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New Project Seeks to Document One Aspect of the Resistance
If you spent any time in a city or town impacted by Operation Metro Surge this past winter, then you probably came across a few ICE abduction alerts. These appeared in many shapes and forms—a cardboard sign taped to a utility pole, a stencil painted on a sidewalk, a graffitied note at bus shelter—and served as haunting reminders of cruel, traumatic moments caused by the federal government.
These memorials weren’t created to last, but a group of public historians at the University of Minnesota have sought to document and preserve the tributes via a user-generated online archive. The project, Here & Gone, invites folks to upload photos taken of abduction signs, which are then added to an interactive map. “The archive is built by and for the public,” its creators write. “Our hope is that this archive will engage and benefit communities beyond the university, beyond this moment.”
Construction Workers Receive $1.28M in Lost Wages
It doesn’t feel right to describe this as a “win,” but at least workers are getting paid. This week two Twin Cities construction companies, Property Maintenance & Construction LLC and Property Maintenance and Construction, Inc., agreed to pay 26 workers $1.28 million in back wages and liquidated damages in a lawsuit settlement that has been ongoing for years. “These cases are complex, but we were committed to recovering every dime owed to these impacted workers,” Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach says via press release.
But not “every dime owed” will be collected. “The case’s success is blunted by time,” Max Nesterak writes for Minnesota Reformer. “The violations date back to 2019, and years of inflation have eroded the real value of the lost wages.” The state also dropped its original request for $1.2 million in damages in addition to wage payments in the settlement.
Nesterak notes that wage theft in the construction industry is a pervasive and costly problem. A 2021 Midwest Economic Policy Institute study found that 23% of the construction workforce had been affected by payroll fraud in 2018 alone, costing taxpayers around $136 million in untaxed wages.
RIP MN Guitarist Michael Yonkers
Friends of Minneapolis-raised musician Michael Yonkers have confirmed that the psych-folk rocker died Tuesday. “Today we have lost a true innovator, unique talent, lovely human being & friend,” writes garage rocker John Dwyer (the Osees) via Instagram.
In the 1960s, Yonkers dabbled in surf rock with his band, the Vectors, then followed it up with the psychedelic sounds of Michael and the Mumbles. By the '70s he had gone more experimental with solo projects and collaborations. But it wasn’t until the early aughts that he went national.
“Long-overdue recognition came in 2003, when [Yonkers's 1968 album with the Mumbles] Microminiature Love was finally released by influential Seattle label Sub Pop, catching critical raves for its inventive, Sonic Youth-esque approach, which was years ahead of its time,” local writer Christopher Bahn wrote for the Onion’s A.V. Club in 2007. (Read his full Q&A, which includes all kinds of anecdotes on the local music scene, here.)
“He kind of invented noise and drone guitar techniques, which is pretty fundamental now but back then it was unheard of,” Cole Alexander of Black Lips, a fan of Yonkers, told Dazed in 2010. “When you think of how The Who, Jimi Hendrix, and the Velvet Underground were pushing feedback at the time—he was more extreme than all three combined in terms of what he was doing.”
Killer ICE Agent Gets a Job
After killing Minneapolis mother/poet Renee Good during Operation Metro Surge, ICE agent Jonathan Ross was put on three days of administrative leave. Months later, he’s back on the job within the agency in another state, reports Tom Latchem's Daily Beast-affiliated Substack, PunchUp.
Folks at the Department of Homeland Security are basically blaming the situation on bureaucracy, saying that any accountability on their end has been delayed by the FBI's slow/possibly stalled investigation into the incident. The FBI needs to "shit or get off the pot," senior DHS sources eloquently say, or “Ross could avoid accountability for a long time to come.”
