrupting the sleep of workers. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” is the title now given to a speech by Frederick Douglass, delivered July 5th, 1852. Has the image of Frederick Douglass been embedded in every mind? Wielding the stature of a George Floyd, Douglass”™ Native-American facial bone structure shown prominently through his African-American complexion. Having escaped the illiteracy of an enslaved childhood, he rose to become an eloquent orator and esteemed author of the day. Naturally, Wendell Phillips, our neighborhood namesake, was a friend of his. Sample some of Frederick”™s words: Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of [...]
Homeless Crisis Requires Common Sense Solutions
Something I said By DWIGHT HOBBES There comes a point at which even bleeding heart liberalism must yield to common sense and things at Powderhorn Park in South Minneapolis have passed it. There”™s been a great deal of carping about how the city owes the homeless a place to go, the parks ”“ not just Powderhorn ”“ should be their sanctuary, so on and so forth. This would hold water if the encampment in the middle of a decent, peaceful neighborhood had not sordidly and violently disrupted the surrounding quality of life. The inhabitants didn”™t even have to contribute to communal well being, just not drag it down into the gutter and literally endanger it. As of this writing, crime there has gone from bad to worse. A teen aged girl was raped on June 26. Two days later, so was a woman. All told, there have been three sexual assaults; at least three that were reported. A man was shot in the face recently. Drug use [...]
