Local newswire

It's that time again: Minneapolis has citywide elections (official site) every four years in the election "off-year." This year's election on November 3rd will have two new twists: the most dramatic change is the shift to Ranked Choice Voting or Instant Runoff Voting for city offices (promoted by FairVote MN); also, the Board of Estimates and Taxation may get dissolved by referendum, consolidating more power with the Mayor and City Council. [More: "The auditor would report to the audited"]

The official outreach website for the City's IRV is at VoteMinneapolis.org and they are tabling local events until Election Day. Find your precinct and sample ballot here. Multi-lingual election info is available en Español (Spanish), Hmoob (Hmong) and Soomaaliga (Somali) - call 311 or 612-673-3000 for language help. Public awareness of how it works, especially among disadvantaged communities, looks really bad right now.

What's on the ballot? Mayor, City Council wards, the 2 at-large members of the Board of Estimate and Taxation, and the Park and Recreation Board (3 At-Large & 6 District Commissioners). The vote is expected to take several weeks to completely count everything (one reason the city cites for not calling it "instant" runoff).

Will Ranked Choice Voting mix up Minneapolis' dull & entrenched political establishment? Probably, for one reason in particular: The word from inside the RT Rybak for "Mayor" campaign is that the highly paid consultants running everything are "lollygagging" around waiting for the 2010 governor's race to start, but they don't really care about the city races.

Below the fold, all the candidates and links for mayor... Going deeper: 2009 Minneapolis election rundown: City Council, our favorite shady local deals & more!

Austin, Minnesota (Updated 8pm Sunday)--It was fifty facing off four: fifty activists from southern Minnesota-based Centro Campesino, Anti-Racist Action, Bash Back--Twin Cities and other Minnesota activist organizations across from four members of the National Socialist Movement.  As they do every so often, the neo-nazis rallied on Saturday at the Veterans' Memorial in Austin's quiet downtown, across the street from popular local restaurant El Mariachi.

In this town of 25,000 about two hours south of the Twin Cities, it's hard to find someone who doesn't have experience in the meatpacking industry.  The legacy of the contentious 1985-6 Hormel strike, combined with Bush-era rhetoric targeting undocumented immigrants and the divide-and-conquer strategy of right-wing bosses has led to animosity from some white residents.  They say Latina/o workers are lowering wages and taking their jobs.  In this context, overt white supremacists have begun to gain public acceptance.

After neo-nazi speeches were drowned out by the screams of the anti-racist crowd on Saturday afternoon, police protection from three different agencies arrived for the NSM.  Three people were arrested while others were sprayed with mace.  What led to this scene, and what lessons were learned?

This is Part 1 of a two-part article on Saturday's events.  Check back to TCIMC later for Part 2.  Related: Neo-nazis Repelled from YWCA in Minneapolis | Photos below

Update from Carrie, who was subpoenaed to a federal grand jury in Iowa on October 15th:

The Union Concerned Scientists issued an argument by argument debunking of the "Global Cooling" section of the new book, SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. The chapter's positions are typical of those used bythe global climate denier movement to stall action on climate solutions like clean energy, renewable power and more sustainable business practices.

UCS spokesperson, Aaron Huertas, says the book "features a chapter that grossly mischaracterizes climate science." 

Thanks to everyone who attended the rally and court solidarity for the RNC 8 on October 8! Enough supporters showed up that the court staff agreed to switch to a larger courtroom. Not only that, but even in the larger room, we took up enough space that the customary sad-looking undercover investigators needed to stand the entire time.

Antiwar organizations across the country have called for Oct. 17 to be a national day of local and regional actions protesting the continuation of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

UPDATE: After reading a statement to the grand jury, Feldman returned to the Twin Cities Thursday night with a subpoena to appear again one month from now. More, including the text of the statement, here.

Early Tuesday evening, Twin Cities activist Carrie Feldman was pulled over by Cedar Rapids, Iowa FBI agents and served a subpoena (PDF) to appear in Davenport, Iowa federal court. The subpoena, dated October 6, originally asked her to appear on Wednesday morning; that date has been pushed back to Thursday at 1pm. No other activists are known to have been subpoenaed. Feldman was also informed that her high school attendance records from 2004 were under investigation. (Read her personal statement below.)

Grand juries have been a leading tool of the Green Scare--the demonization and repression of both legal and illegal activities carried out by environmentalist and animal rights/animal liberation activists. The hearings are particularly troublesome for their secrecy; even the witnesses called to testify are often left wondering what the investigation is about. In this case, too, the nature of the investigation is at present completely unknown and left to the speculation of observers. However, a check of the Omaha, Nebraska FBI Field Office website (the office serves all of Iowa) shows that the FBI is prioritizing its investigation into a November, 2004 Animal Liberation Front action at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Related: Grand Juries 101 PDF zine | EWOK!/MidwestGreenScare.org

 

WARNING: Black SUV just pulled over & served out-of-state federal grand jury subpoena on local. Watch out: US Attorneys fishing around town!!

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More details are not known/available at this time but please be on the lookout!

For more info on Grand Juries as an instrument of state repression, fishing expeditions and everything EXCEPT challenging powerful criminals check: http://grandjuryresistance.org/ ,
and http://midnightspecial.net/projects/grandjury/files/GJRP_Brochure.pdf

Los Angeles Indymedia hosts James and Bronwyn of KPFK's "Indymedia On Air" invited TCIMC's Nigel Parry to appear together with Jessica McPherson from Pittsburgh Indymedia and Ted Forsyth from Rochester Indymedia to talk about the G-20 in Pittsburgh. Topics covered included the increasing militarization of these kinds of events, Indymedia's reporting of the protests around the Summit, the police targeting of journalists and the LRAD.