Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Separation Ordinance Anxiety
The federal raid on Las Cuatro Milpas in south Minneapolis this June revealed that the city’s separation ordinance, which we all assumed prevents the MPD from working with immigration enforcement, may lack the necessary precision or nuance (to coin a phrase) to operate as many city residents imagined it did.
In his analysis of the MPD’s presence at the raid, City Auditor Robert Timmerman found that city police followed the letter of the law, but that the wording of the 22-year-old ordinance, passed before the creation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "may contradict many people’s understanding of its protections."
So while Mayor Jacob Frey has recently touted the ordinance as “one of the strongest in the country,” at least three City Council members—Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez, and Aurin Chowdhury—believe it’s time for a tuneup, according to a story by Brian Martucci at MinnPost.
The Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), which is set to meet with the council members, has recently made four demands of a revamped separation ordinance: a ban on information sharing between local law enforcement and the feds; no local law participation in federal enforcement, not even for crowd control; requiring federal agents show their faces and wear official badges with their name; and punitive measures for departments or officers who violate the ordinance.
“We want to make sure that we are not doing the work of a federal government that seeks to kidnap our neighbors without due process,” Chowdhury told Martucci.
With SNAP About to Snap, State Steps Up
Gov. Tim Walz announced today that the state would provide $4 million to Minnesota food banks, which are bracing for higher demand next month, when a pause in SNAP benefits (aka food stamps) will exacerbate food insecurity nationwide.
The SNAP pause is the result of the current government shutdown, caused by the inability of the Republican-held U.S. Congress to pass a funding bill. The disappearance of federal food assistance will affect 440,000 Minnesotans, mostly children, seniors, and veterans.
The state money comes from the Minnesota Department of Human Services budget, and while these funds may help in the short run, they’re hardly a fix. “All the work and care of our community is not enough to solve an absolutely solvable crisis,” according to Jason Viana, executive director of The Open Door, speaking at a Monday press conference.
Zombies Were the Rage
Remember the Zombie Pub Crawl? Then you probably weren’t there, hahahaha *coughing fit*. For the Star Tribune’s Curious Minnesota feature, Laura Yuen looks into what happened to the annual exercise in staggering mayhem, which, at its peak, drew tens of thousands of costumed revelers from bar to bar in search of “brains” (alcohol).
The pub crawl started as a lark among friends. In 2005, 150 people who’d learned about the happening from MySpace turned up in northeast Minneapolis. Peak Zombie was probably 2014, when the pub crawl set a Guinness world record for the largest gathering of zombies with 15,458 participants. (Yeun notes that the actual attendance was closer to 35,000.)
If you guessed Covid’s what snuffed out the event, you’re half right. The last official Zombie Pub Crawl was in 2019. But even before then, what Yuen calls “demographic and behavioral changes” had taken their toll. As co-founder Chuck Terhark tells her, “Even in the last couple years of Zombie Pub Crawl, people were way more into healthy living and exercise, and those are not core tenets of the Zombie Pub Crawl at all.”
Soon, You Can Be Hennep-on Hennepin
Well hot damn, "Hennepin Ave is substantially complete and re-opening," according to the city of Minneapolis. While there'll be some intermittent lane closures this fall, the roadway and bike lanes will reopen on Friday, October 31—a Halloween miracle. And just look at the beautiful separated bike lanes in this WCCO segment!
Work on Hennepin started last year, and since then the roadway has been completely torn up and inaccessible for large stretches of time. Who can forget the time we swung by L2 at Tii Cup and sat on the top floor deck, watching construction digging away below? Certainly not the folks behind L2 at Tii Cup, who posted this celebratory video about the roadway reopening over the weekend:
Yes, it's definitely been a long year and change for small businesses, bars, and restaurants on Hennepin, so go on over there and show 'em some love if you get a chance in the coming weeks.
