- Blair Powless and his son Key Powless in downtown Duluth on Nov. 16. Dan Kraker | MPR News
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By Dan Kraker
Earlier this year, in a plaza in downtown Duluth, Blair Powless stood alongside dozens of other community members still hurting over the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer and demanded reform from Duluth’s police department.
“Generations of suffering and sacrifice have brought us to this moment,” Powless told the crowd, speaking on behalf of a group called the Duluth Community Safety Initiative. “It is our intention that the relationships between community and public safety come to be based in a sincere mutual respect.”
He also has a personal stake in the matter. Over his lifetime, he said, he’d had several “negative, condescending, humiliating interactions” with police officers, experiences he said that, even if they don’t end in violence, can nonetheless be traumatic.
And secondly, he said, at the same time he was working to reform policing, his son was well on his way to becoming a police officer. “And I'm very concerned that the environment, the culture, that he goes into, is a healthy one.”
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- Dennis Gutierrez cuts football coach Khayleb Willis' hair as student Jorie Van Nest jokes with barber Clinton Lee at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., on Nov. 8. Evan Frost | MPR News
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By Vicki Adame
A group of student athletes at St. Olaf College — many of whom are people of color — decided that instead of traveling outside of Northfield to find barbers who specialize in cutting different hair textures — to bring the barbers to campus
“We decided what if we just had a barbershop of our own? And kind of thought about it from that perspective, and we made it possible,” said Aidan Lloyd, a sophomore football player and member of Oles Against Inequality.
Nino Gutierrez, the barber, said after looking at the proposal and discussing it with the other Trendz Barbershop barbers, decided to bring their services to Northfield. | |
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- Woman serving prison sentence in death of newborn may see early release. The Minnesota Board of Pardons appears ready to commute the sentence of Samantha Heiges, who was convicted in Dakota County in 2008 and has been in the Shakopee prison since 2009.
- Mosque on edge after weekend vandalism. Twin Cities Muslim leaders are calling for a hate crime investigation following vandalism at a northeast Minneapolis mosque. Early Sunday, someone climbed onto a dumpster outside the Dar Al Qalam Cultural Center executive director Abdifatah Abdi. He said the vandal destroyed three cameras and knocked several others offline.
- Walz pledges National Guard help for nursing homes. Gov. Tim Walz said Monday he will deploy teams from the National Guard and pledged $50 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds to help nursing homes in Minnesota deal with short staffing and other needs related to COVID-19.
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