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Becca Good Speaks
On Thursday morning the family of Renee Good, the Minneapolis woman killed in January by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, filed two federal civil lawsuits, stating that “the time is absolutely now for accountability."
One suit names the U.S. government, and it's "essentially a wrongful death case," NPR reports. The other suit names Ross and the architects of Operation Metro Surge, including White House henchman Stephen Miller and dismissed ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and it's "rarer, alleging that federal officials engaged in a conspiracy to interfere with the civil rights of people in Minnesota," according to NPR. "We intend to vigorously defend these baseless civil lawsuits," White House mouthpiece Lauren Bis says.
“She was the love of my life,” Becca Good said at Thursday's press conference in Minneapolis, standing alongside Renee's brother, Brent Ganger. “I’m here today because last January the whole world had to watch as our entire universe was destroyed—as the sunshine who was my amazing Renee was robbed from us, from her children, and from her community.”
We encourage you to watch Becca Good's powerful testimony in its entirety.
St. Paul Updates: What's Going on Over There?
A lot! Some, like the harried St. Paul City Council, might argue too much.
First up: On Thursday the city released its investigation into Police Chief Axel Henry's allegations that Mayor Kaohly Her sexually harassed him and other cops. The report found that Her's actions—thigh grabbing, “Wiener Wednesday” memeing, boob commenting, MILF self-referencing, sex-sound moaning, and hunk photoshopping—were “offensive” and “inappropriate" (we'd throw in "deeply, deeply weird") but fell short of sexual harassment. You can read the full (well, heavily redacted) 73-page report here.
Henry is suing Her over his allegations, and on Wednesday the City Council voted to lawyer up. The mayor’s "first extended public comments" since the scandal broke in July came Monday via a Hmong-language YouTube show hosted by ex-St. Paul City Council Member Dai Thao; the PiPress employed an interpreter to translate the video, in which Her says she was raised to have an open heart, that Henry's accusations hurt, and that people should judge her by her work.
Next up: Over the summer Racket's intern, Clare O’Connor, wrote an in-depth report on the final days inside St. Paul’s Pig’s Eye encampment, which the city cleared in late August. A through line from her dozen-plus interviews: The closure, while cruel and expensive, would also do nothing to alleviate homelessness.
“I don’t think that plan’s gonna work,” former Pig's Eye resident Kia Linebaugh told O’Connor. “People are going to end up somewhere else.”
Well, that's exactly what happened, per this story published Wednesday by Sahan Journal's Katrina Pross. A woodsy encampment near the intersection of Randolph Avenue and Shepard Road has swelled to as many as 200 people in the wake of the Pig's Eye closure, and the city has no known plan as winter fast approaches.
“Moving them again is not the solution because then we’re trapped in a worse system of trying to find people, of people being alone, of people navigating a new reality with absolutely no capacity in the care networks to support them,” Kat Hunter of Rising Waters Mutual Aid tells Sahan.
View Your School's (or Any School's) Test Scores
One of the benefits of being the Upper Midwest's largest newsroom is having the resources to produce incredibly useful data reporting, and the Star Tribune is on a roll this week—see Wednesday's U of M salary analysis (gift link) and, for the purposes of this blurb, Thursday's student test score database (gift link).
Figures from the freshly released Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) reveal that average math scores (45% proficiency) have stagnated since 2020, Mara Klecker and MaryJo Webster report, while average reading scores have dipped (49% proficiency). The Minnesota Department of Education's rollout of these numbers came with an announcement: Education officials are assembling, possibly MacGruber-like, a 28-member task force to reimagine what these sorts of tests even look like.
But weren't we praising the Strib? Can't any asshole with a press release belch out copy like you see above? In order: We were, yes, just hold on a sec; and, well, yeah, true, but also ouch. Klecker and Webster created a searchable database that allows readers to punch in any school to view its reading and math proficiency scores. Nice!
Q Minnesota Debuts
Q Minnesota, a brand-new publication dedicated to telling LQBTQ+ stories, debuted this week.
Longtime Lavender Magazine leader Andy Lien runs the show as editor-in-chief, and her first batch of stories for Q runs a compelling gamut: a history of Twin Cities queer media, a celebration of the local burlesque scene, and a preview of the state's most comprehensive LGBTQIA2S+ survey, to name a few. Headlined "State of the Rainbow," the cover story features the leaders of seven LGBTQ+ groups talking about what has and hasn't changed since the 2024 election; Q notes that these orgs took issue with Lavender's strange victory-lap farewell, and uses the piece to differentiate itself from its spiritual forbearer.
Click here to sign up for Q newsletters and find its free monthly print edition.
