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Twin Cities Confront Legacy of Stuff Named After Disgraced Cesar Chavez
"Newly revealed allegations about the late civil rights and labor leader Cesar Chavez are prompting debate and reflection in Minnesota, where Chavez’s name is on streets and a school—and where his birthday is commemorated by state law," MPR News staffers write in this report about what the hell happens now that the civil rights leader has been accused of sexual abuse.
Chavez's birthday is coming up fast—it's March 31—and Rep. Maria Isa Perez-Vega (DFL-St. Paul) has announced plans to introduce legislation that would eliminate Chavez Day. Officials at Academia Cesar Chavez charter school in St. Paul called the allegations “profoundly concerning," and said that they're “taking time to fully understand the information that is emerging and will continue to follow developments closely.”
As for Cesar Chavez Street on St. Paul’s West Side and Cesar Chavez Avenue in Minneapolis? Perez-Vega (who represents that St. Paul neighborhood) tells MPR that community leaders will discuss removing his name from all public spaces.
Seems like maybe we should just stop naming things after people, eh? Or, here's a thought: What if named some things after women?
Sticker Shock at the Pump? Just Skip Starbucks, Says Tafoya.
For someone who has been a professional talker for many years, GOP Senate candidate Michele Tafoya seems to be not good at saying things. Or maybe it’s just that saying things to rile up talk radio listeners and saying things that will make people vote for you are two very different skills.
Tafoya was recently under fire for claiming that 30% of Californians are homeless. (That would be over 11 million people.) Now she’s suggesting that Americans cope with the spike in high gas prices caused by the Trump administration’s criminal and poorly planned war on Iran by just skipping their morning coffee, The Hill reports.
“Maybe you take one less trip to Starbucks and so that gas goes a little further,” Tafoya told Tennessee’s KWAM radio host Todd Starnes, when she could have instead just not said that. She also offered the most lukewarm defense of the Iran war imaginable: “Let’s just try to be patriots about this, whether you agree with it or not.”
Tafoya is campaigning as a GOP moderate. When the former Sunday Night Football sideline reporter announced her candidacy, Racket's Jessica Armbruster ran down a few of Tafoya’s “moderate” policies: “an anti-CRT crusade, questioning the severity of COVID-19, and being transphobic on Twitter.”
EPNI Goes Halfsies on Urban Farm Site
Last year, Minneapolis's East Phillips Neighborhood Institute failed to come up with the $11.4 million needed to purchase the old Roof Depot site. The plan was to turn the space into a solar-powered, indoor farm with local community groups and businesses onsite, creating 500-plus jobs. But that dream isn’t dead; this week, EPNI announced new plans to make that all happen, at least partially, as the city has agreed to sell half of the property to the group for $6.2 million.
According to the org's Instagram post, the city would agree to keep the other half of the property untouched for a year while developing a “clear pathway for the community to pursue ownership of the entire site in the future.” During that time the city will also collaborate with EPNI to remediate the space of toxins, including arsenic. Gardening could reportedly begin as early as this summer.
Checking in With the MN Daily: Ode to House Parties; Video Tour of Gopher Holes
I, Racket's Jay Boller, am an ex-Minnesota Daily guy. As such, I enjoy checking in with my old paper to see what the young journalists of today are up to. (Middle-aged journalists of today such as myself are exhaustedly raising 5-month-olds while reporting on data centers and podcasting with Fancy Ray.)
Up first, we've got something I'd never consider (again, old and tired): That the concept of the house party might be on life support with alcohol-shunning, smartphone-obsessed Gen Z. Daily opinion columnist Amelia Watters will have none of that, writing:
One Reddit thread went viral nine months ago when a Gen Zer asked whether the house parties depicted in 1990s and 2000s movies were ever actually a thing, prompting Gen Xers to share stories from the house parties of their youth. This paints a picture of a generation in dire need of a good rager. And I, along with plenty of students on campus, am committed to keeping house parties alive.
The 10,000-foot view of house parties she paints is delightful, like a cultural anthropologist studying something that, for most of Racket's readership, probably feels as natural as the boozy tides.
“I feel like it’s more of a curated crowd in a way,” says third-year U of M student Hayden Diaz, one of three subjects Watters studies. “Not that everybody’s the same, but I talked to a couple people that had similar majors or interests, just because it’s like a friend or a friend of a friend.”
Drinking? In a house? With friends? In this economy? A winning combination, she concludes, and one with broader social and societal benefits:
In my two years at the University, parties have pulled me out of my shell in a way I could not have imagined. I’ve made friends, heard new music, spilled food on myself a heinous number of times and made memories that will last far behind my time in Dinkytown. So if you haven’t thrown or attended a house party yet, take this as your sign.
Elsewhere in the Daily, video reporter Neil Roy takes viewers on a tour of the Gopher Way, the system of subterranean tunnels that transport students, faculty, and staff around campus. We get history. We get cute interviews ("sometimes when I'm walking through it feels a bit prison-y"). We get the convenience of not paying for parking to experience them.
