Kare11
Mercado wants images removed from Jensen ad
Mercado Central’s board say they didn’t authorize Republican candidate to film campaign ad inside their marketplace.
MINNEAPOLIS — Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen has been asked to remove images of an iconic Latino mall from one of his campaign ads.
The Mercado Central on East Lake Street is run by a cooperative that is politically neutral. The Mercado president and other members of the governing board say nobody asked for permission to film a campaign ad there.
“Our customers may see this ad and believe that we are taking sides in an election, which is against our rules,” Isis Gastelum, who runs a clothing store in the Mercado and serves as board president, told KARE.
“We, as a cooperative Mercado Central, are nonpartisan. We’re not partisan, we’re neutral.”
In the ad, Jensen and a young Latina woman named Alondra are seen walking on the sidewalk outside the Mercado Central and then walking through the interior spaces of the mall. The Mercado Central’s board, working through business attorney Miluska Novota, asked the Jensen campaign to delete the scenes that customers would recognize as the Mercado.
“The Mercado Central has 39 different businesses, with 39 different opinions. We can’t take sides. We have to remain neutral,” Lisette Moraga, a Mercado Central employee, told KARE.
Moraga said anyone wishing to film a commercial inside the market would need to get advance permission, the same way someone would need permission to film an ad or news report inside places like the Mall of America in Bloomington or the Galleria in Edina.
“We are open to the public, but we’re privately owned,” Enrique Garcia Salazar, the owner of La Loma Tamales, told KARE.
Garcia Salazar and his wife Noelia opened their shop in 1999, the same year Mercado Central opened on 1515 Lake Street East. He said that he doesn’t recognize the young woman in the ad and wasn’t aware anyone filmed anything in the mall until the ad popped up on social media.
“Everybody’s welcome, but if they want to film something they’ve got to ask for permission.”
The Jensen campaign didn’t respond Friday to requests for comments on the controversy.
The campaign is running both Spanish and English versions of the ad, which features a young woman named Alondra saying she’s a lifelong Democrat from south Minneapolis who is voting for the Republican Jensen.
She tells viewers that incumbent Democrat Gov. Time Walz abandoned the Lake Street corridor during the riots of 2020, and “after this, Tim Walz didn’t even bother to show up.” The riots followed the murder George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by then-Officer Derek Chauvin.
Emilia Gonzalez Avalos, who heads Unidos Minnesota, disagrees with the premise of the ad, saying there was immediate outreach by the governor’s staff while the rioting was taking place.
“The lieutenant governor was here the day after the uprising. There was no press, she didn’t make a political scene of it,” Gonzalez Avalos recalled.
Avalos’s organization is an upstairs tenant at the Mercado Central, but she made it clear she wasn’t speaking on behalf of the cooperative.
“Lieutenant Governor Flanagan came here the next morning when many of us were sleep deprived, trying to make sense on how to clean up and what was next for the corridor. She was right here in our parking lot.”
Walz toured the destruction on Lake Street just days after the Minnesota National Guard brought the rioting under control. Since then, he has visited the corridor multiple times and hosted meetings at the Mercado Central with business owners and other stakeholders.
Garcia Salazar of La Loma Tamales said that his business and several others inside the Mercado have received grants from the state to help with the recovery, which was also happening in the midst of the COVID pandemic.
Isis Gastelum said that Walz’s appearances at the Mercado both before and after the riots were done in his official role of governor, showing support for the merchants, celebrating Mexican Independence Day and the 20th anniversary of the Mercado.
Governor Walz’s responses to the riots will continue to be a major theme for Jensen, who has repeatedly asserted Minneapolis burned because “Walz froze” and delayed deploying the National Guard, acting on the advice of his “leftist” constituency.
Walz has pointed out that the Guard members are citizens in private jobs, that need time to assemble with their units and prepare for a mission. Mayor Jacob Frey has stated he asked Gov. Walz to bring in the National Guard May 27, a day before the city felt compelled to surrender the 3rd Police Precinct.
Officers from the Minnesota State Patrol, DNR and other state agencies were already on the ground across the Twin Cities by then working in support of local police, but they were outnumbered.
The U.S. Army says 19-year-old William E. Colby was reported missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950. His remains were identified just this year using DNA technology.
MINNEAPOLIS — Nearly 74 years to the day since he was officially deemed Missing in Action during the Korean war, a Minneapolis soldier finally reached his final resting place.
The burial at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, which came with full military honors, brought closure to the family of Army Corporal William Colby, but it couldn’t bring back the family – and memories – that have long since passed.
“I was little,” said Jinny Bouvette, Corporal Colby’s cousin, who is also among the few surviving family members who ever met him. “We were about nine years difference when he joined the service, I was ten.”
For years, Bouvette says her memories of her cousin Billy, were always clouded by sadness by what happened just months after he deployed to fight in the Korean War.
Colby was just 19 years old and serving in the Korean War when he was declared missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950, after his unit was attacked by the Chinese People’s Army as they attempted to withdraw from the Chosin Reservoir.
“They figure that’s where Billy was,” Bouvette said, pointing to a green circle on a printed map of the Chosin Reservoir. “That’s where he was the last time that he was reported (alive).”
The young soldier could not be recovered following the battle, and the U.S. Army issued a presumptive finding of death on Dec. 31, 1953.
“We never thought of him as being killed in action, we always thought of him as just missing,” Bouvette said. “My aunt, she always thought he was alive somewhere.”
His fate was finally confirmed for family members by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency on May 2, 2024, after Colby’s remains were identified from 55 boxes of remains returned to the U.S. by the North Korean government in 2018.
The process required a DNA analysis of his remains and a sample from a living relative before it could be matched and verified.
Bouvette says representatives initially tried to reach her, but it wasn’t until learning that her aunt and cousin had submitted those DNA samples that she realized what was happening.
“At first I thought they were just people trying to scam old people, and I wouldn’t answer them,” she said, with a laugh. “But eventually, that’s how I found out that he was really, really gone.”
Just a few months later, the Army’s Past Conflict Repatriations Branch helped return his remains, along with a jacket adorned with a full accounting of his honors.
“He didn’t get them when he was alive,” Bouvette said. “So I told them to put them in the casket with him, so he’s got them now.”
She did decide to hold on to one of his awards for herself, Colby’s Purple Heart.
“I just can’t tell you what it feels like,” she said, looking at the military medal in her hand. “It fills your heart right up. It just fills your heart right up.”
Yet it can’t quite compare to seeing his procession finally reach its end.
“My heart is so full… it is overflowing,” she said. “I just can’t… I have no words. I’m just glad that he’s here, and to know he’s home now. He’s home.”
JayCee Cooper filed a lawsuit against USA Powerlifting after the organization banned her from participating in women’s competitions.
SAINT PAUL, Minn. — The conversation inside the Minnesota State Capitol on Tuesday was focused on sports, but a different type of competition was taking place inside the court chambers. Two opposing sides are vying for the Minnesota Supreme Court to rule in their favor in the case of Cooper v. USA Powerlifting.
Transgender woman and athlete JayCee Cooper filed discrimination charges with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2019 after USA Powerlifting banned her from participating in women’s competitions. In 2021, Cooper filed a lawsuit against USA Powerlifting.
The lawsuit claims USA Powerlifting’s ban on transgender women is “an outlier among international, national and local sports organizations,” pointing to the International Olympic Committee’s framework regarding inclusion of athletes and their gender identities.
The case made its way through the state’s courts over several years before landing in the hands of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Oral arguments took place Tuesday morning, in which Cooper was represented by Gender Justice attorney Christy Hall and USA Powerlifting was represented by attorney Ansis Viksnins.
Gender Justice is a legal nonprofit organization based in St. Paul. In a press conference Tuesday morning, the organization’s legal director Jess Braverman said USA Powerlifting is violating Cooper’s rights under the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
“Every Minnesotan deserves the freedom to pursue their dreams without fear of exclusion or discrimination,” Braverman said. “Ms. Cooper was denied that right, solely because she is transgender.”
Viksnins, the attorney representing USA Powerlifting, said Cooper was excluded from women’s competitions due to her biological sex, not gender identity. “It’s not discrimination based on gender identity. That’s the problem for Ms. Cooper’s case: that the differentiation here was because of her biological sex, not for gender identity.”
In 2021, USA Powerlifting launched its MX category, providing a separate division for athletes of all gender identities. “It doesn’t solve the problem of transgender women being barred from women’s competitions, which is the issue here,” Braverman said.
There is no clear timeline as to when the Supreme Court will makes its decision on the case.
The portion of the Kellogg-Third Street Bridge over I-94 is coming down.
ST PAUL, Minn. — The portion of the Kellogg-Third Street Bridge over I-94 is coming down this weekend.
Demolition started in August but they’ve been doing one section at a time. MnDOT says to expect jackhammering around the clock.
City engineers first noticed cracks in its supports in 2014 and limited its capacity. But it’s taken 10 years for the city to come up with the $91 million it will take to build a new one, and it won’t be finished until 2027.
I-94 will be closed this weekend between 35E and Highway 61 in St. Paul.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings