Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
U of M Amplifies Protest-Suppressing Policies
Have University of Minnesota leaders taken the correct lessons from protests over the Israeli military's killing of 41,118+ Gazans (including 16,500 children) since last fall? Sure doesn't seem like it. In a Mother Jones piece published last week, Sophie Hurwitz called out dozens of universities who've "effectively [banned] many forms of protest" with new speech-stultifying rules seemingly inspired by the worldwide wave of campus protests over Gaza.
Hurwitz points to the U of M's “guidelines for spontaneous expressive activity,” which aren't actually new but were reiterated late last month, just ahead of the new school year. Some lowlights include: limiting protests to 100 participants; stipulating limits (just one!) on "battery-operated amplification device[s] (bullhorn)"; outlining poster and chalk protocols; banning tents; and demanding things wrap up by 10 p.m.
Wielding surplus dodgy PR speak, brand-new U of M President Rebecca Cunningham recently addressed campus protests in an interview with the Minnesota Daily. "What’s rolled out the other day, I just can’t say loudly enough: We did not create those policies," she told student reporter Olivia Hines. "Those are policies that the University of Minnesota has had that shared governance created over the last 10 years."
Let's wrap this up with the wise words of a man who likely knows a thing or two about historically contextualizing attacks on free expression: UMD history professor Scott Laderman, who wrote the following earlier this month in the Star Tribune...
Cunningham will no doubt respond that these are policies she inherited, not created. But these policies are frankly absurd, and the appropriate response from any university president who professes to support academic freedom and free speech would be to seek their rescission or revision, not to double down on them... It is not too late to reverse the university’s anti-speech policies. Cunningham should immediately begin doing so.
Is Centrist Org All of Minneapolis Hurting Democracy?
Laura Jahnig and Revmira Beeby, co-chairs of the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America, believe that to be the case, which they outline in fiery detail today via MinnPost. All of Mpls—a pro-cop, pro-biz centrist PAC that cheerleads Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and his allies—regularly frames TC DSA as a boogeyman, so this counterpunch from Jahnig and Beeby makes sense. In it, they cite the $70 million-plus in misconduct settlements racked up by MPD and the cruelty of expensive encampment evictions, while making populist observations about our myriad unresolved pothole problems.
"Frey and his corporate backers at All of Mpls have no vision for our city beyond the failed status quo," the DSA co-chairs conclude. "They try to make us fear each other with labels like 'extremist' so we won’t come together to demand the housing, schools, and good jobs that our families need." For more on the ideological warring between All of Mpls and its progressive counterpart, Mpls for the Many, revisit this 2023 story about how each group is funded.
National Reminder: Wellstone Was Good
Remembering the late, great Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone is never a bad idea. Hell, we did it a couple years ago! But over the weekend a much larger audience, that of the New York Times, got schooled on the "jovial maverick from Minnesota who campaigned in a clattering green school bus, turned up to campaign events in work shirts and jeans, and preferred staying in people’s homes to hotels."
Author Ross Barkan compares Gov. Tim Walz's "earthy politics" favorably to Wellstone's, suggesting that the current Democratic VP nom is somewhat aligned with the progressive tradition of Wellstone, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and a couple other Minnesota lawmakers, Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey. "It is the Wellstone tradition of left-populism, once so central to the Democratic Party’s brand, that must be recovered," he writes, I think accurately. (The cozy relationship the Harris-Walz ticket has with Wall Street suggests things might not be trending in that direction.) We'll leave you with a timeless Wellstone quote that Barkan unearthed for readers:
I don’t represent the big oil companies, I don’t represent the big pharmaceutical companies, I don’t represent the Enrons of this world. But you know what, they already have great representation in Washington. It’s the rest of the people that need it.
Where the Underrated Restaurants At?
If you ask Eater Twin Cities, they're at the 14 addresses found here. It's a nice list (shoutout to Heather's and Guavas Cuban Cafe, both located by yours truly), and we encourage you to check it out. But the bylines hint at a story that's much more gossipy, nitpicky, and insidery baseball: Is that divisive Strib dining critic Jon Cheng covering the beat for a local competitor? Sure is*, and it more or less drives home what we already suspected: The Upper Midwest's largest media organization didn't hire a full-time replacement for Rick Nelson. Nobody is asking us how to run the Star Tribune Media Co. (our layoffs made that quite clear), but man, if I've got a newsroom of 200+ folks, I'm dedicating someone to the venerable food-critic beat—how else will area rat-chefs find crotchety hearts to warm?
*Update, 9/17: Eater editor Justine Jones reached out to us to clarify that the article mentioned above is actually an updated one from a few years ago. We retain the right to speculate about potential Strib mismanagement.
