News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Saturday December 20th 2025
How Phillips Voted: Ballot Questions, Mayor, and Turnout
By LINDSEY FENNER
The Phillips Community is split between two wards – 6 and 9. Ward 6 includes Phillips West and Ventura Village in Phillips, as well as neighborhoods to the north, east, and west: parts of Cedar-Riverside, Elliot Park, Seward, and Stevens Square. Ward 9 includes East Phillips and Midtown Phillips, as well as neighborhoods to the south: Corcoran, Powderhorn Park, Central and parts of Longfellow. Ward 6 has 4 precincts in Phillips and Ward 9 has 2 precincts in Phillips (see map of the six precincts in the Phillips community)
Charter Questions: Breaking down the charter amendment votes at the precinct level, Phillips voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of Question 3, which authorizes the City Council to enact a rent control ordinance. All six Phillips precincts voted against Question 2, which would have created a city Department of Public Safety. Precincts in Ward 6 all voted strongly against Question 2, whereas precincts 9-3 and 9-4 in Phillips saw a much more evenly divided vote, with 51.57% voting no in 9-3 and 52.81% voting no in 9-4. Phillips voters were split on Question 1, the Government Structure Amendment. Four Phillips precincts voted against the so-called “Strong Mayor” amendment: 6-6, 6-8, 9-3, and 9-4.… Read the rest “How Phillips Voted: Ballot Questions, Mayor, and Turnout”
December Random alley News
By LINDSEY FENNER
Midtown Greenway Coalition Calls for Re-Do of Re-Paving Greenway: A section of the Midtown Greenway commuter bike trail was repaved by Minneapolis Public Works in October, but bikers are already calling for a re-do. According to the Midtown Greenway Coalition, a nonprofit group that advocates for the Greenway and Greenway users, the repaving has left the trail surface worse than it was before and created a safety hazard for users. Public Works has admitted they used a different resurfacing process, called “micropaving,” which cost a third of the 1.6 million budgeted for the project. The 5.5 mile bike and pedestrian route runs along the former Milwaukee Railroad line from the Uptown Chain of Lakes to the Mississippi River.
Southside Green Zone Council Seeking Members: The citizen advisory committee advises the Mayor and City Council on the implementation and evaluation of the Southside Green Zone Work Plan. The Southside Green Zone boundaries include all of Phillips and parts of Seward and Cedar-Riverside.… Read the rest “December Random alley News”
Keep citizen journalism alive!
Something I Said: Mario and Melvin
By DWIGHT HOBBES
The original title of Mario Van Peebles’ Baadasssss! (Sony Pictures, 2003) was How To Get The Man’s Foot Outta Your Ass, entirely fitting for the social commentary his father Melvin Van Peebles’ film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Yeah, Inc., 1971) put forth in a time when grassroot black America had grown sick and tired of this country kicking us around to keep us down. Indeed, Baadasssss! is a dramatized, making of historic document, looking at what went into Melvin returning the favor and putting his foot in American cinema’s behind, profoundly challenging its cherished tenet of supremacist propaganda.
There is a reason, after all, The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense lauded it, in Huey Newton’s words as “the first truly revolutionary…[film]” that, in the opening credits, starred “The Black Community,” It became required viewing for Party members. There is the same reason Bill Cosby, who’d narrated CBS’ Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed three years earlier, stepped in with a $50,000 loan to complete funding after Columbia Studios suits turned their backs and left production high and dry. Neither was going to see this landmark depiction of black reality go by the wayside. The days of demeaning portrayals of mammies and shiftless men were done.… Read the rest “Something I Said: Mario and Melvin”