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Minneapolis police respond to fights at DFL endorsement convention

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DFL leaders are condemning those responsible for a melee that erupted during a convention for Minneapolis City Council candidates Saturday, causing the event to end unceremoniously in a frantic scene and with no candidate endorsement.

Minneapolis police spokesman Brian Feintech said officers responded to the convention at Ella Baker Global Studies & Humanities Magnet School to find a large group of people dispersing. Police made no arrests Saturday, but the officers heard several reports of injuries and fights. At least one person was taken to HCMC by paramedics for non-life-threatening injuries, and another was treated at the scene, Feintech said.

Video posted to Twitter by John Edwards, who blogs about Minneapolis politics as Wedge Live, shows the chaos break out at the Ward 10 endorsing convention after supporters of Minneapolis Council Member Aisha Chughtai took the stage. Supporters for Chughtai’s challenger, Nasri Warsame, shouted and jeered in the gymnasium, and a man waving a Warsame sign jumped on the stage. More people in Warsame shirts followed and continued to shout, slam on tables and wave signs, disrupting the convention proceedings.

“This is embarrassing!” convention chair Sam Doten shouted, finally adjourning after pleading futilely for order. “We are shutting this down!” he said. “This is no longer safe!”

In a Facebook post afterward, Warsame said his campaign manager “has been assaulted by one of the other campaign staff member, and he’s now being transported to hospital by an ambulance.”

“The convention was shut down due to turmoil, and all the people were instructed to exit the building,” Warsame wrote. “No endorsement at this point, but more questions to ask regarding the process.”

Chughtai also released a statement, casting blame on Warsame’s campaign for leading his delegates onto the stage and “assaulting me and my supporters as I was about to begin my convention speech.” Chughtai said more than a dozen of her supporters were “physically assaulted,” along with a photographer documenting the convention, and more were bullied and harassed as “an attempt to scare us.”

“Eventually, our supporters locked themselves in our hospitality room, so they would be safe and away from a rapidly escalating and dangerous situation,” she said. “The Warsame campaign followed us off the floor and was only held back by a group of brave volunteers who blocked a hallway while our supporters were able to escape from the locked hospitality room out a back door of the building to safety.”

Minneapolis DFL Chair Briana Rose Lee said on Twitter that “several DFL volunteers were assaulted” at the convention, including members of the state executive committee.

“The behavior displayed today was despicable and unacceptable,” Lee wrote. “I don’t know the next steps yet. But there will be repercussions.”

The video does not show clearly what preceded the fight. “I don’t know what triggered it,” Edwards said in an interview. “People just kind of spontaneously came forward to the stage.”

Edwards said there had been votes on rules and disagreements on procedure, and that issues with translating appeared to be causing some confusion earlier in the day. Chughtai was about to give the first speech of the convention, and Warsame would have been next, followed by a question-and-answer segment and then votes.

Saturday evening, Minnesota DFL Chair Ken Martin apologized to the attendees. “While we are still gathering all of the details of what transpired today, I am extremely disheartened by reports that a fight broke out,” Martin said. “Violence has no place in our politics, and it goes against our party’s most cherished values of democracy, inclusivity, and empathy. I sincerely hope that the perpetrators will be held accountable by law enforcement, and I will work to ensure they are held accountable within our party as well.”

He said the state DFL party is working with Minneapolis DFL to “determine what the next steps in the endorsing process will be given today’s events.”



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R. Smith Schuneman, University of Minnesota photojournalism professor, dies at 88

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As a photojournalism professor, R. Smith Schuneman mixed high expectations with a warm manner to launch the careers of a wide spectrum of photographers.

His students at the University of Minnesota, many of whom regarded Schuneman as a pivotal influence in their lives, went on to shoot for National Geographic, Look, Life and numerous other magazines and newspapers, as well as for corporate clients, photography studios and a wide array of film and video productions.

Then Schuneman, who went by his nickname “Smitty” and never by his given name of Raymond, embarked on a second career with the creation of Media Loft , an events and communications agency. He eventually sold the company to his employees before retiring with his wife, Pat, to a lakeside home in Okoboji, Iowa.

“Smitty could be utterly ruthless, uncompromising or unyielding in his goal of making photojournalists out of us,” wrote Richard Olsenius, a former student of Schuneman’s, in a memorial book prepared by friends. “But it was underlied with a deep-rooted concern for what is right and moral. He demanded honesty from our work.”

He died Nov. 24 at age 88 of heart problems.

Schuneman was born in 1936 in Spirit Lake, Iowa. His parents Raymond “Art” and Olive “Bunch” Schuneman ran the local newspaper in Milford, Iowa, and it was there that Schuneman began publishing photos while still in school.

He also ran a side business covering weddings, events and “whatever pictures were needed around the small town,” his wife said.

She remembers seeing Schuneman for the first time when her band director arranged for her to take drum lessons from him. She was 15 and he was 16. She later worked for him at his photo service, processing the film.



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MN special ed and long-term care costs are rising fast. Why?

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Lawmakers this session will talk to parents, teachers and others about whether they are identifying too many students as needing special education services and if some kids could use less-intensive support, she said. There’s a “mismatch” where some kids get more services than they need, said GOP Rep. Ron Kresha, who will be Youakim’s co-chair in the evenly divided House.

“There’s always going to be this tendency to [say], ‘Hey, let’s get as much services to this kid as we can because we want them to succeed.’ I think that’s a noble quest, but what are we taking away from other students who may have needs that we may not be addressing?” Kresha said, noting that some services may have to be rolled back in light of the potential deficit.

Nationally, special education officials are wary of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, said Phyllis Wolfram, executive director of the national Council of Administrators of Special Education. Minnesota isn’t alone in its rising costs and demand for services, she said, adding that providers are grappling with challenging behaviors and mental health needs, including for younger children.

“We’re still seeing needs and challenges for students that are coming from a post-COVID era, and they don’t just diminish in one or two years,” Wolfram said.

Meanwhile, there is a shortage of special education staff and schools must rely on more expensive contract workers, said Niceta Thomas, president of Minnesota Administrators for Special Education. She said more families are moving to Minnesota with children who require special education and students’ needs are more severe.

“No matter what ability they come from, all children deserve a free and appropriate education,” Thomas said. “We need to make sure we’re meeting that.”



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New housing developers build affordable apartments they would want to live in

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Willy Boulay and Mike Hudson have a grand vision for building affordable apartments for people with below-median incomes that are as nice as market-rate properties.

Their first buildings, one in Minneapolis that opened in May and another about to open in St. Paul, live up to their plans. Both have fitness centers, balconies on most units, roof decks, solar arrays, EV chargers, community rooms, even indoor playgrounds they tested themselves.

“The slide will support guys over 30,” Boulay said as he and Hudson took me through Canvas, their 161-unit project in northeast Minneapolis. It gets its name from all the original paintings purchased from neighborhood artists to fill halls and other common areas.

The seven-story building cost $71 million and is open to renters of all ages who make 60% of average market income, a level sometimes known as workforce housing. Hennepin County and the city of Minneapolis provided subsidies in the form of tax-exempt bonds and tax credits that will discount rents for 40 years. It’s a typical form of financing for affordable housing to help cover the difference between it and market-rate homes.

As of last week, Canvas had just two vacancies. Well, plus one big one on the ground floor.

To get the project approved, their firm, Broadway Street Development, had to comply with the desires of City Council members for buildings in a so-called “production” district, designated to create employment-focused developments.

As a result, the ground floor was built with 18-foot ceilings and about half of it, around 23,000 square feet, was set aside for commercial use. Perhaps a microbrewery with a taproom will lease it, or a commercial production studio, or a small industrial business that isn’t too disruptive to the hundreds of residents above.

Boulay and Hudson are confident they will get the space filled. They noted, however, that projects coming after them haven’t required as much space set aside. Which leads me to remind readers that, when my now-retired colleague Neal St. Anthony wrote about Canvas as construction was getting underway two years ago, he focused on the years of work Boulay, Hudson and partner Sterling Black of LS Black Constructors had already put in to get it financed.



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