When Donald Trump began his second term as U.S. president, the video team at Sahan Journal found itself covering more breaking news than ever. Much of it was tied to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, and the stories had us racing to immigrant-owned businesses as well as homes throughout the Twin Cities.
But we also found time for stories that were more fun. There were museum exhibits to cover, and — even in tense and uncertain times — there always will be the Minnesota State Fair. And that, of course, means testing the latest State Fair food offerings.
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Here is a quick look at the year through the eyes of Sahan Journal’s videographers:
1. Federal raid on Lake Street taqueria leads to chaotic scene
Breaking news is the lifeblood of local television, and Dymanh, a former WCCO videographer, is always ready to jump on a story. As federal immigration enforcement ramped up this year, this led him to race to the scene of several major enforcement actions.
One of the first operations occurred in June, when reports came in of federal agents carrying out a sting near Lake Street and Bloomington Avenue in south Minneapolis. Both Dymanh and Sahan photojournalist Aaron Nesheim raced to the scene where they found themselves caught in a seesaw between federal agents, Minneapolis police and protesters.
2. Rare Cambodian bronzes come to Minneapolis Institute of Art
While Dymanh is a skilled interviewer and has a large social media following for his own Khmer-language social media pages, he rarely steps in front of the camera for Sahan Journal. But when he covered the opening of “Cambodian Royal Bronzes: Cambodian Art of the Divine” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in October, news editor Trisha Collopy nudged him to put a personal stamp on the story. As a result, viewers learned more about Dymanh’s background and were invited into a show that has deep significance for Minnesota’s Cambodian community.
3. Protesters clash with ICE agents, St. Paul police in standoff at East Side home
A week after an ICE raid at St. Paul manufacturer Bro-Tex led to clashes with protesters and a follow-up vigil, another ICE operation turned into an hourslong standoff at a home in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood. Dymanh was able to record interactions between a young woman talking by phone with a man trapped in the house and an ICE agent. After the man left the house, and ICE agents began their retreat, Dymanh was one of several journalists sprayed with a chemical irritant by St. Paul Police officers. It took 10 to 15 minutes for him to clear his eyes before he jumped back into recording the scene — a journalist unwilling to leave the story.
4. Ube butter banana lumpia is a standout new food at the fair
In a year full of immigrant news and protests, shooting a video celebrating the Great Minnesota Get-Together’s new cultural foods felt like a needed counterbalance.
Each year, a team of Sahan journalists eats their way through new State Fair foods introduced by immigrant and ethnic vendors. As we try out each dish, we also give them a brief review and share our thoughts on the dish.
Before this year’s reviews, Alberto spoke with Dymanh and reporters Mohamed Ibrahim and Katelyn Vue, urging them to be as detailed and honest as possible in their reviews.
This led to some audience members finding our reviews to be a bit too brutally honest. One viewer claimed we didn’t like any dish we tried, which wasn’t true! Alberto personally adored the fawaffle at Baba’s this year, a light and surprisingly sweet meal.
Regardless of how upfront Sahan staff was with their reviews, they added some charm to what could’ve been a bland montage of dishes. Amid stressful news weeks, audiences (and staff) needed a bit of levity to balance the news.
5. How hard is the U.S. citizenship test?
As the Trump administration makes the path to citizenship harder, Americans need to understand the difficulties noncitizens face. On top of an already lengthy application process, the current administration added 28 new questions to the 100-question U.S. citizenship exam. Twenty out of the 128 questions are randomly selected for a person’s exam. Of those 20 selected, prospective citizens must answer 12 correctly.
In years past, examinees had to answer six out of 10 randomly selected questions correctly.
When deciding how to promote our reporting on this, someone on staff joked about making passersby answer one of the new questions to gauge how difficult they actually were.
We wanted to get as many people as possible for this video to show that anyone could struggle (or succeed) in answering these questions. While some may have been painfully obvious in retrospect, putting people on the spot with civics questions shows that these aren’t common knowledge for many Americans.
While it may be amusing to see people wriggle trying to find the right answers, this snappy video shows just one arduous process in becoming a U.S. citizen.
