Star Tribune
How a St. Paul program nurtures public service in youth, as seen through the eyes of Abshir Ali
As a member of a St. Paul budget committee, Abshir Ali reviews public improvement projects and a $7 million budget. He sits through long meetings about the city’s parks and sidewalks, often waiting months to see projects come to fruition.
But the 17-year-old Central High School senior loves it. It’s how Ali, who is Somali, got his start in public service — at the age of 14.
“It was kind of daunting,” he said. “These people have, like, 20 years of experience, and then there’s a ninth-grader having the same level of authority in the room.”
Ali joined St. Paul’s 18-member Capital Improvements Budget (CIB) Committee through the city’s Youth On Boards initiative, which allows young people ages 16 to 21 to serve as decisionmakers on city committees and boards.
But joining the CIB committee is just one of many ways Ali has launched his career in public service. And he has his sights set on running one day for the St. Paul City Council.
Ali has interned for Mayor Melvin Carter and City Council Member Rebecca Noecker, and helped review job applications for a new police chief in 2022. Twice a week after school he chairs meetings of the St. Paul Youth Commission, which works with elected officials on issues concerning young people.
“He’s definitely a leader,” said Stephany Lopez, a youth leadership program manager for St. Paul.
As Youth Commission chair, Ali lobbied legislators to pass a bill providing free school lunches for all Minnesota students. The bill passed and was signed into law earlier this year.
“I’d say I played some part in that, because as young people speaking to state House members, it helped a little. … It felt like my work paid off,” he said.
Lopez met Ali this summer when she became the manager of Sprockets, an after-school program for kids and teens in St. Paul. She heard him speak at a news conference at the Frogtown Community Center, highlighting the city’s youth organizations.
“He talked about his experience, how programs like RightTrack [a youth employment training program], Youth on Boards and the St. Paul Youth Commission opened a lot of doors for him,” Lopez said.
Ali, his parents and seven sisters emigrated from Ethiopia to St. Paul nearly 10 years ago. The family joined the large East African community, but Ali noticed a lack of citizen empowerment there.
“I came from Ogaden, which is a subpart of Ethiopia,” Ali said. “Not a lot of political rights, you know? No one in my family really knew what voting was, or the idea of civilian bodies in government.”
Explaining his role in the city to his parents was also a learning curve, he said. It eventually clicked for them when they visited Ali while he was interning in Carter’s office this summer and met the mayor himself.
“Being as involved as I could is a way for me to show that if I can do it, then you can do it,” Ali said.
Moua Yeng Xiong, a project manager for RightTrack, encouraged Ali to join Youth On Boards in 2021.
“Abshir was not like most 15-year-olds,” Yeng Xiong said of his efforts to join the CIB committee. “There were a handful of other boards and commissions he could have selected. But from my understanding, the reason why he was interested in CIB was he wanted to see how funds are allocated throughout the city, and how the CIB is part of that influence. “
Ali was nominated for the CIB committee by Noecker, for whom he interned in 2022.
“It’s so important to have young people involved, because they bring a completely fresh perspective to the work that we do,” Noecker said. “They bring personal experience of how the city operates in their daily lives, which is easy to forget as an adult working inside City Hall.”
Twenty-two young people from Youth On Boards serve on city committees, including the Parks and Recreation Commission, the Human Rights Equal Economic Opportunity Commission, and the Transportation Committee.
Along with school and his public service work, Ali works as a parking attendant in downtown St. Paul. He added that he enjoys photography and filmmaking, and often takes photos around the city.
With his 18th birthday approaching Monday, Ali told Sahan Journal that he’s hoping to go to the University of Minnesota, where he plans to major in political science and eventually pursue law school. But he doesn’t have plans to leave St. Paul any time soon, he said; he’s waiting for the right time to run for City Council.
“I have to live here to run for office,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to run against his mentor, the mayor. “I’m not old enough yet, anyways.”
About the partnership
This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for a free newsletter to receive Sahan’s stories in your inbox.
Two men are dead and one woman was injured in a shooting at a homeless encampment in south Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon, police said. It was the second shooting at a Minneapolis encampment this weekend.
At about 2:20 p.m. Sunday, police responded to a reported shooting in the 4400 block of Snelling Avenue near the railroad tracks at the small encampment between Snelling and Hiawatha avenues. At the scene, officers found two men with fatal gunshot wounds, said Sgt. Garrett Parten Minneapolis Police spokesman. Responders rendered aid, but both men died at the scene.
A woman was found at the scene with life-threatening injuries and was taken to a local hospital where she was being treated Sunday night, he said. Police have yet to say whether the three were living at the encampment.
Officers detained three people, who Parten said have since been released after police found they were not believed to be involved in the shooting. No suspects had been identified as of 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
The shooting is the second at a southside homeless encampment this weekend. One man died and two were critically injured early Saturday at an encampment shooting near E. 21st Street and 15th Avenue S. On Sunday, the man was identified as Deven Leonard Caston, 31, according to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“We don’t know if there’s a connection between this homeless encampment shooting and the one that occurred yesterday,” Parten said on Sunday. “That is a consideration of the investigation. We can’t rule it out.”
Ward 12 Council Member Aurin Chowdhury, who represents the area and lives nearby, was at the site of the shooting Sunday afternoon. She said officials need information about what happened to better understand how to address situations like this long-term.
“This is an absolute tragedy, and this type of violence should never occur within our city,” she said. “It really makes me think about how we need to look at this more systemically and not just take a whack-a-mole approach and expect the problem to go away.
During Sunday’s Twitch stream, Walz and Ocasio-Cortez played Madden while discussing making homebuying more accessible, building affordable housing, eliminating student loan debt and raising the federal minimum wage.
After the match, Walz showed off his Sega skills in a round of “Crazy Taxi,” the Y2K-era racing game where gamers play as a taxi driver picking up passengers and taking them to their destination for cash.
Walz called himself a “first-generation gamer” and recalled playing “Crazy Taxi” when he bought a Sega Dreamcast. He also mentioned the Minnesota Star Tribune’s coverage of how his old game console was sold and ended up with a Plymouth resident, who still has it.
Afterward, Walz and Ocasio-Cortez watched a short clip of Trump denying on Rogan’s podcast that he lost the 2020 presidential election. Democrat Joe Biden won that year.
Ocasio-Cortez during the livestream also showed viewers her farm on the cozy, indie game Stardew Valley. Walz said the game reminded him of Minnesota: “You’ve got mining,” he said. “You’ve got agriculture. You’ve got snow.”
Before Walz headed out to a rally in Nevada, he pleaded with viewers to vote. More than 12,000 viewers tuned into the livestream on Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitch channel. More watched from Harris’ channel.
”Hey guys, they’re now scrambling and trying to call us Nazis and fascists,” said Alina Habba, one of Trump’s attorneys, who draped a sparkly ”MAGA” jacket over the lectern as she spoke. ”And you know what they’re claiming, guys? It’s very scary. They’re claiming we’re going to go after them and try and put them in jail. Well, ain’t that rich?”
Declared Hogan in his characteristic raspy growl: ”I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here.”
Trump has denounced the four criminal indictments brought against him as politically motivated. He has ramped up his denunciations in recent weeks of ”enemies from within,” naming domestic political rivals, and suggested he would use the military to go after them. Harris, in turn, has called Trump a ”fascist.”
The arena was full hours before Trump was scheduled to speak. Outside the arena, the sidewalks were overflowing with Trump supporters in red ”Make America Great Again” hats. There was a heavy security presence. Streets were blocked off and access to Penn Station was restricted.
In the crowd was Philip D’Agostino, a longtime Trump backer from Queens, the borough where Trump grew up. The 64-year-old said it was appropriate for Trump to be speaking at a place bills itself as ”the world’s most famous arena.”
”It just goes to show ya that he has a bigger following of any man that has ever lived,” D’Agostino said.
