Star Tribune
Minneapolis parks workers want you to know why they’re striking
Dan Ament works seven days a week, all summer long, so Minneapolis can play.
He’s a golf course foreman, supervising two of the city’s public golf courses — Hiawatha and Fort Snelling. The terms of his contract require one full-time employee to be on hand at all times at every public golf course. Ament has two golf courses and he’s one of two full-time employees. So.
“We work seven days a week, from the beginning of the season to the end,” said Ament, who maintains two historic courses and 27 holes with the help of 15 part-time seasonal groundskeepers.
When it came time to negotiate a new contract, he and his colleagues asked the Park Board for more full-time help. Management, he said, said no — budgets stretched thin by the pandemic and inflation could not stretch that far.
So on July Fourth, as golfers headed to the greens, Ament headed to the picket line.
“I love what I do. I really don’t want to do anything else,” he said Tuesday, on the sixth day of a planned seven-day strike by Minneapolis park workers. “I love public golf more than anything else, which is why I’m here. I’ve had opportunities to go to other organizations — I’ve turned them all down. … I firmly believe that every single individual should be entitled to great public golf in our state.”
On the picket line in the park, workers in union orange waved “STRIKE” signs in front of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Behind them sat the Spoonbridge and Cherry, that big blue chicken and 11 acres of lovingly landscaped public parkland. A city treasure, maintained by workers who say they’ve been asked to do too much with too little for too long.
In most of Minneapolis, you’re never more than six blocks from a park. Mitchell Clendenen certainly never wanted to be. The parks of his hometown were his playground when he was a child. Now they’re his life’s work.
“I grew up in these parks,” said Clendenen, who said he was named Park Board volunteer of the year when he was in middle school. He applied for a job as soon as he turned 18, and today, he’s a crew leader, responsible for the maintenance of six south Minneapolis parks. “I learned how to ride my bike [in the park]. My brothers taught me how to play hockey at Lake of the Isles. … The neighborhood parks were just a backyard for everyone. Being part of that makes you feel good.”
But a kid can ride a bike in the park only if someone is out there picking broken glass off the paths. The neighborhood park feels as safe and welcoming as your own backyard only because someone is out there collecting the trash, planting the flowers, mowing the grass and frantically cleaning up after people who treat public spaces like an open-air toilet. Minneapolis parks are a jewel because of workers like Mitchell Clendenen, who’s on strike from the job he loves.
Wednesday is the final day of a weeklong strike by City Employees Local 363. About a third of the park workforce walked off the job on Independence Day.
Before they head back to work — now that the Park Board has backed off its threat to lock them out — they hope Minneapolis residents will look around their beautiful parks and see the people who keep them that way.
“We called a weeklong strike just to bring awareness,” said arborist Scott Jaeger, resting on a park bench in the shade of one of the trees he tends. “We all care about our parks. We love the parks. I would say all of us use the parks just as much if not more than the residents of Minneapolis.”
Jaeger and his team cultivate an urban forest. Fifty-eight arborists, 600,000 trees shading the parks and boulevards of a city Jaeger says he can’t afford on an arborist’s salary.
At park board meetings “they keep saying, ‘We’re not trying to make anyone rich.’ Neither am I,” said Jaeger, who had to move out of Minneapolis to stretch his $67,000 income to cover the cost of housing. Starter homes in Minneapolis start around $300,000. “I just want to be able to buy a home, to live in the city. If that’s what park board management sees as being ‘rich’ — to be able to afford a home in Minneapolis — I think that sends a terrible message.”
Some take him up on it and fret when he’s not around.
“It is nice to be missed and be part of the school’s culture,” Arzola said. But mostly, he added, he wants kids to know that police aren’t around just for when the bad stuff happens. He’ll hand out his stickers and bracelets, even a trading card bearing his image. Then, they’ll talk about dogs and family.
School resource officer Al Arzola talks to students in his office at John Adams Middle School in Rochester on Oct. 11. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Two months ago, Rochester played host to a three-day training session for new SROs from across the state — an event organized by the Minnesota School Safety Center. On the final day, the 26 officers learned about surveillance challenges at the other school where Arzola works: Dakota Middle School.
It is a beautiful building with a scenic view. There is a lot of glass, too. Arzola, handling the role of instructor and tour guide, took the group outside and noted how one could look straight through the entrance to the large groups that gather inside. There were no curbs in front, either.
“There is nothing stopping any vehicle whatsoever from going through my front doors,” Arzola told the officers. “Law enforcement wasn’t talked to before this building was made. It was kind of like, ‘Here it is. You’re the SRO. Do what you do.’”
He showed them his office, too, which is separate from the main office and near those of other school support staff members. That makes sense, said Jenny Larrive, SRO coordinator for the Minnesota School Safety Center, given than SROs spend more time connecting with youth than on actual law enforcement.
“The basic rule in Minnesota is you cannot preemptively post law enforcement at a polling place,” he said. “A city can’t say, ‘Wow, Precinct Two, there’s a lot of intensity there, let’s just put a cop at the door.’”
Simon doesn’t go deep into the details on security, though. “I don’t want to give a total road map to the bad guys,” he said.
But testimony at the Capitol last year on behalf of the new law bolstering protections for election and polling place workers indicated there’s room for concern. One election worker was followed to her car by an angry voter; the head of elections in another county was called repeatedly on her home phone during off hours, and an official was lunged at by an aggrieved voter, forcing her to call the local sheriff.
Those who violate the law could now face civil damages and penalties of up to $1,000 for each violation.
The Brennan Center survey indicated more than four in 10 election leaders were concerned about recruiting enough poll workers due to threats of harassment and intimidation. This includes doxing — publishing a person’s personal information online in a threatening manner — and swatting, fake emergency calls that result in an armed response being sent to someone’s home.
“Election officials are working to prepare for everything right now,” said Liz Howard, director of partnership engagement at the Brennan Center. “More than 90% of election officials have made improvements to election security since 2020.”
Star Tribune
Daylight saving time ends next weekend. This is how to prepare for the potential health effects
The good news: You will get a glorious extra hour of sleep. The bad: It’ll be dark as a pocket by late afternoon for the next few months in the U.S.
Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. local time next Sunday, Nov. 3, which means you should set your clock back an hour before you go to bed. Standard time will last until March 9 when we will again ”spring forward” with the return of daylight saving time.
That spring time change can be tougher on your body. Darker mornings and lighter evenings can knock your internal body clock out of whack, making it harder to fall asleep on time for weeks or longer. Studies have even found an uptick in heart attacks and strokes right after the March time change.
”Fall back” should be easier. But it still may take a while to adjust your sleep habits, not to mention the downsides of leaving work in the dark or trying exercise while there’s still enough light. Some people with seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression usually linked to the shorter days and less sunlight of fall and winter, may struggle, too.
Some health groups, including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Sleep Medicine, have said it’s time to do away with time switches and that sticking with standard time aligns better with the sun — and human biology.
Most countries do not observe daylight saving time. For those that do — mostly in Europe and North America — the date that clocks are changed varies.
Two states — Arizona and Hawaii — don’t change and stay on standard time.
Here’s what to know about the twice yearly ritual.
