The Gay Animal Kingdom

The effeminate sheep & other problems with Darwinian sexual selection.

by Jonah Lehrer • Posted June 7, 2006 12:14 AM

From the JUN/JUL 2006 issue of Seed:

Joan Roughgarden thinks Charles Darwin made a terrible mistake. Not about natural selection—she's no bible-toting creationist—but about his other great theory of evolution: sexual selection. According to Roughgarden, sexual selection can't explain the homosexuality that's been documented in over 450 different vertebrate species. This means that same-sex sexuality—long disparaged as a quirk of human culture—is a normal, and probably necessary, fact of life. By neglecting all those gay animals, she says, Darwin misunderstood the basic nature of heterosexuality.

Male big horn sheep live in what are often called "homosexual societies." They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males "effeminate."

Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in "penis fencing," which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages.

As this list of activities suggests, having homosexual sex is the biological equivalent of apple pie: Everybody likes it. At last count, over 450 different vertebrate species could be beheaded in Saudi Arabia. You name it, there's a vertebrate out there that does it. Nevertheless, most biologists continue to regard homosexuality as a sexual outlier. According to evolutionary theory, being gay is little more than a maladaptive behavior.

Joan Roughgarden, a professor of biology at Stanford University, wants to change that perception. After cataloging the wealth of homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom two years ago in her controversial book Evolution's Rainbow—and weathering critiques that, she says, stemmed largely from her being transgendered—Roughgarden has set about replacing Darwinian sexual selection with a new explanation of sex. For too long, she says, biology has neglected evidence that mating isn't only about multiplying. Sometimes, as in the case of all those gay sheep, dolphins and primates, animals have sex just for fun or to cement their social bonds. Homosexuality, Roughgarden says, is an essential part of biology, and can no longer be dismissed. By using the queer to untangle the straight, Roughgarden's theories have the potential to usher in a scientific sexual revolution.

Darwin's theory of sex began with an observation about peacocks. For a man who liked to see the world in terms of functional adaptations, the tails of male peacocks seemed like a useless absurdity. Why would nature invest in such a baroque display of feathers? Did male peacocks want to be eaten by predators?

Darwin's hypothesis was typically brilliant: The peacocks did it for the sake of reproduction. The male's fancy tail entranced the staid peahen. Darwin used this idea to explain the biological quirks that natural selection couldn't explain. If a trait wasn't in the service of survival, then it was probably in the service of seduction. Furthermore, the mechanics of sex helped explain why the genders were so different. Because eggs are expensive and sperm are cheap, "Males of almost all animals have stronger passions than females," Darwin wrote. "The female...with the rarest of exceptions is less eager than the male...she is coy." Darwin is telling the familiar Mars and Venus story: Men want sex while women want to cuddle. Females, by choosing who to bed, impose sexual selection onto the species.

Darwin's theory of sex has been biological dogma ever since he postulated why peacocks flirt. His gendered view of life has become a centerpiece of evolution, one of his great scientific legacies. The culture wars over evolution and common descent notwithstanding, Darwin's theory of sexual selection has been thoroughly assimilated into mass culture. From sitcoms to beer ads, our coital "instincts" are constantly reaffirmed. Females are wary, and males are horny. Sex is this simple. Or is it?

Indeed, biology now knows better. Nobody is hornier than a female macaque or bonobo (which mount the males because the males are too exhausted to continue the fornication). Peacocks are actually the exception, not the rule.

Roughgarden first began thinking Darwin may have been in error after she attended the 1997 gay pride parade in San Francisco, where she had gone to walk alongside a float in support of transgendered people. Although she had lived her first 52 years as a man, Roughgarden was about to become a woman. The decision hadn't been easy. For one thing, she was worried about losing her job as a tenured professor of biology at Stanford. (The fear turned out to be unfounded.)

After living for a year in Santa Barbara while undergoing the "physical aspects of the transition," Roughgarden returned to Stanford in the spring of 1999 and decided to write a book about the biology of sexual diversity. In particular, she wanted to answer the question that had first surfaced in her mind back in 1997. "When I was at that gay pride parade," Roughgarden remembers, "I was just stunned by the sheer magnitude of the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] population. Because I'm a biologist, I started asking myself some difficult questions. My discipline teaches that homosexuality is some sort of anomaly. But if the purpose of sexual contact is just reproduction, as Darwin believed, then why do all these gay people exist? A lot of biologists assume that they are somehow defective, that some developmental error or environmental influence has misdirected their sexual orientation. If so, gay and lesbian people are a mistake that should have been corrected a long time ago. But this hasn't happened. That's when I had my epiphany. When scientific theory says something's wrong with so many people, perhaps the theory is wrong, not the people."

The resulting book, Evolution's Rainbow, was an audacious attack on Darwin's theory of sexual selection. To make her case, Roughgarden filled the text with a staggering collection of animal perversities, from the penises of female spotted hyenas to the mènage à trois tactics of bluegill sunfish. As Roughgarden put it, "What's coming out [in the past 10-15 years] is to the rest of the species what the Kinsey Report was to humans."

According to Roughgarden, classic sexual selection can't account for these strange carnal habits. After all, Darwin imagined sex as a relatively straightforward transaction. Males compete for females. Evolutionary success is defined by the quantity of offspring. Thus, any distractions from the business of making babies—distractions like homosexuality, masturbation, etc.—are precious wastes of fluids. You'd think by now, several hundred million years after sex began, nature would have done away with such inefficiencies, and males and females would only act to maximize rates of sexual reproduction.

But the opposite has happened. Instead of copulation becoming more functional and straightforward, it has only gotten weirder as species have evolved—more sodomy and other frivolous pleasures that are useless for propagating the species. The more socially complex the animal, the more sexual "deviance" it exhibits. Look at primates: Compared to our closest relatives, contemporary, Westernized Homo sapiens are the staid ones.

Despite this new evidence, sexual selection theory is still stuck in the 19th century. The Victorian peacock remains the standard bearer. But as far as Roughgarden is concerned, that's bad science: "The time has come to declare that sexual theory is indeed false and to stop shoe-horning one exception after another into a sexual selection framework...To do otherwise suggests that sexual selection theory is unfalsifiable, not subject to refutation."

Roughgarden is an ambitious scientist. She believes it is impossible to comprehend the diversity of sexuality without disowning Darwin. Although she isn't the first biologist to condemn sexual selection—Darwin's theory has never been very popular with feminists—she is unusually vocal about cataloguing his empirical errors. "When I began, I didn't set out to criticize Darwin," she says. "But I quickly realized that most scientists are pretty dismissive about same-sex sexuality in vertebrates. They think these animals are just having fun or practicing. As long as scientists clung to this old dogma, homosexuality would always be this funny anomaly you didn't have to account for."

Roughgarden's first order of business was proving that homosexuality isn't a maladaptive trait. At first glance, this seems like a futile endeavor. Being gay clearly makes individuals less likely to pass on their genes, a major biological faux pas. From the perspective of evolution, homosexual behavior has always been a genetic dead end, something that has to be explained away.

But Roughgarden believes that biologists have it backwards. Given the pervasive presence of homosexuality throughout the animal kingdom, same-sex partnering must be an adaptive trait that's been carefully preserved by natural selection. As Roughgarden points out, "a 'common genetic disease' is a contradiction in terms, and homosexuality is three to four orders of magnitude more common than true genetic diseases such as Huntington's disease."

So how might homosexuality be good for us? Any concept of sexual selection that emphasizes the selfish propagation of genes and sperm won't be able to account for the abundance of non-heterosexual sex. All those gay penguins and persons will remain inexplicable. However, if one looks at homosexuality from the perspective of a community, one can begin to see why nature might foster a variety of sexual interactions.

According to Roughgarden, gayness is a necessary side effect of getting along. Homosexuality evolved in tandem with vertebrate societies, in which a motley group of individuals has to either live together or die alone. In fact, Roughgarden even argues that homosexuality is a defining feature of advanced animal communities, which require communal bonds in order to function. "The more complex and sophisticated a social system is," she writes, "the more likely it is to have homosexuality intermixed with heterosexuality."

Japanese macaques, an old world primate, illustrate this principle perfectly. Macaque society revolves around females, who form intricate dominance hierarchies within a given group. Males are transient. To help maintain the necessary social networks, female macaques engage in rampant lesbianism. These friendly copulations, which can last up to four days, form the bedrock of macaque society, preventing unnecessary violence and aggression. Females that sleep together will even defend each other from the unwanted advances of male macaques. In fact, behavioral scientist Paul Vasey has found that females will choose to mate with another female, as opposed to a horny male, 92.5% of the time. While this lesbianism probably decreases reproductive success for macaques in the short term, in the long run it is clearly beneficial for the species, since it fosters social stability. "Same-sex sexuality is just another way of maintaining physical intimacy," Roughgarden says. "It's like grooming, except we have lots of pleasure neurons in our genitals. When animals exhibit homosexual behavior, they are just using their genitals for a socially significant purpose."

Roughgarden is now using this model of homosexuality to reimagine heterosexuality. Her conclusions, published last February in Science, are predictably controversial. While Darwin saw males and females as locked in conflict, acting out the ancient battle of their gametes, Roughgarden describes sexual partners as a model of solidarity. "This whole view of the sexes as being at war is just so flawed from the start. First of all, there are all these empirical exceptions, like homosexuality. And then there's the logical inconsistency of it all. Why would a male ever jettison control of his evolutionary destiny? Why would he entrust females to serendipitously raise their shared young? The fact is, males and females are committed to cooperate."

Consider the Eurasian oystercatcher, a shore bird that enjoys feasting on shellfish. A consistent minority of oystercatcher families are polygynous, in which a lucky male mates with two different females simultaneously. These threesomes come in two different flavors: aggressive and cooperative. In an aggressive threesome, the females are at war; they attack each other frequently, and try to disrupt the egg-laying process of their fellow spouse. So far, so Darwinian: Life is nasty, brutish and short. However, the cooperative threesome is everything Darwin didn't expect. These females share a nest, mate with each other several times a day, and preen their feathers together. It's domestic bliss.

In Roughgarden's Science paper, she uses "cooperative game theory" to elucidate the diverse mating habits of the oystercatcher. Whereas Darwin held that conflict was the natural state of life (we are all Hobbesian bullies at heart), Roughgarden sees cooperation as our default position. This makes mathematical sense: The family that sleeps together has more offspring. Why, then, do oystercatcher females occasionally engage in all out war? According to Roughgarden, violence occurs when "social negotiations" break down. Although the birds really want to get along (who doesn't like being preened?), something goes awry. The end result is risky violence, in which one female or both will end the breeding season without an egg.

The advantage of Roughgarden's new theory is that it can explain a wider spectrum of sexual behaviors than Darwinian sexual selection. Lesbian oystercatchers and gay mountain sheep? Their homosexuality is just a prelude to social cooperation, a pleasurable way of avoiding wanton conflict. But what about the peacock and all those other examples of sexual dimorphism? According to Roughgarden, "expensive, functionally useless badges like the peacock's tail...are admission tickets": they just get you in the door. If you don't have a ticket, you are ruthlessly denied breeding rights, like an uncool kid at the prom.

Of course, most humans don't see sex as a way of maintaining the social contract. Our lust doesn't seem logical, especially when that logic involves the abstruse calculations of game theory. Furthermore, it's strange for most people to think of themselves as naturally bisexual. Being gay or straight seems to be an intrinsic and implacable part of our identity. Roughgarden disagrees. "In our culture, we assume that there is a straight-gay binary, and that you are either one or the other. But if you look at vertebrates, that just isn't the case. You will almost never find animals or primates that are exclusively gay. Other human cultures show the same thing." Since Roughgarden believes that the hetero/homo distinction is a purely cultural creation, and not a fact of biology, she thinks it is only a matter of time before we return to the standard primate model. "I'm convinced that in 50 years, the gay-straight dichotomy will dissolve. I think it just takes too much social energy to preserve. All this campy, flamboyant behavior: It's just such hard work."

Despite Roughgarden's long list of peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals, most evolutionary biologists remain skeptical of her conclusions. For one thing, it's tough to measure the benefits of diversity—or lesbian pair bonding. It's even harder to imagine how traits that are good for the group get passed on by individuals. (As a result, group selection has largely been replaced by kin selection.) In the absence of anything conclusive, most scientists stick with Darwin and Dawkins.

Other biologists think Roughgarden is exaggerating the importance of homosexuality. Invertebrate zoologist Stephen Shuster told Nature that Roughgarden "throws out a very healthy baby with some slightly soiled bathwater." And biologist Alison Jolly, in an otherwise positive review of Evolution's Rainbow for Science, conceded that Roughgarden ultimately fails in her ambition to "revolutionize current biological theories of sexual selection." As far as these mainstream biologists are concerned, Roughgarden's gay primates and transgendered fish are simply interesting sexual deviants, statistical outliers in a world that contains plenty of peacocks. As Paul Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, put it, "I think much of what Roughgarden says is very interesting. But I think she discounts many of the modifications that have been made to sexual selection since Darwin originally proposed it. So in that sense, her Darwin is a straw man. You don't have to dismiss the modern version of sexual selection in order to explain social bonding or homosexuality."

Roughgarden remains defiant. "I think many scientists discount me because of who I am. They assume that I can't be objective, that I've got some bias or hidden LGBT agenda. But I'm just trying to understand the data. At this point, we have thousands of species that deviate from the standard account of Darwinian sexual selection. So we get all these special case exemptions, and we end up downplaying whatever facts don't fit. The theory is becoming Ptolemaic. It clearly has the trajectory of a hypothesis in trouble."

Roughgarden's cataloging of sexual diversity has challenged a fundamental biological theory. If Darwinian sexual selection—whatever its current variant—is to survive, it must adapt to this new data and come up with convincing explanations for why a host of animals just aren't like peacocks.

Source: http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php

Oromia Chief Administrator Forges New Ties with U.S.

Julia N. Opoti
Published 08/01/2006 - 9:48 p.m.

The Chief Administrator of the Oromia Regional State, Mr. Abadula Gemeda, was in the Twin Cities in July to meet with members of his community, the business community and supporters of his state. He was accompanied by staff from the Ethiopian embassy in Washington. Mr. Gemeda is also chairman of the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), one of the four parties that form the coalition called the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) which is currently in power in Ethiopia.



The Solar Oven Society (SOS), a Minnesota based non-profit corporation that promotes solar cooking through the production of solar ovens, hosted Mr. Gemeda during his visit. That organization’s president, Mr. Mike Porter, visited Oromia two years ago taking a prototype solar oven with him. Its effectiveness was realized immediately, and a business contract was signed soon after, making the Oromia National Regional Government, one of SOS’ biggest clients. SOS will only make the basic parts of the oven, and train local Oromos to assemble the solar oven, creating jobs in Oromia. With the civil war and drought, Ethiopia’s land is becoming increasingly barren since a lot deforestation has occurred making the solar oven an attractive solution.



Oromia is the largest federal state in modern day Ethiopia, occupying southern and central Ethiopia. The region has been marred with civil strife as the Oromo, the majority in Ethiopia, feel that they are oppressed by Ethiopia’s central government. Thousands of Oromo have fled their motherland in fear of their lives and safety, making the Twin Cities their home. According to a report by the UN, Minnesota and the refugee camps in Kenya, have the largest number of Oromo residents in the world outside of Ethiopia. According to the Minnesota State demographer’s office, there are about 7,500 Ethiopian immigrants as of 2003, the last year that complete figures are available with Ethiopian community leaders putting the figure at over 20,000. The Oromo Liberation Front claims on its part that that there are 15,000 Oromo immigrants in Minnesota.



In response to the conflict between the Ethiopian government, and the people of Oromia, Mr. Gemeda contends that his government’s goal is to bring development to its people allowing them sustainability. In the context of Ethiopia/Oromia politics however, the OPDO of which Mr. Gemeda is the chairman is viewed by many in his community as a creation of the TPLF (Tigrayan People's Liberation Front). TPLF is the dominant party in the EPRDF ruling coalition. TPLF is the party of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi. Prior to joining politics, Mr. Gemeda was the defense minister in Prime Minister Zenawi’s government. As the only Oromo party in the coalition, the OPDO is viewed with suspicion by many Oromos. There are many Oromo separatist groups that call for an independent Oromo nation, the most well known being the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).



In a tense meeting with the Oromia community conducted exclusively in Oromo, President Gemeda and his delegation made a presentation in which they discussed his cabinet’s five-year strategic plan. With a population of 1.5 million people, the Oromia federal government is faced with the task of ensuring that its people receive basic needs. The region, like the rest of Ethiopia, faces food scarcity despite immense resources. The causes of food shortage are numerous: drought, health, low crop productivity, few healthy livestock, population pressure, land scarcity, and misuse and degradation of natural resources. Chief Administrator Gemeda and his government hope to solve these issues through: water provision to the people, health improvement of man and livestock, improved infrastructure, resettlement of domestic refugees, and sustaining natural resources.



The meeting with his community held at the Assemblies of God Church in Saint Paul was marked by tense exchanges between Mr. Gemeda’s delegation and local Oromias in the Twin Cities. Pressed by this reporter to translate what the exchange was about, the Oromia community members refused saying “these are in-house matters”. A follow-up interview with Mr. Gemeda himself yielded no answer as he would say those were constructive exchanges between people and their leaders.



Also on his itinerary was a visit to Compatible Technology International (CTI), an organization whose objective is to improve the lives of people in developing countries by designing food and water technologies that are sustainable and appropriate to local cultures. CTI is working with people in countries such as Nicaragua, Zaire, India, and Uganda among others, where they have made hand grinders that reduce the physical labor required to realize production. Not only do technologies such as these allow individuals to be self-reliant, but they also increase productivity according to CTI.



Bruce Humphreys, CTI’s executive director expressed a willingness to work with the Oromia Regional Government in developing a coffee grinder and preservation techniques and tools for potatoes. According to Mr. Gemeda, his region is in dire need of food preservation tools since the crops spoil soon after harvest contributing further to the hunger and poverty of his people. Jenni Anderson, program director, with CTI, assured the delegation that their company engineers will work closely with the local community to ensure that cultural practices are maintained and respected as the new technology is implemented.



Chief Administrator Gebeda is also keen on forging a strong relationship with the Oromo community in the Diaspora. He believes the Oromo in the Diaspora will be instrumental in mobilizing technology, financial resources and expertise for the benefit of their region. They would have the potential of promoting tourism in Oromia and investment opportunities found in Oromia regional state. “With all the resources available in Oromia, it is important that Oromos the world over work together in developing our region.”


source: http://www.mshale.com/article.cfm?articleID=1242

U researchers: Ethanol and other biofuels won't solve U.S. oil woes

U researchers: Ethanol and other biofuels won't solve U.S. oil woes
At maximum capacity, ethanol could meet only 12 percent of demand.
By Marni Ginther

the quest for cleaner, cheaper fuel is on many people's minds as gasoline prices increase, but it's riddled with obstacles for researchers and industry leaders.

University applied economics researchers have found some more twists and turns in the path toward widespread use of biodiesel and ethanol to fuel the nation's vehicles.

A study by the group released July 11 led by postdoctoral applied economics researcher Jason Hill reported that dedicating all current U.S. corn production to ethanol would meet only 12 percent of the nation's demand for vehicle fuel. The study also said ethanol produces only 12 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than the gasoline people already use.

With the current sources available for ethanol, primarily corn in the United States, and the technology used to produce it, widespread use of ethanol doesn't look economically feasible, Hill said.

"Corn grain ethanol and soy biodiesel are first-generation biofuels, and so we need to look for other ways of producing biofuels from different sources, and even producing different biofuels," Hill said.

Mark Hamerlinck, communications manager of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, acknowledged "we will never run all the vehicles in this country on E85," which is the gasoline blend with 85 percent ethanol seen at some gas stations.

But "12 percent (of gasoline demand) is still 12 percent," he said.

He also pointed out that currently all gasoline in Minnesota has a 10-percent ethanol additive, and in the year 2010, that additive will be increased to 20 percent.

He pointed out that in recent years, fuel economy of cars in the United States has not been restricted.

"We have these land yachts driving around," Hamerlinck said. "If, every year, (cars) had to get 3 percent better fuel economy … then your total fuel usage would actually start to go down, so the percentage of ethanol usage could go up."

"There is much more we can do on the demand side than on the supply side," Hill said.

But even as an additive, Hill said ethanol would not work for the whole country.

"Even E20 is not sustainable for the nation," Hill said. "E10 is not sustainable for the nation either."

Despite studies like Hill's which say ethanol might not be significantly cleaner than gasoline, Taher Alyamany, sales manager at Freeway Ford in Bloomington, said flex-fuel vehicles are selling more than before.

"Our only flex-fuel vehicle was introduced three years ago and it's selling pretty well because it's a flex-fuel," he said. "A lot of people now are thinking more about gas prices when buying a vehicle."

Hill said this is creating a demand for ethanol, which might mean that ethanol prices won't be much lower than gasoline.

"(Ethanol) is a response that, in many ways, is short-term, and I don't think makes complete sense," Hill said. "We really are in the early stages of developing sustainable biofuels."


source: http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/07/26/68638

Little Earth - City Pages 2006

Another accusation of police misconduct reopens
the old rift between cops and residents at south
Minneapolis's Little Earth housing complex

BY G.R. ANDERSON JR.

An evening rain has just cleared, and some of the residents of Little Earth are emerging from their apartments to enjoy the summer night. Vinnie, a 36-year-old mother of four, is out for a stroll along the grounds of the low-income housing complex, just east of Cedar Avenue South, in the 2500 block. Like most of the residents of Little Earth, Vinnie is American Indian. She's lived at the complex for about a year.

It's just after 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday, and Vinnie is feeling cheerful in spite of the previous year's troubles, incurred since she moved to town from South Dakota. She came to take care of her mother, a longtime Little Earth resident who is recovering from a kidney transplant. Just a couple of weeks back, she found herself at the business end of a knife in a confrontation with neighbors who had been harassing her mother.

And the rest of the family—well, that's why she's carrying her two- year-old niece with her as she walks. "Her mom and dad are smoking crack right now," Vinnie explains. "They smoke it right in front of her. I'm like, it's my niece. I don't want her smelling that shit."

Vinnie tells this with the assurance that her real name won't be used; retaliation for speaking out about anything is commonplace at Little Earth. The baby's parents live in the apartment next door to Vinnie's, in a row of dwellings that face south toward what used to be 25 1/2 Street, but recently was renamed E.M. Stately Street after one of the people who initiated plans for the housing complex more than 35 years ago. There's a steady stream of folks going in and out of both apartments, a flimsy storm door clattering behind them.

"Weed, cocaine, crack," Vinnie continues, ticking off the drugs of choice—aside from alcohol—found at Little Earth. "People go to the hospital and get drugs and sell them. You can get a Percocet for three dollars, and a Vicodin for four."

There's a pause. Rain clouds still linger, bringing an early darkness. Suddenly there are kids everywhere, riding dirt bikes on sidewalks and makeshift paths all around the complex. Teenagers dressed in athletic jerseys, ball caps, and blue bandanas roam about in groups, teasing, roughhousing, and flirting with each other. Many of them have been drinking; some are in local gangs. Several older adolescent girls are pushing babies in strollers.

Someone lights off some fireworks in the distance. "I hear shootings every weekend," Vinnie says, prompted by the rat-a-tat pops outside. "This will go on all night, and something will happen. Every weekend, they light off the fireworks just to fuck people up, so pretty soon you can't tell what's a real gun and what isn't."

In early June, Little Earth was briefly in the news following the public disclosure of an incident on Friday, May 26, involving the Minneapolis Police Department. That Memorial Day weekend had been unseasonably hot in the city. According to a police report, later verified by surveillance footage), cops arrived at Little Earth shortly after 7:00 that evening to break up a fight. After a long conversation with the two officers, Lt. Rick Thomas and Lt. Michael Fossum, one of the brawlers tried to flee, and was immediately handcuffed.



Over the course of the next few minutes, the suspect, identified as Juan Trinidad Vasquez, and the two officers somehow remained out of sight of the 32 security cameras scattered about the complex. When they reappeared on surveillance video, one officer was walking a handcuffed Vasquez to a squad car. The other officer approached and bumped into Vasquez, who doubled over as though he'd received a blow to the mid-section. Onlookers say Vasquez passed out. Though Vasquez was, according to the tape and the incident report, given "medical treatment," many eyewitnesses claimed that he was detained in the back of a squad on a hot day by himself—windows up, AC off—for some 30 minutes.

Both of the officers implicated in the episode were put on paid leave while the MPD and the FBI conducted investigations. They returned to their jobs June 24 in a "non-enforcement capacity" while the case remains open. Vasquez, a 24-year-old American Indian-Latino who does not live at Little Earth, was charged with a narcotics violation (the incident report notes the officers observed him "with a baggie of suspected crack cocaine").

The incident was made public 11 days later when Little Earth executive director Bill Ziegler held a press conference outside the complex's administrative offices. Ziegler was joined there by MPD interim Chief Tim Dolan, Deputy Chief Lucy Gerold, and Third Precinct Inspector Scott Gerlicher. About 100 residents, activists, and journalists showed up as well. "We have worked to make Little Earth a safe, hope-filled community," Ziegler began on a conciliatory note, praising the response of Dolan and Gerlicher. "We cannot allow this incident to destroy the relationship we've developed with the Minneapolis Police Department."

If Ziegler, who has been on the job for all of 18 months, was trying to walk a fine line, it didn't work. His apparently cozy relationship with the cops infuriated some Indian activists who have long viewed the MPD as a mortal enemy. The press, meanwhile, wanted to know why Ziegler wasn't making the tape of the incident public. "Does everyone want to see a big Indian uprising here?" he countered. "How would that help the residents? You don't live here. You'll all go home to the suburbs. You aren't stuck with the fallout from your reports."

There was also a split between the activists who were angry with the cops and those residents who sided with Ziegler's decision, and a fight nearly broke out. The next day, Clyde Bellecourt, the longtime Indian activist who had a huge hand in shaping Little Earth in its infancy, held a similarly contentious press conference. He called for the termination of Lt. Rick Thomas, and the release of the surveillance tape. Within two hours, Ziegler, citing "ongoing tension," gave out DVD copies of the tape.

But a day's delay was enough to feed the suspicion and hostility of many Little Earth residents toward the police. Though Ziegler, Dolan, and Gerlicher all say the MPD's relations with the complex have never been better, a bad history runs deep.

News accounts from the pages of the Minneapolis Star and the Minneapolis Tribune in the 1970s and '80s record a number of nameless, faceless criminal incidents ranging from assaults and murders to allegations, some subsequently confirmed, of police brutality. The past 15 years have included a number of highly publicized allegations of police wrongdoing in connection with Little Earth:

• In July 1993, a pair of MPD officers were accused of putting two Native Americans, one a Little Earth resident, in the trunk of their squad car before taking them to detox. Then-Chief John Laux drew praise for his actions, which included suspending one officer, Marvin Schumer, for 90 days without pay, and another, Michael Lardy, for 20 days without pay. The two men, Charles Lone Eagle and John Boney, were awarded $100,000 each in a subsequent civil rights suit.

• In December of that year, a 16-year-old boy at the complex was wounded by a gunshot from a cop after he waved a "realistic-looking replica" of a handgun at a cop. One officer, Anthony Diioia, was working off-duty and in uniform at Little Earth; another, David E. Campbell, was out of uniform and helping Diioia on an unrelated case. As Campbell approached a group of youths, one boy pulled out the toy gun. Both officers fired, according to news clips, wounding the boy. It was never clear which officer shot the 16-year-old. According to the StarTribune it was the "first violence at Little Earth in quite some time."



• In March 1994, two officers were accused of kidnapping a man they had stopped for a driving violation at Little Earth. According to the Star Tribune, the two cops, Richard Gonion and Malcolm Johnson, allegedly offered to let Tesfai Kashai Dirar go if he paid them $300. The officers, according to news accounts, were arrested in handcuffs at the 3rd Precinct and forced to turn in their weapons and badges. (The officers eventually pled guilty to misconduct and resigned.) City leaders decried the situation, but shirked responsibility. "I can't police from City Hall. John Laux can't supervise from City Hall," then-Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton told reporters. "These officers have failed us."

• In September 2002, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court, MPD officers broke down the door of an apartment and allegedly proceeded to kick and batter several residents in the process of throwing them to the floor and handcuffing them. One woman, Danielle Long Crow, who was eight months pregnant, was purportedly yanked from the shower and forced to lie naked and stomach-down on the floor, the complaint says. The suit, which was eventually settled for $60,000, named as one of the defendants Lt. Richard Thomas—the same Rick Thomas who was a party to the May 26 incident this year. An MPD internal investigation apparently cleared Thomas of any wrongdoing in the department's eyes; his personnel file indicates he was never disciplined for the Long Crow incident.

• In January 2003, two MPD cops were accused of urinating on an intoxicated man and then leaving him and his female companion outside in freezing temperatures at a Little Earth parking lot off Ogema Place. "We've got a good thing going and then wham, this happens," then-Chief Robert Olson said at the time. "It's just disheartening." Clyde Bellecourt roared at a subsequent press conference, "What happened in our community would never take place at Hennepin and Lake or Edina or Bloomington."

Unfortunately for the MPD, the collective memory at Little Earth is uncommonly long. "We're a tight-knit group," says one resident. "And with that comes old wounds that never heal."



Little Earth is often mistaken for an inner-city reservation, a characterization that pisses off many residents and local Indians. They call it "the compound." It is actually public housing, devised in 1971 as a low-income enclave operated by American Indians. Initially, it was just Section 8 housing funded by the federal Model City program and the Housing and Urban Development office. By 1973 it opened, with one news account quoting a building manager saying that "A strong effort has been made to keep the complex from becoming an Indian ghetto." But almost immediately the complex faced money problems. Over the years, it has survived a number of financial distresses, the prospect of imminent foreclosure, and an 11-year lawsuit with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It is often referred to as the only urban Indian housing complex in America, and to a large degree that's true: Some 96 percent of current residents are Native American. But it's also open to anyone who qualifies for Section 8 housing and can get approved from a waiting list. It features 212 units—efficiencies, one- and two-bedroom apartments, and townhouses with as many as four or five bedrooms. The rents are based on tenants' incomes, which are usually meager. According to Little Earth's official numbers, some 800 residents live there, but even Bill Ziegler concedes that the number is more than 1,000, and some residents say it gets as high as 3,000, with relatives and friends regularly crashing there—sometimes for long periods.

As Faith Bad Moccasin, who is 66 years old and has lived there for 10 years, puts it: "It's the Indian way to take care of your family, but a week turns into two months, and pretty soon the bad elements are living next door."

What this brings is a sense that outsiders, not residents, are inflicting problems on Little Earth. But the first identified American Indian gang in contemporary Minnesota, the Naturals, started here in 1979. Since then, there have been various offshoots of what are historically considered black gangs, like the Native Gangster Disciples and the Native Vice Lords. And there is something to the notion that people come from reservations in search of work or whatever else in the city and end up squatting at Little Earth.

But there is also an element of conflict between residents of different tribal backgrounds. Over the years, as Little Earth has become predominantly Indian, it has historically been Ojibwe-dominated. In recent years, however, members of other tribes, such as Lakota Indians, have moved in, and there are divisions between the differing bands. "But natives want to live among natives," says one resident, "and that's why I live here."

In recent years, as south Minneapolis has seen an influx of Mexican immigrants, the face of Little Earth has changed slightly as Indian and Latino cultures gravitated toward each other. "They're both indigenous peoples," notes Vince Hill, an Ojibwe reporter for the Native American Press/Ojibwe News, "but now you see native tongues dying out"—in some cases replaced by Spanish, or the collective tongue of poor America, hip-hop vernacular.

Geographically, "the compound" comprises a couple of parcels of land in a neighborhood now known as East Phillips, bordered by 24th and 26th streets on the south and north ends, and 18th and Hiawatha Avenues on the west and east. A pedestrian bridge, the main visual element of Little Earth, arches over Cedar Avenue. There are six or seven clusters of sloping, stucco buildings in the west side of the complex. It's not hard to imagine Little Earth as decent public housing, at least cosmetically, back in the day. There are patios, and gates, and patches of yard in some of the clusters. There's a bucolic park on the west side of Cedar Avenue—which runs right through the heart of Little Earth—that appears to epitomize what urban green space can do for a community, complete with playground equipment, public grills, and towering trees. The units on the west side were rehabbed and fitted with central air conditioning units not long ago.



They don't have central air on the east side of Cedar. But they do have a security center, as well as a majority of the compound's 32 surveillance cameras. The dwellings on Ogema Place (the name is Ojibwe for "king" or "leader") have a pervasive air of poverty. They face east toward a high retaining wall that's part of Hiawatha Avenue. On the ground, there are wrecked cars, broken screens, fast-food litter, and an occasional lampshade or abandoned Styrofoam cooler. Judging from the forensic evidence scattered everywhere, the canned beverages of choice include Diet Coke, Bud Ice, and Colt 45.

East side or west, the one unifying theme at Little Earth, besides native heritage, is poverty. Some 80 percent of households are led by single mothers, according to estimates of those who live and work there. "Of the families and individuals currently occupying the units," according to a current Little Earth press release, "99 percent are very low income and 1 percent are low income." Further, "69 percent of the households have annual incomes less than $10,000."

As of 2000, the official population of Census Tract 73.01, which encompasses Little Earth, was 1,733 people in 485 households. Of the roughly 400 renter households, 225 had no car, 206 were below the federal poverty line, 95 were on public assistance, and 49 had no phone service. Demographically, some 1,500 residents were American Indian or mixed-race. More than 58 percent were under the age of 18, and just 11 percent older than 45. Married couples made up only 18 percent of the population, single mothers 45 percent. And of the 950 residents over the age of 16, 9 percent were unemployed and another 41 percent were "not in the labor force"—making for an effective unemployment rate of 50 percent. About 96 percent of the households made less than $25,000 a year.

Going back a decade, MPD maps of violent crime in the area for 1996 and 1997 show a steady wave of aggravated assault, rape, domestic assault, and a handful of homicides. In 1998, some 2,373 serious crimes—such as aggravated assault, rape, or murder—occurred in the Phillips neighborhood, which was a huge part of town before it was split into four separate neighborhoods. A good quarter of those crimes, by MPD estimates, happened near or at Little Earth. (That figure for all of Phillips nearly doubles the total in impoverished north side areas like Jordan and Hawthorne during the same period.)

In 2001, the MPD started keeping statistics for Phillips East, which is a more precise sample, an eight-block area that consists mostly of Little Earth. There were 320 reported crimes in the area that year alone. And nearly every resident recalls a period of slightly longer than six months, from November 2004 to June 2005, when there were five homicides on the Little Earth grounds. Little Earth used to have private security patrol the complex, but for nearly a decade now, off-duty MPD cops have been hired to do so.

"I made 20 calls a night," says Martha Fast Horse of her days working as a dispatcher at Little Earth. (Residents at the complex are hired to monitor security cameras and call police when necessary.) "And you have to make them, even though you know you'll be a target. Otherwise you get the feeling that this stuff will never end."

Rick Thomas, a 25-year MPD veteran, has patrolled Little Earth for several years. Nearly everyone at Little Earth knows him, and he surely knows the place better than most outsiders. He's been there to apply the community-policing touch, too—working with youth programs and sitting in on regular meetings with a Little Earth crime committee.

Thomas, like the MPD itself, inspires vehement if surprisingly varied reactions from the people who live there. Take the 2002 Long Crow episode: Not everybody at Little Earth was outraged by the raid. "I went without sleep for two years living next door to them," attests 30-year resident Lori Ellis of the Long Crows. "Those were types of problems that Rick was good at dealing with.

"I think he just had too much on his plate," she says of Thomas's alleged misconduct. "He's been very effective in dealing with crack houses here, and he's often here overnight. I can understand why something would go wrong." She stops short of a hearty endorsement, though. In general, Ellis says, "I am in-between on Thomas and the cops. I don't have nothing bad to say about them. But I wouldn't use the word 'love' either. I don't know that we're that close."

(Thomas declined to comment to City Pages about the May 26 Vazquez incident, citing MPD policy that forbids officers to discuss ongoing investigations.)

Thomas "has done a lot for the community," wrote Martha Fast Horse in a recent letter to MPD acting Chief Tim Dolan. She went on to recount a 2004 incident involving a group of kids who had beaten up her 15-year-old son. Afterward, "I went over to their unit and nearly knocked the door down pounding on it," Fast Horse wrote. "I am not ashamed to admit that I am a mother bear when it comes to my children, and I was ready to do battle with the whole group. They called the police on me. Rick showed up to save their lives. So, nobody can tell me that he doesn't care about all people equally, even the gang members.



"From where I stood, I could see him coming from the 2501 building where the police substation is housed," Fast Horse continues. "He looked tired like he had been up working all night; I later found out that was in fact the truth. He walked up to me and said, 'Doesn't this ever end?'"

At the same time, numerous younger residents can recall unpleasant run-ins with Thomas. Some of them call him "Mr. Bigguns" in sneering testament to his swagger. "What he does, it creates a lot of tension," says 27-year-old Isaac Dennis St. Clair-Jones, a lifelong resident of Little Earth.

Joho Ellis, who's part of a very distinct minority as an African American living at Little Earth—he lives with his Ojibwe girlfriend—says he's seen Thomas around plenty. "I know him," he chortles. He declines to say more about Thomas specifically, then adds: "Look, most people get out of hand here. But I gotta keep it clean because my friends are black. Too many black people outside my place, and the cops show up. Every time."

Make no mistake: There are a lot of people at Little Earth who despise the cops utterly. (One 19-year-old woman tells me that MPD cops are "the harassers of all native people.") But most residents make at least a practical accommodation with the MPD. They agree among themselves that the problems at Little Earth are so pervasive and so intractable that a police presence is required; they also seem to concur that shoddy treatment at the hands of the MPD is a way of life, the price of the ticket for getting law enforcement when you need it. "There is a fine line between the enforcement that people demand," says Bill Means, an American Indian representative on the city's Police Community Relations Council, "and brutality that comes with that enforcement."

Still, residents call the police when there is serious trouble, even though a certain portion of the callers have outstanding warrants for their own arrest. It happened once to John Goose, 39, who has lived at Little Earth since 1999. "There's a lot of gang activity here," he notes. He called the cops one night earlier this year to report shots fired. By the time they showed up, he had gotten into a fight with his wife—who promptly won that round by telling officers her husband had never paid the fines on a 2003 DWI. Goose spent a month in the county workhouse for that offense.

"Do I regret that I called the cops?" he asks now. "No, man. I wanted the cops here. Tell the truth, I did the right thing. I protected my children and did my time. I don't have to look over my shoulder no more."



One of the more brutal memories MPD Sgt. David Burbank carries around from his days patrolling Little Earth involved the fatal cocaine overdose of a 12-year-old girl. "That's the sad reality of that place," Burbank notes. "How the heck does a 12-year-old get a hold of cocaine, let alone a lethal dose?"

Burbank, who is a Chippewa Indian, worked a beat that included Little Earth for more than two and a half years. During that time, a stint that concluded in October 2005, he was also a member of a local law enforcement consortium called the Native American Gang Task Force. By his own admission, his native status did little to get locals to open up to him. "The biggest problem is that it's always difficult to get somebody to come forward," Burbank says. "Gaining trust is the biggest obstacle."

The feeling is pretty much mutual. When he patrolled the place, Burbank remembers, "You're always looking around. You can see that [gangs] have little scouts out. You show up and there's movement all about the complex, and it's always like, 'where is he going?'"

Burbank says he agrees with residents that much of the criminal element at Little Earth stems from outside forces, not residents. Even so, he notes, gangs constantly jockey for turf at the complex: the Native Mob, Native Gangster Disciples, Native Vice Lords, Project Boyz, and MAKK MOB—which stands for Money Associated Kold-Hearted Killers, Money Over Bitches.



It's the last two, Burbank claims, that have led to a recent uptick in crimes. "It's the 15-to-17-year-old set of kids that claim to be in gangs, but they're really just about trying to act like it," Burbank says, adding that the Project Boyz in particular practice a sort of "guerrilla warfare" without much regard for consequences or codes of conduct. If anything, this spells more random violence than old-school gang activity: "In the Native Mob," he notes, "before you actually tried to do something, you had to ask a higher-up beforehand."

Burbank recalls incidents that still trouble him. One was a double homicide in November 2004 that everyone at Little Earth still talks about, the killing of two Project Boyz by members of the Native Mob. Despite the anguish it caused in the community, he recalls, there was very little cooperation from residents. The police only got one conviction out of the killing, which in turn further damaged the MPD's credibility among American Indians in the city.

Kids regularly play on their elders' historic animosity toward police, Burbank claims: "I confront the kids, and they know what's going on. They tell their grandparents, and turn it into a conflict with the police. So if we even ask anybody what's going on, it becomes that. Cops messing with them. They're just pulling the wool over their parents' eyes.

"In a way, it's a game," Burbank continues. "We're just a piece of the puzzle. There's a lack of male role models, and there's no one there to talk to them. The kids behave bad, and we have to talk to them."

Burbank transferred to another position with the MPD when his stint with the gang task force was up, even though he could have stayed on. "I try to be as professional as I can be, but you have to have your guard up the whole time," he says. "Everyone's looking at you. You can know one household, and the next day you've got to arrest four of their next-door neighbors. You try not to let that influence the relationship you have with the family you know. It does take its toll."

Burbank sees the problems at Little Earth as intractable, the kind of troubles police have no way to solve. By the time he left the assignment, "I was at the end of my rope. You feel like you're moving in circles. You clean up one part, and then something happens somewhere else."



Acting MPD Chief Tim Dolan maintains that the department only puts its best and brightest on the job at places like Little Earth. "If you're cynical about answering calls to a place like that, we're not going to put you there," Dolan says, adding that he patrolled there in the early 1980s. "There was an attraction when I was working there. The most ambitious cops wanted to work there. It was troubling, and difficult, but ultimately rewarding. They are a proud people, and if the cops were hustling, they appreciated it." And it's working, he adds, citing as evidence a trend toward fewer crimes, yet more calls to police, at the complex in recent years. (By the MPD's own accounting, however, "calls to service" have tapered off there recently, while crimes involving theft, assault, narcotics, or murder have increased. In 2002, the total number of serious crimes reported was 73; in 2005, it was 92.)

"It's not any different than some of the other areas around town," Dolan says of the place. "I'd say 99 percent of the people there are just trying to get along."
Getting along at Little Earth is often a full-time job. Lifelong resident Isaac Dennis St. Clair-Jones recalls his own experiences with crime and cops at Little Earth. When he was 12, he claims, his head was bashed into a brick wall by a cop on the northwest side of the complex. His offense? He had laughed out loud with a group of friends after the officer had slipped on some ice. "I always wanted to be a cop, too, but not after that," he says.



St. Clair-Jones got involved in a gang at Little Earth, but got out a few years ago, he says, because he has two children now. Tonight he's "smoked a couple fatties" and plans to chill at home with his family. He recalls an incident last summer when his children, who are seven and nine, were sleeping in the front room of their apartment with some of their cousins. At about 4:00 a.m., St. Clair-Jones says, a gunshot blew out the window, and glass shattered all over the kids.

"I pulled the slug out of the wall, and it looked like a .357," he says, adding that he learned later it was a gang shooting gone awry. "I wrapped the thing in a bag and took it to the police station. The cop just looked at me and threw it in the garbage."

He motions toward a gathering of teenagers nearby who are swilling from a bottle of brandy. "It was probably one of those guys," he says.

Two of them are from Little Earth originally, though they now live in Roseville. They both look to be about 17, and they come to Little Earth to party on the weekends.

"I had to get out of here," one of them explains without any hint of irony. Pretty soon he and rest of the group drift off into the recesses of the clusters of apartments, looking for a party where there's booze.

A little while later they reappear nearby, not far from where Vinnie is cradling her niece. "I have an uncle in Lincoln, Nebraska," she says wistfully, prompted by nothing in particular. Right now she's taking classes to become a nurse. "I have to get out of here, as soon as I can," she says. "These projects are no good."



source: http://citypages.com/databank/27/1338/article14559.asp

Little Earth - City Pages 2006

Another accusation of police misconduct reopens
the old rift between cops and residents at south
Minneapolis's Little Earth housing complex

BY G.R. ANDERSON JR.

An evening rain has just cleared, and some of the residents of Little Earth are emerging from their apartments to enjoy the summer night. Vinnie, a 36-year-old mother of four, is out for a stroll along the grounds of the low-income housing complex, just east of Cedar Avenue South, in the 2500 block. Like most of the residents of Little Earth, Vinnie is American Indian. She's lived at the complex for about a year.

It's just after 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday, and Vinnie is feeling cheerful in spite of the previous year's troubles, incurred since she moved to town from South Dakota. She came to take care of her mother, a longtime Little Earth resident who is recovering from a kidney transplant. Just a couple of weeks back, she found herself at the business end of a knife in a confrontation with neighbors who had been harassing her mother.

And the rest of the family—well, that's why she's carrying her two- year-old niece with her as she walks. "Her mom and dad are smoking crack right now," Vinnie explains. "They smoke it right in front of her. I'm like, it's my niece. I don't want her smelling that shit."

Vinnie tells this with the assurance that her real name won't be used; retaliation for speaking out about anything is commonplace at Little Earth. The baby's parents live in the apartment next door to Vinnie's, in a row of dwellings that face south toward what used to be 25 1/2 Street, but recently was renamed E.M. Stately Street after one of the people who initiated plans for the housing complex more than 35 years ago. There's a steady stream of folks going in and out of both apartments, a flimsy storm door clattering behind them.

"Weed, cocaine, crack," Vinnie continues, ticking off the drugs of choice—aside from alcohol—found at Little Earth. "People go to the hospital and get drugs and sell them. You can get a Percocet for three dollars, and a Vicodin for four."

There's a pause. Rain clouds still linger, bringing an early darkness. Suddenly there are kids everywhere, riding dirt bikes on sidewalks and makeshift paths all around the complex. Teenagers dressed in athletic jerseys, ball caps, and blue bandanas roam about in groups, teasing, roughhousing, and flirting with each other. Many of them have been drinking; some are in local gangs. Several older adolescent girls are pushing babies in strollers.

Someone lights off some fireworks in the distance. "I hear shootings every weekend," Vinnie says, prompted by the rat-a-tat pops outside. "This will go on all night, and something will happen. Every weekend, they light off the fireworks just to fuck people up, so pretty soon you can't tell what's a real gun and what isn't."

In early June, Little Earth was briefly in the news following the public disclosure of an incident on Friday, May 26, involving the Minneapolis Police Department. That Memorial Day weekend had been unseasonably hot in the city. According to a police report, later verified by surveillance footage), cops arrived at Little Earth shortly after 7:00 that evening to break up a fight. After a long conversation with the two officers, Lt. Rick Thomas and Lt. Michael Fossum, one of the brawlers tried to flee, and was immediately handcuffed.



Over the course of the next few minutes, the suspect, identified as Juan Trinidad Vasquez, and the two officers somehow remained out of sight of the 32 security cameras scattered about the complex. When they reappeared on surveillance video, one officer was walking a handcuffed Vasquez to a squad car. The other officer approached and bumped into Vasquez, who doubled over as though he'd received a blow to the mid-section. Onlookers say Vasquez passed out. Though Vasquez was, according to the tape and the incident report, given "medical treatment," many eyewitnesses claimed that he was detained in the back of a squad on a hot day by himself—windows up, AC off—for some 30 minutes.

Both of the officers implicated in the episode were put on paid leave while the MPD and the FBI conducted investigations. They returned to their jobs June 24 in a "non-enforcement capacity" while the case remains open. Vasquez, a 24-year-old American Indian-Latino who does not live at Little Earth, was charged with a narcotics violation (the incident report notes the officers observed him "with a baggie of suspected crack cocaine").

The incident was made public 11 days later when Little Earth executive director Bill Ziegler held a press conference outside the complex's administrative offices. Ziegler was joined there by MPD interim Chief Tim Dolan, Deputy Chief Lucy Gerold, and Third Precinct Inspector Scott Gerlicher. About 100 residents, activists, and journalists showed up as well. "We have worked to make Little Earth a safe, hope-filled community," Ziegler began on a conciliatory note, praising the response of Dolan and Gerlicher. "We cannot allow this incident to destroy the relationship we've developed with the Minneapolis Police Department."

If Ziegler, who has been on the job for all of 18 months, was trying to walk a fine line, it didn't work. His apparently cozy relationship with the cops infuriated some Indian activists who have long viewed the MPD as a mortal enemy. The press, meanwhile, wanted to know why Ziegler wasn't making the tape of the incident public. "Does everyone want to see a big Indian uprising here?" he countered. "How would that help the residents? You don't live here. You'll all go home to the suburbs. You aren't stuck with the fallout from your reports."

There was also a split between the activists who were angry with the cops and those residents who sided with Ziegler's decision, and a fight nearly broke out. The next day, Clyde Bellecourt, the longtime Indian activist who had a huge hand in shaping Little Earth in its infancy, held a similarly contentious press conference. He called for the termination of Lt. Rick Thomas, and the release of the surveillance tape. Within two hours, Ziegler, citing "ongoing tension," gave out DVD copies of the tape.

But a day's delay was enough to feed the suspicion and hostility of many Little Earth residents toward the police. Though Ziegler, Dolan, and Gerlicher all say the MPD's relations with the complex have never been better, a bad history runs deep.

News accounts from the pages of the Minneapolis Star and the Minneapolis Tribune in the 1970s and '80s record a number of nameless, faceless criminal incidents ranging from assaults and murders to allegations, some subsequently confirmed, of police brutality. The past 15 years have included a number of highly publicized allegations of police wrongdoing in connection with Little Earth:

• In July 1993, a pair of MPD officers were accused of putting two Native Americans, one a Little Earth resident, in the trunk of their squad car before taking them to detox. Then-Chief John Laux drew praise for his actions, which included suspending one officer, Marvin Schumer, for 90 days without pay, and another, Michael Lardy, for 20 days without pay. The two men, Charles Lone Eagle and John Boney, were awarded $100,000 each in a subsequent civil rights suit.

• In December of that year, a 16-year-old boy at the complex was wounded by a gunshot from a cop after he waved a "realistic-looking replica" of a handgun at a cop. One officer, Anthony Diioia, was working off-duty and in uniform at Little Earth; another, David E. Campbell, was out of uniform and helping Diioia on an unrelated case. As Campbell approached a group of youths, one boy pulled out the toy gun. Both officers fired, according to news clips, wounding the boy. It was never clear which officer shot the 16-year-old. According to the StarTribune it was the "first violence at Little Earth in quite some time."



• In March 1994, two officers were accused of kidnapping a man they had stopped for a driving violation at Little Earth. According to the Star Tribune, the two cops, Richard Gonion and Malcolm Johnson, allegedly offered to let Tesfai Kashai Dirar go if he paid them $300. The officers, according to news accounts, were arrested in handcuffs at the 3rd Precinct and forced to turn in their weapons and badges. (The officers eventually pled guilty to misconduct and resigned.) City leaders decried the situation, but shirked responsibility. "I can't police from City Hall. John Laux can't supervise from City Hall," then-Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton told reporters. "These officers have failed us."

• In September 2002, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court, MPD officers broke down the door of an apartment and allegedly proceeded to kick and batter several residents in the process of throwing them to the floor and handcuffing them. One woman, Danielle Long Crow, who was eight months pregnant, was purportedly yanked from the shower and forced to lie naked and stomach-down on the floor, the complaint says. The suit, which was eventually settled for $60,000, named as one of the defendants Lt. Richard Thomas—the same Rick Thomas who was a party to the May 26 incident this year. An MPD internal investigation apparently cleared Thomas of any wrongdoing in the department's eyes; his personnel file indicates he was never disciplined for the Long Crow incident.

• In January 2003, two MPD cops were accused of urinating on an intoxicated man and then leaving him and his female companion outside in freezing temperatures at a Little Earth parking lot off Ogema Place. "We've got a good thing going and then wham, this happens," then-Chief Robert Olson said at the time. "It's just disheartening." Clyde Bellecourt roared at a subsequent press conference, "What happened in our community would never take place at Hennepin and Lake or Edina or Bloomington."

Unfortunately for the MPD, the collective memory at Little Earth is uncommonly long. "We're a tight-knit group," says one resident. "And with that comes old wounds that never heal."



Little Earth is often mistaken for an inner-city reservation, a characterization that pisses off many residents and local Indians. They call it "the compound." It is actually public housing, devised in 1971 as a low-income enclave operated by American Indians. Initially, it was just Section 8 housing funded by the federal Model City program and the Housing and Urban Development office. By 1973 it opened, with one news account quoting a building manager saying that "A strong effort has been made to keep the complex from becoming an Indian ghetto." But almost immediately the complex faced money problems. Over the years, it has survived a number of financial distresses, the prospect of imminent foreclosure, and an 11-year lawsuit with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It is often referred to as the only urban Indian housing complex in America, and to a large degree that's true: Some 96 percent of current residents are Native American. But it's also open to anyone who qualifies for Section 8 housing and can get approved from a waiting list. It features 212 units—efficiencies, one- and two-bedroom apartments, and townhouses with as many as four or five bedrooms. The rents are based on tenants' incomes, which are usually meager. According to Little Earth's official numbers, some 800 residents live there, but even Bill Ziegler concedes that the number is more than 1,000, and some residents say it gets as high as 3,000, with relatives and friends regularly crashing there—sometimes for long periods.

As Faith Bad Moccasin, who is 66 years old and has lived there for 10 years, puts it: "It's the Indian way to take care of your family, but a week turns into two months, and pretty soon the bad elements are living next door."

What this brings is a sense that outsiders, not residents, are inflicting problems on Little Earth. But the first identified American Indian gang in contemporary Minnesota, the Naturals, started here in 1979. Since then, there have been various offshoots of what are historically considered black gangs, like the Native Gangster Disciples and the Native Vice Lords. And there is something to the notion that people come from reservations in search of work or whatever else in the city and end up squatting at Little Earth.

But there is also an element of conflict between residents of different tribal backgrounds. Over the years, as Little Earth has become predominantly Indian, it has historically been Ojibwe-dominated. In recent years, however, members of other tribes, such as Lakota Indians, have moved in, and there are divisions between the differing bands. "But natives want to live among natives," says one resident, "and that's why I live here."

In recent years, as south Minneapolis has seen an influx of Mexican immigrants, the face of Little Earth has changed slightly as Indian and Latino cultures gravitated toward each other. "They're both indigenous peoples," notes Vince Hill, an Ojibwe reporter for the Native American Press/Ojibwe News, "but now you see native tongues dying out"—in some cases replaced by Spanish, or the collective tongue of poor America, hip-hop vernacular.

Geographically, "the compound" comprises a couple of parcels of land in a neighborhood now known as East Phillips, bordered by 24th and 26th streets on the south and north ends, and 18th and Hiawatha Avenues on the west and east. A pedestrian bridge, the main visual element of Little Earth, arches over Cedar Avenue. There are six or seven clusters of sloping, stucco buildings in the west side of the complex. It's not hard to imagine Little Earth as decent public housing, at least cosmetically, back in the day. There are patios, and gates, and patches of yard in some of the clusters. There's a bucolic park on the west side of Cedar Avenue—which runs right through the heart of Little Earth—that appears to epitomize what urban green space can do for a community, complete with playground equipment, public grills, and towering trees. The units on the west side were rehabbed and fitted with central air conditioning units not long ago.



They don't have central air on the east side of Cedar. But they do have a security center, as well as a majority of the compound's 32 surveillance cameras. The dwellings on Ogema Place (the name is Ojibwe for "king" or "leader") have a pervasive air of poverty. They face east toward a high retaining wall that's part of Hiawatha Avenue. On the ground, there are wrecked cars, broken screens, fast-food litter, and an occasional lampshade or abandoned Styrofoam cooler. Judging from the forensic evidence scattered everywhere, the canned beverages of choice include Diet Coke, Bud Ice, and Colt 45.

East side or west, the one unifying theme at Little Earth, besides native heritage, is poverty. Some 80 percent of households are led by single mothers, according to estimates of those who live and work there. "Of the families and individuals currently occupying the units," according to a current Little Earth press release, "99 percent are very low income and 1 percent are low income." Further, "69 percent of the households have annual incomes less than $10,000."

As of 2000, the official population of Census Tract 73.01, which encompasses Little Earth, was 1,733 people in 485 households. Of the roughly 400 renter households, 225 had no car, 206 were below the federal poverty line, 95 were on public assistance, and 49 had no phone service. Demographically, some 1,500 residents were American Indian or mixed-race. More than 58 percent were under the age of 18, and just 11 percent older than 45. Married couples made up only 18 percent of the population, single mothers 45 percent. And of the 950 residents over the age of 16, 9 percent were unemployed and another 41 percent were "not in the labor force"—making for an effective unemployment rate of 50 percent. About 96 percent of the households made less than $25,000 a year.

Going back a decade, MPD maps of violent crime in the area for 1996 and 1997 show a steady wave of aggravated assault, rape, domestic assault, and a handful of homicides. In 1998, some 2,373 serious crimes—such as aggravated assault, rape, or murder—occurred in the Phillips neighborhood, which was a huge part of town before it was split into four separate neighborhoods. A good quarter of those crimes, by MPD estimates, happened near or at Little Earth. (That figure for all of Phillips nearly doubles the total in impoverished north side areas like Jordan and Hawthorne during the same period.)

In 2001, the MPD started keeping statistics for Phillips East, which is a more precise sample, an eight-block area that consists mostly of Little Earth. There were 320 reported crimes in the area that year alone. And nearly every resident recalls a period of slightly longer than six months, from November 2004 to June 2005, when there were five homicides on the Little Earth grounds. Little Earth used to have private security patrol the complex, but for nearly a decade now, off-duty MPD cops have been hired to do so.

"I made 20 calls a night," says Martha Fast Horse of her days working as a dispatcher at Little Earth. (Residents at the complex are hired to monitor security cameras and call police when necessary.) "And you have to make them, even though you know you'll be a target. Otherwise you get the feeling that this stuff will never end."

Rick Thomas, a 25-year MPD veteran, has patrolled Little Earth for several years. Nearly everyone at Little Earth knows him, and he surely knows the place better than most outsiders. He's been there to apply the community-policing touch, too—working with youth programs and sitting in on regular meetings with a Little Earth crime committee.

Thomas, like the MPD itself, inspires vehement if surprisingly varied reactions from the people who live there. Take the 2002 Long Crow episode: Not everybody at Little Earth was outraged by the raid. "I went without sleep for two years living next door to them," attests 30-year resident Lori Ellis of the Long Crows. "Those were types of problems that Rick was good at dealing with.

"I think he just had too much on his plate," she says of Thomas's alleged misconduct. "He's been very effective in dealing with crack houses here, and he's often here overnight. I can understand why something would go wrong." She stops short of a hearty endorsement, though. In general, Ellis says, "I am in-between on Thomas and the cops. I don't have nothing bad to say about them. But I wouldn't use the word 'love' either. I don't know that we're that close."

(Thomas declined to comment to City Pages about the May 26 Vazquez incident, citing MPD policy that forbids officers to discuss ongoing investigations.)

Thomas "has done a lot for the community," wrote Martha Fast Horse in a recent letter to MPD acting Chief Tim Dolan. She went on to recount a 2004 incident involving a group of kids who had beaten up her 15-year-old son. Afterward, "I went over to their unit and nearly knocked the door down pounding on it," Fast Horse wrote. "I am not ashamed to admit that I am a mother bear when it comes to my children, and I was ready to do battle with the whole group. They called the police on me. Rick showed up to save their lives. So, nobody can tell me that he doesn't care about all people equally, even the gang members.



"From where I stood, I could see him coming from the 2501 building where the police substation is housed," Fast Horse continues. "He looked tired like he had been up working all night; I later found out that was in fact the truth. He walked up to me and said, 'Doesn't this ever end?'"

At the same time, numerous younger residents can recall unpleasant run-ins with Thomas. Some of them call him "Mr. Bigguns" in sneering testament to his swagger. "What he does, it creates a lot of tension," says 27-year-old Isaac Dennis St. Clair-Jones, a lifelong resident of Little Earth.

Joho Ellis, who's part of a very distinct minority as an African American living at Little Earth—he lives with his Ojibwe girlfriend—says he's seen Thomas around plenty. "I know him," he chortles. He declines to say more about Thomas specifically, then adds: "Look, most people get out of hand here. But I gotta keep it clean because my friends are black. Too many black people outside my place, and the cops show up. Every time."

Make no mistake: There are a lot of people at Little Earth who despise the cops utterly. (One 19-year-old woman tells me that MPD cops are "the harassers of all native people.") But most residents make at least a practical accommodation with the MPD. They agree among themselves that the problems at Little Earth are so pervasive and so intractable that a police presence is required; they also seem to concur that shoddy treatment at the hands of the MPD is a way of life, the price of the ticket for getting law enforcement when you need it. "There is a fine line between the enforcement that people demand," says Bill Means, an American Indian representative on the city's Police Community Relations Council, "and brutality that comes with that enforcement."

Still, residents call the police when there is serious trouble, even though a certain portion of the callers have outstanding warrants for their own arrest. It happened once to John Goose, 39, who has lived at Little Earth since 1999. "There's a lot of gang activity here," he notes. He called the cops one night earlier this year to report shots fired. By the time they showed up, he had gotten into a fight with his wife—who promptly won that round by telling officers her husband had never paid the fines on a 2003 DWI. Goose spent a month in the county workhouse for that offense.

"Do I regret that I called the cops?" he asks now. "No, man. I wanted the cops here. Tell the truth, I did the right thing. I protected my children and did my time. I don't have to look over my shoulder no more."



One of the more brutal memories MPD Sgt. David Burbank carries around from his days patrolling Little Earth involved the fatal cocaine overdose of a 12-year-old girl. "That's the sad reality of that place," Burbank notes. "How the heck does a 12-year-old get a hold of cocaine, let alone a lethal dose?"

Burbank, who is a Chippewa Indian, worked a beat that included Little Earth for more than two and a half years. During that time, a stint that concluded in October 2005, he was also a member of a local law enforcement consortium called the Native American Gang Task Force. By his own admission, his native status did little to get locals to open up to him. "The biggest problem is that it's always difficult to get somebody to come forward," Burbank says. "Gaining trust is the biggest obstacle."

The feeling is pretty much mutual. When he patrolled the place, Burbank remembers, "You're always looking around. You can see that [gangs] have little scouts out. You show up and there's movement all about the complex, and it's always like, 'where is he going?'"

Burbank says he agrees with residents that much of the criminal element at Little Earth stems from outside forces, not residents. Even so, he notes, gangs constantly jockey for turf at the complex: the Native Mob, Native Gangster Disciples, Native Vice Lords, Project Boyz, and MAKK MOB—which stands for Money Associated Kold-Hearted Killers, Money Over Bitches.



It's the last two, Burbank claims, that have led to a recent uptick in crimes. "It's the 15-to-17-year-old set of kids that claim to be in gangs, but they're really just about trying to act like it," Burbank says, adding that the Project Boyz in particular practice a sort of "guerrilla warfare" without much regard for consequences or codes of conduct. If anything, this spells more random violence than old-school gang activity: "In the Native Mob," he notes, "before you actually tried to do something, you had to ask a higher-up beforehand."

Burbank recalls incidents that still trouble him. One was a double homicide in November 2004 that everyone at Little Earth still talks about, the killing of two Project Boyz by members of the Native Mob. Despite the anguish it caused in the community, he recalls, there was very little cooperation from residents. The police only got one conviction out of the killing, which in turn further damaged the MPD's credibility among American Indians in the city.

Kids regularly play on their elders' historic animosity toward police, Burbank claims: "I confront the kids, and they know what's going on. They tell their grandparents, and turn it into a conflict with the police. So if we even ask anybody what's going on, it becomes that. Cops messing with them. They're just pulling the wool over their parents' eyes.

"In a way, it's a game," Burbank continues. "We're just a piece of the puzzle. There's a lack of male role models, and there's no one there to talk to them. The kids behave bad, and we have to talk to them."

Burbank transferred to another position with the MPD when his stint with the gang task force was up, even though he could have stayed on. "I try to be as professional as I can be, but you have to have your guard up the whole time," he says. "Everyone's looking at you. You can know one household, and the next day you've got to arrest four of their next-door neighbors. You try not to let that influence the relationship you have with the family you know. It does take its toll."

Burbank sees the problems at Little Earth as intractable, the kind of troubles police have no way to solve. By the time he left the assignment, "I was at the end of my rope. You feel like you're moving in circles. You clean up one part, and then something happens somewhere else."



Acting MPD Chief Tim Dolan maintains that the department only puts its best and brightest on the job at places like Little Earth. "If you're cynical about answering calls to a place like that, we're not going to put you there," Dolan says, adding that he patrolled there in the early 1980s. "There was an attraction when I was working there. The most ambitious cops wanted to work there. It was troubling, and difficult, but ultimately rewarding. They are a proud people, and if the cops were hustling, they appreciated it." And it's working, he adds, citing as evidence a trend toward fewer crimes, yet more calls to police, at the complex in recent years. (By the MPD's own accounting, however, "calls to service" have tapered off there recently, while crimes involving theft, assault, narcotics, or murder have increased. In 2002, the total number of serious crimes reported was 73; in 2005, it was 92.)

"It's not any different than some of the other areas around town," Dolan says of the place. "I'd say 99 percent of the people there are just trying to get along."
Getting along at Little Earth is often a full-time job. Lifelong resident Isaac Dennis St. Clair-Jones recalls his own experiences with crime and cops at Little Earth. When he was 12, he claims, his head was bashed into a brick wall by a cop on the northwest side of the complex. His offense? He had laughed out loud with a group of friends after the officer had slipped on some ice. "I always wanted to be a cop, too, but not after that," he says.



St. Clair-Jones got involved in a gang at Little Earth, but got out a few years ago, he says, because he has two children now. Tonight he's "smoked a couple fatties" and plans to chill at home with his family. He recalls an incident last summer when his children, who are seven and nine, were sleeping in the front room of their apartment with some of their cousins. At about 4:00 a.m., St. Clair-Jones says, a gunshot blew out the window, and glass shattered all over the kids.

"I pulled the slug out of the wall, and it looked like a .357," he says, adding that he learned later it was a gang shooting gone awry. "I wrapped the thing in a bag and took it to the police station. The cop just looked at me and threw it in the garbage."

He motions toward a gathering of teenagers nearby who are swilling from a bottle of brandy. "It was probably one of those guys," he says.

Two of them are from Little Earth originally, though they now live in Roseville. They both look to be about 17, and they come to Little Earth to party on the weekends.

"I had to get out of here," one of them explains without any hint of irony. Pretty soon he and rest of the group drift off into the recesses of the clusters of apartments, looking for a party where there's booze.

A little while later they reappear nearby, not far from where Vinnie is cradling her niece. "I have an uncle in Lincoln, Nebraska," she says wistfully, prompted by nothing in particular. Right now she's taking classes to become a nurse. "I have to get out of here, as soon as I can," she says. "These projects are no good."



source: http://citypages.com/databank/27/1338/article14559.asp

Fiskars Grant e-mail discussion

Brad, how did you happen to intercept the deliver of the tools sent by the Fiskars Corporation? I know they had my address correct, since it is in the letter Peace with Justice Gardeners sent them, and since they did make some of their first deliveries to my house.

Thanks,

Llen
Love Life, Earth, Neighbor
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lynne-
The tools from Fiskar arrived on a day when you
apparently weren’t available. I understand the
delivery men knocked on your door. They tried to find
you and when unable, called Paul Wichmann whose name
was on the garden shed as the contact person. Paul was
out of town and they reached him on his cell phone. I
think he may have tried to contact Andy, who was also
unable to help with the delivery. He then called me
and said the men wanted to get going and would I
please help with this delivery. I interrupted my day
and went over to the garden, unloaded 16 bundles of
tools, in the hot sun I might add, and put them in the
shed. Neither Paul nor I knew anything nor had been
told anything about the Fiskars Grant at this time,
though we are both on the Garden Steering Committee.
We only knew someone was trying to deliver tools,
which the guy claimed belonged at the garden address,
however, they did not have the name of the garden,
East Phillips Community 17th Ave. garden right either.
There was nothing mentioning East Phillips Community
at all, though that was on the garden shed and this
confused them. The garden was only called Organic 17th
Ave, sort of generic and could be anywhere. Our
actions, contrary to your suggestive remarks, were
entirely innocent.

Our simply helping out some delivery truck guys is not
worth your getting “depressed, sad, and angry about
[our] recent actions”. Or your getting “a stomach ache
or crying”. (quotes from your emails). Nor should this
cause you to create elaborate conspiracy theories
about some of us and send them all over town, creating
the impression that some great evil is going on here.
Why didn’t you just ask these questions weeks ago
instead of stewing about this?

Most of us do not have time for “listening groups” of
people who have no involvement here and do not know
anything about the history of the garden and the
effort of many to create open and democratic rules,
which the steering committee has followed without
fail. Unless these people were committed to real
democracy and not just your personal friends, as
appears to be the primary target of your email list,
there would be no point anyway. Many of these people
have never come to the people (me and others) whom you
spread stories about, to hear our point of view. Why,
then, should we value their integrity? Point is: the
gardeners have done nothing that you have not been a
witness to or signed on to yourself.

Also no one would ever think of “yelling at” the
proprietor of Mother Earth Garden Store. I have no
idea what you are talking about and why you would ever
suggest that. I think those of us who know you have
suggested this to a large number of people have a
right to be both amazed and angry that you would imply
that is what is going on here.

Lynne, no one else is emailing people all over town
and there is no one spreading rumors, except you. You
need to stop spreading these suggestive
misrepresentations and innuendoes about others. All
the garden meetings have been democratic and open to
view. Nothing has been done by the steering committee
that has not been done openly. While you have not been
willing to include the rest of the gardeners who are
not your renters in the writing of this grant and have
refused to offer copies to the steering committee, we
have been entirely open with you. You have come to all
our meetings. We were not notified nor invited to any
of your meetings over the winter, when this grant was
written, committing the gardeners to things without
our knowledge.

If there is a problem here, it would seem to be your
extreme distrust of your neighbors and fellow
gardeners. All I did was unload a truck at Paul’s
request. He is, after all, the chair of the steering
committee. If this was a problem for you, you could
have just asked a few weeks ago instead of going into
orbit over this and involving all sorts of people in a
series of veiled accusations against your fellow
gardeners.

I think much would be helped if you could just
honestly inquire and share information and stop
attributing the worst to some of your neighbors. Next
time I’ll tell the trucks to go away. I want no
apologies or lengthy commentaries on community and
democracy in response to these remarks. I am into
doing democracy and community, not just talking about
them.
Brad

PS: Lynne, you write in one of these letters: "I am
happy to answer any questions you have about this
letter." Yet the Garden Steering Committee has
repeatedly asked for a copy of the grant, once we
realized its existence. We also do not know who the
Peace and Justice Gardeners are. We need to know these
things and have asked them repeatedly, but you have
refused to answer them. Yet in this letter from some
time ago you claim to be willing to do so and seem to
be accusing others of hiding things. What things these
are I have no idea, but you need to honor your remark
that you will answer questions.

The Peace and Justice group does not have jurisdiction
over the garden and must come through the recognized
garden group, those who signed the garden use
agreement (you also signed this agreement) and their
elected steering committee. If there is a grant
connected with the garden and having any requirements
of the gardeners or relationship to the garden, the
least you should do is inform them (us), but it is not
appropriate or even legal that the gardeners have had
no involvement in the creation of this grant and its
implementation, whatever its obligations are. But the
least we can do is know what they are and try to meet
them. You appear to have committed us to things
without our knowledge, though we don't even know. And
since we know nothing about this, we can't even say a
relevant thank you. You need to live up to your words
and your signing of the garden use agreement, namely
commitments to openness, notification, democratic
process and accountability. No amount of
"mediation/conflict resolution" can take the place of
living up to one’s agreements.
Brad
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 22, 2006

Dear Brad Pass (and 2006 Gardeners and supporters),

I glanced over, but have not yet found time to read your email, Brad.

In the meantime, you may want to know:

When I was doing magazine recycling at home (1), I found one pair of Fiskars hand pruners in my recycling basket. As you know, I had been upset because some of the tools were lost and broken, and felt you were, to some extent, responsible for not following through with a means for checking tools in and out from the shed. Afraid I may not be making myself clear, I will spell this out further. This means that I was upset with lost tools AND that I, myself, was responsible for at least one of those lost tools.

I did also find my looseleaf notebook. It was in one of my portable file cabinets, not the blue basket I had taken to the meeting. (I had implied that you might have taken it from the garden.)

Inside of the looseleaf I found:

* The lists of Fiskar¹s grant award "packages". With these lists, Paul W. and I updated the inventory. (There is only one lost tool at this point; a little hand trowel with numbers marking inches etched into the metal.) I gave Paul a copy of the inventory, and will put one copy in the blue notebook in the shed.
* The garden application and $20 bill from a gardener.


In addition, in one of my emails I indicated that the Fiskars grant is worth $3100. Actually, looking at the Fiskar¹s tool price list, it is more like $2100

Well, so there all that is.

My apologies. Especially for voicing suspicions and implied accusations that were, to large extent, my own fault. Sort of the worse kind of thing a person can do, actually. May as well be honest about that. To lose stuff and then publicly imply someone else took it as further justification for distrusting that person is pretty danged destructive. Not as bad as murder. But bad. I think all the great spiritual teachers say to falsely accuse one¹s neighbor is a kind of murder, since it can kill off reputations and community cohesion. I know I am getting preachy here. So I will leave it at that.

I hope a person gets to apologize several times in the same week, since I need to do just that. I dread to think that I¹ll have to make more apologies in the future, but it wouldn¹t surprise me.

Regarding your upset about my spreading ³conspiracy theories² ³all over town²: the people who are getting these letters are: some of the 17th Ave. gardeners (those whose emails I have), EPIC community elders (Wenji and Vanhalla), and funders with some civic responsibility for the gardens (Corrie Zoll from Green Institute, and Robert Thompson from Neighborhood Revitalization).

In any case, I think you have won two rounds of emails. So the score is 2-0 in your favor. Well, unless we score according to another system. Such as for each point won within an email. In which case the score, unfortunately for me, is more like 5-0 your favor.

I hope "all over town" doesn't find out how poorly I am faring in the debate so far. Please don't spread it beyond town into the neighboring states and countries. I would really rather only a limited number of people find out. Until my score improves significantly.

I will read and respond to your letter as soon as time allows. I am committed to working through these misunderstandings.

Also, I plan to pull ahead on the scoreboard.

Sincerely,

Llen
-------------------------------------------------------------

25 June 06

Dear Paul:

Gardeners:
Rebekah Teague: 721-2753
Sheryle Batcher: 724-4089
Brandy Kyllonen: 597-3559
Mark: 651-341-2278

Danny & Caroline: I don't have a number. They live across from the garden
Other residents have expressed interest in "cooperative plot" wherein we all
work together and share the food.

May all gardeners have access to the contact numbers for all gardeners?
This would facilitate communication and democracy.

Fiskars Grant:
Paul, I think it needs to be clear that the 17th Ave. Gardeners Steering
Committee did not write, and are not responsible for the grant. Regarding
your request for more information, may I suggest a conversation with the
Peace with Justice Gardeners to answer questions and fulfill obligations.
We have the grant proposal. I would like ground rules for implementation as
well as contacts with Fiskars. I am available for a meeting with you and
anyone else regarding the grant at a time convenient to you. The people who
helped with the grant should be there. Megan, Andy, & Matt B., if possible.
Mondays and Tuesdays are best, I believe. (megan & andy are out of town the
rest of the week)


Sincerely,
Llen
-------------------------------------------------------------
My note:
Lynne and the 17th Avenue Gardeners DID have a meeting. Lynne was voted to be excluded from any leadership at the garden for no less than TWO YEARS, because she applied for a grant without EPC/17th Avenue Gardeners permission. Lynne contends there was no Steering Committee in existence when she applied for the grant. EPC believes that the previous years steering committee would still be in charge until the next election.

Lynne is working to mediate with the garden group. Regardless of other goals within Peace and Justic Organic Gardeners, this seems to be of primary concern. If Lynne has no authority in the garden, she may lose significant garden space and a say in whether it remains Organic. ( or any say at all for that matter )

I feel she will work to create her own garden plots on available land resources she has available. Therefore, I predict a plot will be established next to her 2408 17th Avenue duplex. ( as I live in 2406)

Bacteria Turn Styrofoam into Biodegradable Plastic

Bacteria are everywhere, silently going about their business of breaking down cellulose, fermenting foods or fixing nitrogen in the soil, among a host of other activities. Given their ubiquity and diversity of functions, biotechnologists have been searching for new uses for different strains of the microscopic organisms, such as consuming oil spills or even capturing images. Now biologists at the University College Dublin in Ireland have found that a strain of Pseudomonas putida can exist quite happily on a diet of pure styrene oil--the oil remnant of superheated Styrofoam--and, in the process, turn the environmental problem into a useful, biodegradable plastic.

Kevin O'Connor and his European colleagues turned the polystyrene into an oil through pyrolysis--a process that heats the petroleum-based plastic to 520 degrees Celsius in the absence of oxygen. This results in a chemical cocktail made up of more than 80 percent styrene oil plus low volumes of other toxicants. The researchers then fed this brew to P. putida CA-3, a special strain of a common soil microbe, fully expecting that the oil would have to be further purified in order to enable bacterial growth.

But the bacteria thrived on this new diet, turning 64 grams of undistilled styrene oil into nearly 3 grams of additional bacteria. In the process, the bacteria stored 1.6 grams of the energy of the styrene oil as a biodegradable plastic called polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHA. This plastic can stand up to heat but also breaks down more naturally in the environment than petroleum-based products. Thus, though the biology-powered process results in some toxic byproducts such as toluene and requires significant energy to drive the pyrolysis, it fuels hopes that Styrofoam--and the polystyrene molecule that makes it--can become more environmentally friendly. This would be good news for the U.S., which produced three million tons of polystyrene in 2000, according to the EPA, and threw away 2.3 million tons of the stuff, consigning the waste to rest for long years in landfills. The PHA from this process could be turned to more productive uses; it is already being used to make everything from forks to vitamins. And the process might not just be useful for getting rid of disposable cups. "Due to the general applicability of pyrolysis for plastic conversion to an oil and the large number of microorganisms capable of PHA accumulation from a vast array of molecules, the principle of the process described here can be applied for the recycling of any petrochemical plastic waste," the scientists claim in the paper presenting their findings in the April 1 issue of Environmental Science & Technology. Apparently, bacteria recycle, too.

By David Biello

source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0007B0AE-88AF-13FF-88AF83414B7F0000