Posts Tagged ‘Nov 22’
Returning Chapter 25: Moonstruck
Patrick Cabello Hansel. Photo courtesy the author. By PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL Screen one: Luz and Angel stare at the full moon rising, holding little Angel’s hands, for a moment forgetting that their daughter had been taken and they were in a desperate search to find her. For just a minute, the beauty of the moon gave them room to breathe; a space free of fear, full of awe. Screen two: Agnes, looking at the same moon, 120 years later, holding little Lupe’s hand, knowing that she did the right thing by taking her away from Brian Fleming and his band of criminals. Knowing that it meant the life of her granddaughter Amethyst was in mortal danger. For Agnes, the full moon inspired not awe, but doom. We cannot stare at beauty or shake with fear forever. We have to move. Agnes took Lupe by the hand and decided to go to the one place that would not ask too many questions. It was a shelter for the abused: women, children and others. But it was not one of the official ones which [...]
Something I Said: Should’ve Been
Dwight Hobbes. Photo: courtesy the author By DWIGHT HOBBES Art Knight should be the next Minneapolis Police Department Chief, but has too much integrity for his own good. That’s how he lost his deputy chief position and got demoted, calling the MPD out for entrenched, institutionalized racism. Knight said the department needs to improve how it recruits, trains and promotes minorities and women, stating the obvious. “If you keep employing the same tactics you’re just going to get the same old white boys.” Chief Arradondo dismayed black Minneapolis at large with that move, since he, himself won his job on the strength of overwhelming black support in a social climate that demanded a change from those same old boys. And, for that matter, racist female cops. In fact, in 2007 then-Lieutenant Medaria Arradondo was part of a successful lawsuit against the MPD on the grounds of an environment hostile toward black officers. One has to believe the publicly pull-no-punches Art [...]
