IMHO: 'Indigenous Tribes' are considered 'nations' but the USA does not really treat nor respect that designation. We need a Constitutional Amendment making local/state/federal Eminent Domain laws NOT applicable to Tribal Lands.
SUMMARY:A protracted stand-off between a major oil company and northern Indigenous American tribes intensified this week over the construction of a pipeline in Minnesota.Tara Houska, an attorney, founder of the advocacy organization Giniw Collective and a member of the Couchiching First Nation, joins Stephanie Sy from the construction site where the pipeline is being built.
SUMMARY:As the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin went into a third week of testimony Monday, a police killing of a motorist in a neighboring community has once again left the region reeling. Amna Nawaz speaks with Lisa Clemons of A Mother's Love Initiative and Campaign Zero's Sam Sinyangwe about the community's reaction.
SUMMARY: The death of George Floyd and the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin has kept the state of Minnesota in the national spotlight. Now the death of Daunte Wright near Minneapolis has led to new protests and opened long-standing wounds over policing and race. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports.
SUMMARY:This year Minnesota is home to the only two Democratic-held House seats that are rated a toss-up. Republican Jim Hagedorn and Democrat Dan Feehan are competing in a district that's voted for both parties, and where issues of health care and agriculture dominate. Special correspondent Mary Lahammer of Twin Cities PBS reports.
SUMMARY: Since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, there's been an increased police presence at schools. But that presence has also sparked concerns. According to a recent analysis, black students are more likely to be arrested on campus than their white counterparts. Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza of Education Week reports on how the Saint Paul public schools are changing their approach.
KAVITHA CARDOZA, Special correspondent: Minnesota — it's known for the Vikings, Lake Wobegon, and being nice.
But, in the past year, a series of violent interactions within the St. Paul school system has taken center stage, school fights, teacher assaults, and one incident where a visiting student was arrested for trespassing, all caught on cell phones and, of course, widely shared on social media.
Teachers threatened to strike, the superintendent was fired, and more than 100 students walked out in protest.
Makkah Abdur Salaam is a senior.
MAKKAH ABDUR SALAAM, Student:The truth is, I don't feel safe around police. Like, it's point blank, period.
KAVITHA CARDOZA: Students like Saffiyah Al'Aziz Muhammed say rocky police-civilian relations have filtered down to schools all over the country.
SAFFIYAH AL'AZIZ MOHAMMED, Student:Us seeing all this police brutality in the media, and then going to school, and then your interactions with school police aren't good, it's kind of, like, traumatizing a little bit.
KAVITHA CARDOZA: Nationwide, there were nearly 70,000 arrests during the 2013 school year. And, in most states, black students are far more likely to be arrested, according to an analysis of federal data by the Education Week Research Center.
One reason might be that they are far more likely to be in schools with police officers.
Laura Olson is trying to change the relationship between students and police officers in St. Paul schools.
LAURA OLSON, Saint Paul Public Schools:If students don't feel safe when they come to school, they're not going to be in a position to learn.
KAVITHA CARDOZA: One of the first things she did? Change the uniforms.
Some students expressed that they felt uncomfortable, kind of that paramilitary look. So, over the summer, instead of the hard military-style blue and metal badge, they moved to a more soft blue polo shirt with stitched-on badge.
Officers, known as School Resource Officers, are still armed and carry Tasers, but Olson hopes this softer look makes them more approachable.
Another change? Clarify when SRO's should step in and when should they step aside.
SUMMARY: Like any 4th grade boy, Jalue Dorje enjoys soccer, swimming and Pokemon cards. But unlike most 9-year-olds, he is believed to be -- and confirmed by the Dalai Lama himself -- the reincarnation of an eminent senior lama who died nine years ago. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The tradition of rebirth is a central Tenet in the Buddhist religion. And when spiritual leaders, or lamas, die, there's an elaborate process of identifying their reincarnation.
It's usually an infant. One such young lama was identified a few years ago far away from his Himalayan roots.
Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Minnesota.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO, Special correspondent: They are chants more likely heard in a Himalayan monastery than a working-class Minneapolis suburb.
But it's here in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, that 9-year-old Jalue Dorje begins the day in a routine of Tibetan Buddhist mantras, coached by his father.
A bit later, there are house calls from volunteer teachers in modern Tibetan, in the calligraphy of the ancient scriptures.
THINLY WORSER, Teacher: He has really motivation to learn and especially — even I know him, he's tired, but he says, no, I'm not tired. I want to continue, you know?
So that also motivated me also to teach him.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO:It's a fitting trait, because Jalue Dorje has been recognized as a reincarnation of Takshem Karma Yongdu Choekyi Nima, an eminent senior lama, or spiritual leader, who died nine years ago. He would be the eighth reincarnation of the first Takshem lama, who lived in the 16th century.
In Tibetan tradition, the process of recognizing a reincarnate varies, depending on circumstances. Spiritual masters divine from a variety of signals. In the case of Jalue Dorje, it was the dream of a senior monk who had visited Jalue's home in Minnesota, which is home to some 3,000 Tibetan-Americans, the second in size only to New York.
In that dream, tigers roamed in every room of Jalue's house. It was a critical clue in the search for the Takshem Lama's reincarnation.
THINLY WORSER: The Takshem lamas, they used to wear skirts of the tiger skin. Then I also thought, oh, it might be, you know, because Takshem lama was passed away year before, and everybody was trying to find out his reincarnation.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The question of whether that reincarnation is indeed Jalue Dorje went all the way up to the Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism.
THINLY WORSER: Then His Holiness' prediction was the same, and many other high lamas, and so he was confirmed.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In the old days, the boy would be moved to a monastery in Tibet, or now in India, where the Dalai Lama and thousands of followers have lived in exile since 1959.
However, the Dalai Lama suggested that Jalue's monastic education be deferred until he's a bit older. The spiritual leader has emphasized that Tibetans, or all Buddhists must reconcile their traditional belief system with the modern world. .
DALAI LAMA:I always appealing we Buddhists should be 21st century Buddhists.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For Jalue Dorje, that means immersion in ceremony and scripture, on one hand, and, on the other, a fairly typical 21st century Minnesota upbringing.
Soccer and swimming are favorite pastimes, as are more sedentary ones, isolated in headphones and a laptop computer. All this will soon change drastically in a Himalayan monastery perhaps in a couple of years, though an exact date has not yet been determined.
After about 10 years in India, he is to return to Minnesota as a spiritual leader.
When you grow older and you've completed your studies, what do you think you'll be doing for people?
JALUE DORJE: I will be praying for them. I will be chanting for them.
SUMMARY: Even when they serve their time, sex crime offenders in some states are being held years beyond their release date. The civil commitment laws that let jailers deem convicts too dangerous to walk free are facing increased scrutiny, especially in Minnesota, where even juvenile sex offenders grow old behind bars. William Brangham reports.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):This facility in the rural town of Moose Lake is where Minnesota puts the sex offenders it says are too dangerous to live on the outside.
Twenty-nine-year-old Craig Bolte is one of them. He’s been locked up for nearly half his life. It started when he was 15, when he pled guilty to sexually assaulting a younger member of his family, and also admitted to sexual contact with another minor. He says these were very troubling years for him.
CRAIG BOLTE, Juvenile Sex Offender: I was sexually abused on numerous occasions as a child when I was a young child, and that is by no means an excuse. I’m responsible for my actions. I still hurt people.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM:Bolte was originally sentenced to three years, but he’s now been behind bars here in Minnesota for 14, locked up with hundreds of rapists, child abusers, and other sex offenders.
They’re all being kept by what’s known as 'civil commitment law,' which allows a state to deem someone an ongoing threat and even after their sentences are served keep them locked up indefinitely.
CRAIG BOLTE: I have been in for about 10 years now. All in all, I have been locked up for 14 years, 10 years of it here.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The “PBS NewsHour” was granted rare access to Minnesota’s sex offender program. We could film interviews inside this one room, but, almost everywhere else, we could only take still photos. Most everyone agrees that there are people locked up in Minnesota’s program who are very likely to reoffend. These are people who say they simply cannot control their behavior.
And that concern is why legislatures in 20 states have set up programs like this to hold these people. But others say these programs also end up snaring juvenile offenders who they argue have no business being held for years past their sentences.
ERIC JANUS, Mitchell Hamline School of Law: It’s outrageous. That’s one of the more outrageous features of this program.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Eric Janus is a law professor and longtime critic of Minnesota’s sex offender policies. He says juvenile sex offenders are almost never the kind of lifetime sexual predator that society needs to worry about.
ERIC JANUS:Probably a fairly high percentage of adolescent sexual offending is basically due to immaturity and experimentation, and so it’s not deviant sexuality. It’s not that they are attracted to violent sex or involuntary sex. It’s that they are immature, and that’s the kind of thing that they will grow out of.
SUMMARY:In most states across America, education for teen offenders pales in comparison to what they'd receive on the outside. Just one third mandate that these kids meet the same standards as their public school counterparts. Massachusetts is one of them, and there the goal is to save these young offenders with vocational classes and good old reading, writing and arithmetic. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
SUMMARY: According to a new study, some 50 percent of all Muslim students in the U.S. have been bullied by their peers. In mostly-white St. Cloud, Minnesota — where thousands of east African refugees have relocated — the problem got so bad that Muslim students walked out of the city's high school en massè. John Tulenko of Education Week takes a look at the intersection of education and Islamophobia.
JOHN TULENKO, Education Week: Hafsa Abdi, who's 18-years-old, remembers well the day four years ago when she was first bullied for being Muslim.
HAFSA ABDI, Student, St. Cloud Technical High School:The last day of by eighth grade year, I was just going home, and then this boy — I think he was a year younger than me — he pulled off my hijab. And at the time, I was wearing a longer one, so it was more easy to kind of like pull off from the back.
And then I also had like a pin underneath to hold it in place. And then that kind of came loose. So, like, at the time I was just trying to think of like five different things at one time, like trying to get the pin to not stab me in the neck, and then turn around to see who this kid is.
JOHN TULENKO: In high school, the bullying continued, especially when she and other Muslim students would gather to pray.
HAFSA ABDI:Mostly, the upperclassmen, they would come into the bathroom sometimes and start fighting with the Somali girls that were trying to wash for prayer, and then when it gets reported, nothing would happen.
JOHN TULENKO: What would they say?
HAFSA ABDI: So they'd be like, oh, well, why are you making the bathroom dirty, you stinky Somalian or you terrorist or stuff like that, or go back to where you came from.
JOHN TULENKO:Where Hafsa comes from is Minnesota. She was born here, after her parents fled Somalia to escape civil war. Thousands of other East African refugees have also come to St. Cloud, changing the face of this mostly white, mostly Catholic small city.
WILLIE JETT, Superintendent, St. Cloud Area School District 742: My job is to make sure that all children, whether it's their children, whether it's somebody brand-new to the country, that they have the best tools available to be successful here in America, here within our community.
JOHN TULENKO: For superintendent Willie Jett, educating the new arrivals required changes across the board.
WILLIE JETT: What we have had to do is start from ground zero. You're trying to make sure that, (A) All the different languages within school are welcomed.
You're trying to make sure that you have interpreters. You're making sure that you're revamping teaching staff and support staff and the way that you hold conferences, the way that you send messages home. It's not what it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, even 10 years ago.
aka Money before people or environment or Rape the Earth for more money.
Excerpt
SUMMARY: Minnesota’s Arrowhead region sits atop a trove of precious metals: four billion tons of raw material like copper and nickel, a haul worth $1 trillion, mining companies say. But local residents and activists are taking a stand against encroaching mining operations, citing the potentially disastrous environmental consequences. Josh Buettner of Iowa Public Television reports.
JOSH BUETTNER (PBS Iowa):Last fall, demonstrators pressured Minnesota’s Saint Louis County Board to publicly acknowledge a proposed copper-nickel sulfide mine would threaten the health of their local watershed.
WOMAN:It’s crazy to clean the river, only to allow it to be polluted again.
MAN: Mining is less than 1 percent of Minnesota’s economy.
JOSH BUETTNER:Opponents allege newly unearthed sulfur-bearing rock will create acid mine drainage, diluting previous efforts to restore the Saint Louis River, a waterway once crippled by iron ore pollution.
Since 2008, applications to conduct exploratory drilling have surged in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. And Toronto, Canada-based PolyMet Mining Corporation is first in line to unlock precious metals from the Duluth complex, a vast mineral deposit in the Arrowhead of Minnesota.
Mining proponents say geologists have known about the formation for over 60 years, but new technology will allow excavation of four billion tons of raw material worth an estimated $1 trillion.
LATISHA GIETZEN, PolyMet: It’s kind of a closed loop system.
JOSH BUETTNER: Latisha Gietzen, director of public affairs for PolyMet, says new mining techniques and rehabilitated infrastructure will mitigate past damages.
LATISHA GIETZEN: Because we’re using a Legacy site, we will actually be able to clean up some of the issues that are currently going on and bring modern technology to the process.
JOSH BUETTNER: Additionally, corporate officials say any water released from their proposed NorthMet site will be treated to meet state and federal guidelines.
But, for some, the mining industry’s track record is suspect. A well-established hub for agriculture, forestry and mining exports, the Port of Duluth sits between the contested estuary and Lake Superior. Ships from North America’s furthest inland port traditionally transported taconite, a mineral used to make steel, to mills around the Great Lakes Rust Belt and the world.
The finite resource is mined exclusively in the state’s Mesabi Iron Range. In the 1980s, two steel making facilities on the banks of the Saint Louis River became so polluted, they became qualified for EPA’s Superfund program.
With corporate- and taxpayer-funded cleanup continuing today, environmentalists such as Aaron Klemm fear relapse.
SUMMARY: In Minneapolis, the Walker Art Center is offering art lovers a new thing to collect: intangible experience, direct from artist to consumer. Jeffrey Brown reports on how customers can purchase personal dances, ringtones, even the chance to stage their own art exhibit.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Next, an experiment in personalized intangible art, direct from the artist to a consumer like you.
WOMAN: I’m going to have you walk towards the bridge. And when you see a person in an orange shirt, the show has begun.
(CROSSTALK)
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): The show has begun.
I’m just going?
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I had been told to meet with performers from the dance group BodyCartography at Loring Park in downtown Minneapolis.
I think I have arrived at the performance.
But it was all very mysterious, especially when this man in an orange shirt began to dance, and he seemed to be dancing just for me. Was I supposed to join in? Confusing me a bit, it turned out, was intentional.
WOMAN: There’s a lot of playing with your comfort and your discomfort to kind of engage you physically in what’s happening.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes. There is discomfort, right, I’m sure, for a lot of people.
WOMAN: Yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: This personal one-on-one dance is part of what’s touted as a new kind of art commerce, e-commerce, to be precise. The seller is a very prominent museum, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Emmet Byrne is the Walker’s design director and one of the creators of this so-called Intangible shopping experience.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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