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Climate
A Minnesota winter is coming. So are higher heating costs.
Natural gas prices are up and Minnesotans will likely see higher heating bills this winter. But more energy assistance is available than ever before.
culture & community
Hmong American fashion designer Jocelyn Yang weaves her community’s history and tradition into modern-day clothing.
Yang creates clothing that reflects Hmong history and new commitments to body-positive sizing and design. Her clothing, she writes, “captures a utopia of a perfect world, where women are able to thrive and flourish without the pressures of society.”
Policing and justice
Former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor re-sentenced to 57 months in prison for the 2017 killing of Justine Ruszczyk.
Judge Kathryn Quaintance handed Mohamed Noor the maximum sentence, referencing the recklessness of his conduct and systemic problems in the Minneapolis Police Department. Mohamed Noor, who has already served 29 months, could still be released in the coming months.
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MINNEAPOLIS BALLOT AMENDMENT FAQS
Confused by all the legal squabbles around the Minneapolis public safety amendment? We’ve got you covered! Your vote will count—and here’s a breakdown of what you’re voting on.
Updated Friday, September 17, 3:25 p.m. Minneapolis voters will finally have their chance to vote on the future of their police department this fall, more than a year after George Floyd died under Derek Chauvin’s knee. The upcoming election marks a major step for the movement sparked by Floyd’s murder—and a test for Minneapolis voters…
COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT
‘Why I got the COVID-19 vaccine’: Sahan Journal’s COVID-19 vaccine video series on the importance of getting vaccinated, in Spanish, Somali, Hmong, and English.
The Delta variant is still surging, and more than 30 percent of the state’s population ages 12 and older is still unvaccinated. Health experts are urging those who haven’t gotten shots yet to do so. So are community leaders. For the third installment in Sahan Journal’s COVID-19 vaccine video series, we spoke to three vaccinated…
voices from the pandemic
Free muffins, a fancy cappuccino machine, and a $1,000 signing bonus: A Minnesota school-bus-company CEO talks about the struggle to hire drivers amid the pandemic worker shortage.
Sacad Guled owns and operates a fleet of 50 yellow buses and minivans across the Twin Cities, largely serving charter schools. These days, he says, he’s also driving a school bus route himself. Sacad told Sahan Journal what he’s doing to hire and retain drivers—and why $25 an hour often can’t compete with job offers from Amazon.
LATEST NEWS
Macalester professor watches for action ahead of climate summit
A major international climate summit in Scotland could result in global agreements to preserve the planet. For the U.S., getting Congress to pass bills is key to credibility.
In White House visit, Minnesota’s top teachers bring President Biden a message from second graders in Burnsville
Dr. Jill Biden invited each state’s Teachers of the Year to a White House ceremony delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Minnesota’s Qorsho Hassan and Jess Davis passed along questions from second-grade students—and posed for a selfie with President Joe Biden.
Sheila Nezhad’s run for Minneapolis mayor focuses on transforming public safety and making the city more democratic.
Running against incumbent Jacob Frey, Nezhad received the majority of votes at the city’s DFL convention and has been endorsed by an array of progressive groups. She supports community-based initiatives including a Black-led reparations commission and a $10 million investment in participatory budgeting.
Duluth City Council candidate Azrin Awal hopes to make history by becoming the first Asian American to win office.
Azrin Awal, 25, serves on the Duluth NAACP Board and has advocated around issues of sexual violence and housing access. While Awal collected the most votes in August’s DFL primary, she says her campaign has run into anti-Islamic bigotry on Facebook.
Some critics of the Minneapolis Police Department express doubts about public safety amendment
Some anti–police brutality activists have raised questions about accountability and funding plans under a public safety department led by the Minneapolis City Council.
Still struggling on Lake Street: Immigrant-owned businesses have reopened, but sales are down sharply, crime is up, and insurance is hard to find.
Millions of dollars in public and private funds were allocated to offset the effects of the George Floyd protests and the pandemic, but business owners say they’re still far short of what they need.
MORE STORIES
Sahan Journal is hiring an editor to join its staff.
Sahan Journal is seeking a high-energy, versatile, and experienced senior editor to manage daily news and enterprise coverage and join our editorial director in shaping the future of this distinctive nonprofit news organization.
Mukhtar Ibrahim, founder of Sahan Journal, wins ‘Emerging Leader of the Year’ award in national nonprofit news competition
The Institute for Nonprofit News announced winners Wednesday in the organization’s first awards contest. INN honored Mukhtar Ibrahim for his work creating an innovative, sustainable news operation dedicated to equity and community. Sahan Journal was a finalist in three of the contest’s nine categories.
What ‘kids in cages’ endured: Lawsuit filed by Rochester family alleges negligence and abuse by U.S. officials at infamous facility along the Mexican border.
Kerlin Sanchez Villalobos and her sister left Honduras to join their mother in Minnesota. At the U.S. border, they allege, there was a shortage of food, water was never offered and detained children were physically abused.
Candidates Phillipe Cunningham and LaTrisha Vetaw agree that public safety policy is the main issue in Minneapolis’ Ward 4. Next question: How to fix it?
The City Council race in the city’s northernmost neighborhoods has become a referendum on the ballot amendment to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a Department of Public Safety.
Minnesotans of color trust news media, according to a new survey. But they say coverage includes ‘too few stories’ about people like them.
Black, Latino, and Asian populations registered higher levels of trust in media than white Minnesotans. But the new Diverse Communities Survey from APM Research Lab found dissatisfaction with negative community coverage. White Republicans reported the lowest trust in the news.
Minneapolis City Council votes for a compromise on redeveloping the Roof Depot site. Neighborhood groups reject the offer.
Minneapolis officials voted to move forward with plans to build a new public works facility in the polluted, diverse East Phillips neighborhood. Community organizers say the fight isn’t over.
Peggy Flanagan hails $1.3 million investment to teach K–12 students the ‘full true history’ of Minnesota’s Indigenous people.
Ahead of Indigenous Peoples Day, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor explains why she pushed to fund education programs that will train Native teachers, hire curricular experts, and help schools connect with Native students and families.
Somali American youth in St. Cloud sign up for new class in school: Reading and writing Somali.
The St. Cloud school district is offering a Somali language course for native Somali speakers. Interest has been so high that the program has expanded. Officials believe it’s the first high school course of its kind in MN — and possibly in the nation.
Hmong farmland or freeway interchange: New road expansion in Dakota County threatens small family farms.
The Hmong American Farmers Association, a pioneer in diverse agriculture, will soon own 155 acres in Dakota County. A plan to modernize access to Highway 52, the main artery between Rochester and the Twin Cities, could encroach on small family farm plots.
A luxury rental tax? A citizens assembly to solve public safety? In Minneapolis mayor’s race, AJ Awed adds unconventional solutions to progressive agenda.
The 30-year-old lawyer stands out among progressive candidates for his positions on public safety and the strong-mayor proposal. He’s also raised twice as much money as other challengers, largely from immigrant communities.
Changing a flight in Afghanistan? Wiring money to Ethiopia? Facebook crash severs connections between Minnesotans and family abroad.
Immigrants in Minnesota count on WhatsApp and other Facebook platforms to conduct essential family business across borders. The massive tech outage Monday left people isolated and hard to reach.
Some 50,000 Minnesota households have fallen behind on rent. With the COVID eviction moratorium ending soon, housing nonprofits want to help renters apply for help catching up.
Two-thirds of Minnesota households that owe back rent are people of color. A coalition of housing organizations can help Minnesota renters fill out applications, translate forms, communicate with landlords, assemble paperwork, and more. Undocumented Minnesotans can apply, too.
Hmong Minnesotans see parallels in Afghan refugee crisis.
The U.S. military’s evacuation from Afghanistan has brought back painful memories for members of Minnesota’s Hmong community. For some, the desperate plight of Afghan refugees mirrors their own dangerous escape from Laos nearly 40 years ago.
Why Sahan Journal published a story about a 6-year-old’s drowning and the people involved in his accidental death.
Local media routinely report on accidental deaths and lawsuits. The drowning death of Isaac Childress III–and new details about the involvement of Don and Sondra Samuels, political and nonprofit leaders from north Minneapolis–represents an even more compelling public interest.
Racial disparities persist in drowning deaths.
People of color are less likely to swim and more likely to drown in Minnesota. Experts say more education and an increase in lifeguards of color could help.
MORE STORIES
Sondra Samuels, Minneapolis nonprofit leader, reaches wrongful death settlement in the fatal drowning of a 6-year-old neighbor.
Newly obtained records show Don and Sondra Samuels took Isaac Childress III on a bike ride to Boom Island. There, the boy drowned in the Mississippi River. Isaac was a “NAZ scholar” with the Northside Achievement Zone, where Sondra Samuels is the CEO. She and her husband Don Samuels, a former City Council member, recently sued Minneapolis over policing and the public safety ballot amendment.
No driver’s license? No housing. Minnesota immigrants, advocates say missing government-issued IDs keep people out of stable homes.
A woman called D.N. came to the U.S. from Liberia as a 1-year-old refugee. Her father became a naturalized citizen, but she never did. Now a mother of two children herself, and often homeless, she needs a birth certificate to find long-term housing. Like many immigrants, she says getting those documents has proved impossible.
Hennepin County Sheriff Dave Hutchinson said he’d change the way his office works with immigration enforcement. Critics say the jail still referred 1,000 inmates to ICE.
Hutchinson says the sheriff’s office has met its goals and that government grants and bureaucracy forced the sharing of information on some inmates.
What makes a useful voter guide? We started by asking immigrant groups in Minneapolis what they wanted to know about the 2021 city election
Sahan Journal collaborated with Pollen Midwest and Pillsbury United Communities to create a 2021 Minneapolis voter guide. Before we surveyed candidates for mayor and City Council, though, we surveyed immigrant communities. Voter advocates from Latino, Hmong, and Somali backgrounds talked about barriers to voting and how to win their support.
University of Minnesota appoints its first immigrant, person of color as dean at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs
An immigrant from Jamaica and former administrator at Georgia Tech, Dr. Nisha Botchwey brings her expertise in health, environment, youth engagement, and equity to the Humphrey School dean’s office. “The education that the Humphrey School provides allows for the elevation of a little Black girl like me,” Botchwey says.
Less than 30 percent of Minnesota’s people of color believe schools offer equal opportunities to all students, survey says.
White Minnesotans think very differently from people of color about the opportunities that the state’s K-12 public schools provide to students, according to a survey from the APM Research Lab.
Victor Martinez, a candidate for the Ward 5 City Council seat in Minneapolis, door-knocks almost every day, delivering his pro-police, pro-life message
“I’d rather lose being real than win being fake,” said Martinez, who is a pastor at the Northside’s New Generation Church.
Research team goes door-to-door talking to Latino business owners, hoping to identify barriers to energy efficiency and rebates
Utilities in Minnesota offer significant rebates on energy efficient equipment that can lower carbon footprints and save money. But, entrepreneurs like Fatima Landaverde, who owns the Rincon Chalateco restaurant in St. Paul, may face language barriers or be too busy to take advantage.
A Minnesota researcher thinks he’s figured out why Black populations die more often from colon cancer: screening and insurance.
Dr. Chyke Doubeni found that Black men die of colon cancer at higher rates than white men. The disparities are larger in East African communities. A south Minneapolis health clinic hired a Somali “medical navigator” to help guide patients toward testing with culturally sensitive care. The result: a giant increase in colon cancer screening—and saved lives.
