Star Tribune
Jack Jablonski gives Minnesota another gift
Jack Jablonski was going on a date.
It was summer and he was back in Minnesota for a few weeks for another fundraiser for the foundation that bears his name. The 26-year-old opened an app, swiped and found a guy he liked and who liked him.
And then he canceled.
“What if someone sees you?” his family worried.
Paralyzed at a high school hockey game in 2011, he had been a source of inspirational, feel-good news stories. He was the kid who turned a devastating sports injury into a force for good in the world. The Jack Jablonski Foundation has raised millions of dollars for spinal cord injury research. He had a great job with the NHL.
But he wasn’t out yet. What if someone told the world he was gay before he was ready to share the news himself?
Coming out doesn’t change who you are. But it can change how the world treats you.
Which is why coming-out announcements, like Jablonski’s last month, still matter.
It matters to kids like the ones KQ Quinn works with as a school equity coordinator for OutFront Minnesota.
Quinn offers coming-out training for youngsters who are almost ready to tell their parents or friends or teachers that they’re gay, or trans, or ready to use the pronouns that make them feel more like themselves.
They talk about what they’ll say, how they’ll answer questions, where they can go for support if they don’t find support at home. Being kind when someone comes out is more than just Minnesota Nice. It’s a lifeline. A 2022 survey by the Trevor Project found that 45% of LGBTQ youth have seriously considered suicide in the past year.
So if someone comes out to you, say thank you.
“This person just shared some really, really important and vulnerable information,” said Quinn, who uses they/them pronouns. “I always recommend starting with ‘Thank you very much for sharing that with me’ … ‘What do you need in this moment and what do you need moving forward so I can show that I support you and love you?’ “
Jablonski came out on his own terms, in his own words, and so far the response has been overwhelmingly – 99%, he estimates – positive.
“Now I can just be myself,” he said. “I don’t have to worry about living in the shadows … Embrace who you are. This is the only life you’re promised.”
The Jack Jablonski Foundation is hosting its big Beat Paralysis Gala on Oct. 15 in St. Paul, which will raise money for two spinal cord research projects. Over the years, the foundation has raised $3 million, bringing hope to an injury the Jablonski family never saw as hopeless.
“Slowly but surely, progress,” Jablonski tweeted in March. Below the words, a video showed him pouring water out of a bottle and into a glass — an action that would have been unthinkable before his participation in an upper-limb stimulation research trial.
By July, a follow-up video captured the moment he swiped a cracker through some hummus and popped it in his mouth. A tiny, everyday gesture. An enormous triumph.
“Hard work is paying off!” he tweeted. “Couldn’t control my hands like this six months ago. Finally able to eat lunch on my own.”
He will walk again someday, he believes. Someday, he’ll skate again.
Right now, he’s just happy to be living without fear of what might happen if somebody spots him out on a date.
“It’s great to be who you are,” he said. “I just want everyone to be who they are and not have to hide and live a lie.”
Now that he’s out, the most intrusive questions he’s likely to face at the Oct. 15 gala will be whether he’ll be rooting for the Minnesota Wild when they play his employers – the L.A. Kings – in St. Paul that night.
Jablonski, a Minnesota story of courage and optimism for the past decade, just added another chapter.
“It was scary,” he said. “But I’m so happy I’ve done it. I’m happy to be who I am.”
Star Tribune
The U.S. Army prepares for war with China
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.
Star Tribune
Minnesota school board election endorsements caught in culture wars
For a handful of school board candidates across the state, the final weeks of campaigning have included an effort to lose support — or at least distance themselves ― from an organization known for backing conservative candidates and wading into local culture wars.
At least four candidates have stated publicly that they had not connected with or sought support from the Minnesota Parents Alliance before seeing their name appear on the group’s online voters guide. Some candidates said they were not aware of such an endorsement until voters reached out to them with questions about it.
“Without my knowledge or consent, I was added to the Minnesota Parents Alliance recommended candidate list,” Todd Haugen, a candidate for the Bemidji school board, wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page. “I did not seek this endorsement, and I have now requested more than once to be taken off of the list.”
The Minnesota Parents Alliance bills its voters guide as a nonpartisan resource, though the group lists several conservative groups, including the think tank Center of the American Experiment, on its list of resources for candidates.
The organization’s executive director, Cristine Trooien, said the voter guide recommendations are based on an independent evaluation of candidates’ campaigns, public engagement, and input received from parents and community members. Trooien launched the group in 2022 as a response to equity efforts in schools. Its initial goal included recruiting and supporting school board candidates who would champion ‘parents’ rights’ in education.
The group, and several others like it — on both sides of the political spectrum — cropped up during the pandemic, when tensions flared in school board rooms across the country as parents fought over mask mandates, curriculum and policies involving gender and race. Increasingly, school board races are drawing more money than ever — largely a result of outside groups lobbying amid those ongoing culture wars.
In general, endorsements aren’t new to school board races. Political parties, teachers unions and other educational organizations have long declared their support for candidates that align with their missions.
Minnesota Parents Alliance, Trooien said, does not coordinate its voter guide recommendations with candidates or require them to pledge their allegiance to the organization. She sees that as the antidote to what she called a “quid pro quo endorsement process” by teachers unions and interest groups, which offer support in “exchange for prioritizing that organization’s agenda at the board table,” she said.
Star Tribune
Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine is arrested in New York for a possible parole violation
Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine was arrested in New York City on Tuesday for alleged parole violations that were set when he was sentenced several years ago to two years in prison in a racketeering case.
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