"Don't All Stampede At Once" North Minneapolis Column Controversy Reheated And Rehashed

Photo By John Hoff

When I first started this blog, during the time I was also writing for the Minnesota Daily, I wrote a column about North Minneapolis called "Don't all stampede at once" which set off a flurry of letters and heated discussion...

I'd just about forgotten it, but I have a blog reader who was apparently determined to read EVERY LAST POST in an effort to learn everything he can about North Minneapolis. Well, after reading the back-and-forth surrounding "Don't all stampede at once," he sent me his views, as follows:

I had to laugh when I saw the names of the respondents who let you have it with both barrels. Michelle Lewis. Rich Bergeron. Janna Krawczyk. Vanessa Handler. What do they all have in common? They're all from Homewood. They're all college educated. They're all homeowners. They're all white. And they are all desperate to divorce perceptions of THEIR neighborhoods from stereotypes of the greater Northside. Can you blame the Handlers? They paid $293,000 for their place...and on those blocks closest to Wirth Park, that may actually have been a bargain at the time.

At the 27th and Penn Cookout, several of us had a great discussion of the mainstream media's tendency to only identify Minneapolis neighborhoods during non-Northside crime reports. When something happens elsewhere, it's a "shooting in Cedar-Riverside" or a "hit and run in Seward." Over North, it's always "the latest murder/robbery/home explosion on the Northside."

To this I reply: it may be partly due to reporters who are more familiar with certain neighborhoods but tend to mentally lump all of North Minneapolis together.

Or there may be a subtle editorial agenda at play. Always saying "North Minneapolis" may be a way of editorializing, a way of saying, in effect, "(Expletive) North Minneapolis, when are you going to get your act together and stop the shootings, the open air drug markets, the prostitution so the rest of the city doesn't have to read about this horrible (expletive?)"

And it's a fair question. How is it situations which would never be allowed in other Minneapolis neighborhoods are allowed to fester in North Minneapolis? Crack is dealt out of certain houses. Neighbors KNOW which houses. Yet the situation drags on for years, even decades.

We can blame the media for a lot of things...including the Star Tribune creating links that go dead after a certain period of time, so I just REFUSE to use their links...but the media also says good things about our neighborhoods when we do actually come together, struggle, and win. Monday's article about Hawthorne's settlement with CitiMortgage is a good example.