Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Leave a Future... Leave a Future... Leave... a... Future....
I'm sorry, but I've been muttering that series of words, which happens to be the University of Minnesota's apparent new tagline, over and over in my head like a madman.
A future? OK, whose future? Just the ONE future? All right, but how does one leave what hasn't happened yet? And if college is about preparing one for the future, why (setting aside the how for a moment...) in god's name would I leave it behind? My tuition paid for it, I'm taking it with me!
The mind reels.
At any rate, the U seems pretty excited about its baffling new exercise in branding. Over on Bluesky, university librarian Shane Nackerud unearthed this recent blog post about the tagline rollout, in which we learn that U of M marketers "are moving from the drawing board to the dialogue phase." There's an embed to a 30-minute YouTube presentation (posted below) about "Leave a Future"—the video "isn't just a presentation; it’s an invitation." Oh! We regret the error.
Savvy Racket readers might remember when we mocked a previous list of finalists to replace the U's 20-ish-year-old "Driven to Discover" tagline. "It’s paid for. I say let’s keep it," reasoned our own Keith Harris.
It's unclear if local marking firm Rise and Shine, with whom the university inked a $15 million contract in 2024, is responsible for "Leave a Future." We asked the U of M PR team, but the... future... response... from their spokesperson hasn't... been left... in the present... of this writing?
Update: A U of M spokesman told us, among other things, that "the brand evolution reflects the entirety of the University and the full scope of our mission" so, uh, yeah. Still no word on who came up with "Leave a Future" or how much was spent on it.
Government Using Dehumanizing Third-Party Tech to Harass Immigrants
Natalie, whom Sahan Journal only identifies by her first name, isn't a criminal. She's a 28-year-old woman who emigrated from Ethiopia four years ago; she has a pending asylum application and a day job. But every week she's forced to upload a selfie to a third-party surveillance company called BI Incorporated. Her monitoring also includes biweekly remote visits and monthly at-home visits, wherein she's subjected to invasive questions. “I wish those people would leave me alone,” she tells Sahan's Katelyn Vue.
Natalie is one of 185,000 immigrants being monitored by BI's Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). “It’s extremely demoralizing for [immigrants] when they’re trying to follow the rules and they’re being treated like criminals,” Roseville immigration attorney Carrie Peltier says. Immigrants aren't told why they're in the program, though ICE and/or reps from ISAP have threatened people with detention if they don't comply.
Local lawyers tell Vue that an increasing number of Minnesota immigrants are being added to ISAP, and little is known about how much oversight it receives from the federal government that awarded its creator a two-year contract with more than $1 billion.
“This is a cash cow,” Minneapolis immigration attorney David Wilson says. “That’s why there’s a lot of motivation to push it as some kind of alternative to ICE, because it’s money in the bank.”
Speaking of Creeping Authoritarianism...
Local historian Greg Gaut has a fascinating piece in today's Minnesota Reformer about how, during World War I, Twin Cities business tycoons helped create the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS), which was granted "unlimited power to govern the state for the duration of the war."
Did the financial elites use those powers for good? They did not.
The MCPS was wielded as a cudgel against organizing farmers and trade unionists, Gaut writes, more or less turning the state into a "dictatorship." However, the Nonpartisan League fought back alongside unions and 50,000 farmers, helping forge "the anti-oligarchy ideology of prairie populism." Thankfully, the war ended and with it so did the five-month MCPS assault on anything resembling leftism.
Sensing a lesson here? Gaut has one.
"Hopefully, the inspiring mass mobilization against ICE will lead to something similar: A grassroots movement, at least as broad, which opposes oligarchy and policies coddling billionaires and supports programs benefiting the rest of us."
Eyesore St. Paul CVS Finally Meets Wrecking Crane
As previously reported this week in The Flyover: The ol' Hamline-Midway ghost CVS is finally ascending to chain-store heaven. Today, actually—see the fun demolition video from Jen Brooks below. The neighborhood mood? Reportedly gleeful. Brooks compares the CVS removal to the Lake Street Kmart one in Minneapolis.
“I guess if they weren’t going to put anything useful in it, it’s good that they’re tearing it down,” says Shaun Doniger, who lives nearby and can attest to the crime and unpleasantness the abandoned building attracted. “It’s an ugly building and it’s been the source of a lot of bad news for the last couple of years. It’s fun to get stuff torn down, too.”
Amen, brother.
