Star Tribune
While some stress as Nov. 5 approaches, many Americans remain hopeful about the election
The early voters arrived at their polling place in a clatter of skateboard wheels and excited chatter.
Tucking their boards under their arms, they nodded to election judge Beatrice Owen and headed in to cast their vote.
It was a small moment, but it made her smile. She holds on to the memory, one of her favorite Election Day recollections, on the long days she and other members of the League of Women Voters spend registering voters and the even longer nights at candidate forums for lesser-known races you have to flip your ballot over to see.
“This is your country,” said Owen, president of the League of Women Voters of St. Paul. Voting, she said, is a responsibility and a civic duty.
In an election cycle churning with anxiety, stress and rage, Owen still sees Minnesotans approaching the ballot box with all the hope and enthusiasm of a first-time voter on a skateboard.
“I think, overall, people are kind of excited,” she said. Excited enough to research the constitutional amendments on this year’s ballot, excited enough to read up on the down-ballot judicial candidates, excited enough to walk up to a League of Women Voters booth at an event and learn more. “It’s like they’re saying ‘I’m taking responsibility for my country.’ I think that reflects in a positive, upbeat attitude.”
Hearing about positive, upbeat voters is a pleasant change from news of a stressed-out, doomscrolling electorate lying awake at night wondering what is going to happen to those of us on Donald Trump’s ever-growing enemies list.
The 2024 presidential election is tying us in knots. The American Psychological Association’s annual Stress in America report finds stressed, anxious nation where politics is fraying families and fueling fears about the nation’s very future.
“Mourning Passage” – a list of the names of people killed by police that is repainted on the street annually – would remain, though slightly north of its current location.
While calling the square “a sacred place,” the city would restore vehicular access to the neighborhood’s numerous driveways, garages and alleys, with full access for transit, emergency vehicles and deliveries. But traffic would be calmed with curb extensions, raised trail crossings, a raised intersection and wider sidewalks.
The report acknowledges “emotion” over the city leading the work at the square, with some saying there weren’t enough Black voices involved. Some critics want to see more progress toward protesters’ original 24 “demands for justice,” which include requiring police officers to maintain private liability insurance and firing some leaders of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, before development proceeds, particularly at the People’s Way.
A community-led town hall meeting will be held to discuss an alternative plan on Nov. 6 at Calvary Lutheran Church. Residents say they will urge the city to halt its plan and instead focus on a proposal on health care and housing, saying they want the city to ensure any development honors the legacy of Black lives taken by police violence and the trauma the neighborhood has endured.
Alexander Kado, senior project manager in charge of George Floyd Square, said the city is still taking feedback on the report. There was a public open house dinner dialogue Tuesday night.
Details of the plans include:
Hennepin County has fast-tracked the creation of a youth behavioral health crisis stabilization center in Minneapolis as pressure mounts to help kids with complex mental health needs who are stuck in emergency rooms and detention centers.
County commissioners unanimously signed off Tuesday on a $15 million plan to open the center, as well as an up to $7 million annual agreement for provider Nexus Family Healing to operate the 10- to 15-bed crisis residential program for kids.
“This is long overdue,” County Administrator David Hough said. While the county hopes state lawmakers will address broader youth mental health needs, he added that the county has to act, “because if we don’t, it’s not going to be done for some time.”
He hopes the facility can start operating in three to six months, and said it will serve Hennepin County children and potentially some kids from other counties.
The new center will focus on a gap in services for kids who need short-term residential treatment to stabilize their behaviors while a support plan is created for them. Those kids are often stuck in juvenile detention centers or emergency rooms. Others remain at home with family members who aren’t equipped to meet their intense needs or have to leave the state to get help.
Hennepin County’s crisis stabilization center will include three key services:
Kids will likely stay at the short-term facility for a maximum of 30 to 45 days, said Leah Kaiser, the county’s behavioral health director.
The center will be located on two floors of a building at 1800 Chicago Ave., in Minneapolis, where the county currently offers walk-in mental health and substance use disorder support for adults.
The Pentagon would not go into detail about how American trainers are helping Taiwan build defenses. But making clear to the Chinese that an amphibious assault would be fraught is part of the U.S. military’s deterrence plan.
Army officials also say they hope joint exercises with Pacific partners will show Chinese military officials all the capabilities that the United States has and can bring to bear.
The officials point out that more than a quarter of the service’s 450,000 active-duty troops are already tasked to the Pacific. But they define that region liberally, to encompass troops not only in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines but also in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and California. Taiwan is more than 6,000 miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, a separation the Army refers to as “the tyranny of distance.”
Docked in Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army vessel Maj. Gen. Robert Smalls will be critical to getting all the apparatuses of the Army into the Pacific theater. The 300-foot-long ship, which recently arrived from Norfolk, Virginia, via the Panama Canal for the exercises, can beach itself, discharging 900 tons of vehicles and cargo — and, if necessary, troops — onto islands.
Capt. Ander Thompson, the commander of the 7th Engineer Dive Detachment out of Pearl Harbor, was part of a detachment that spent several weeks this past summer with Filipino military divers clearing debris from a strategic port in the northern Philippine island of Batan, about 120 miles south of Taiwan.
The operation, which also deepened the harbor, will give Army and Navy ships better access to the port should conflict break out. Batan is near the Bashi Channel, a potential transit point for American forces headed to the Taiwan Strait.
