News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Thursday December 18th 2025
Raise Your Voice: Shane is his name
By PETER MOLENAAR
Peter Molenaar
Once a month, 15 copies of the Alley are delivered to Little Earth Neighborhood Early Learning Center at 2438 18th Ave. S. While delivering the July issue, I witnessed Native children joyfully play with children of all races under multi-ethnic supervision. Thoughtful people, our community nurtures a beautiful example to the world.
However, an opioid crisis among the destitute penetrates. It is a crisis which began long ago.
In the period of 1842-44, Fred Engels, first son of an industrial capitalist, wrote the book entitled: “The Condition of the Working-Class of England.” This was the book which convinced a man named Karl Marx that the working-class would be the agent of history”™s final revolution.
This ”˜proletariate”™ was derived from displaced peasants, a people who had worked parcels of the Lord”™s land for centuries, forced off to satisfy the new industrial demand for wool. Sheep replaced people. In the modern world, for empathy”™s sake, imagine the Palestinians”™ horror as Israeli bulldozers smashed the ancestral groves of olive and orange trees.
The historically traumatized people who formed the proletariate shed from their ranks a ”˜lumpen proletariate.”™ The “lumpen” are a declassed strata which became widespread with the advent of capitalism.… Read the rest “Raise Your Voice: Shane is his name”
Letter to the community: Don”™t go down the path of ugliness
I am a former 13-year resident of Phillips, during which time I was an activist and sometime-contributor to the Alley. When I saw “The Rand Report” I thought: Another interesting column. On reading further, I was saddened. The piece is a classic rant, full of angry statements backed up by unsubstantiated or non-existent evidence. (Sound familiar these days?)
For example: “The Irish, as indentured servants, were worked to death with greater frequency than [African] slaves.” Since at the time, Africans were counted as 4/5 of a person, it would be hard to calculate this even if there were any figures. Â
I have all good feeling for Irish people and Irish culture, and know they were badly mistreated by people who had immigrated to America before them, but were there any Irish chattel slaves (meaning that they and their offspring were property of the master)?Â
Any Irish-aimed Jim Crow laws? Any laws written to discriminate against the Irish in banking, housing, etc. even in the North and right up to the present? Today, I and Mr. Retteroth are recipients of white privilege, whether we are conscious of it or not.
Having been out of Phillips for 11 years, I neither know nor care about his apparent feud with Alondra Cano.… Read the rest “Letter to the community: Don”™t go down the path of ugliness”
Keep citizen journalism alive!
