Wednesday, Nov 18, 2009

TTT NOV 18: MENTAL ILLNESS: Not So Far from Home As We May Think

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NOV 18: MENTAL ILLNESS: Not So Far from Home As We May Think

Victims of mental illness have never had an easy time of it. It’s difficult enough coping with the demons that haunt their minds and distort their dreams and world view. Delusions and demons of illnesses such as clinical and bi-polar depression, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can lead them to engage in self-destructive behavior – addiction, suicide and violence toward the ones they love most. In worst cases, they take it to the streets where, when confronted by law enforcement, they have died at the hands of police officers ill-trained to deal with mentally ill men and women, war-torn veterans and mothers, abuse victims and chemically unbalanced brains.

Cops have killed too many of these victims. Society fears them, sometimes for cause, more often unnecessarily. In the past, we simply warehoused them with little in the way of adequate treatment – counseling and proper medication; with the closing of state institutions, we now leave many of them to wander the streets, homeless, jobless and refuse to fund the relief – treatment and acceptance - they so desperately need and deserve. The shooting to death of Barbara Schneider by Minneapolis police officers several years ago, spawned an organized community response to cease such callous overreaction and a foundation in her name. One response has been the creation of crisis intervention team training.

This week, _TTT’s_ ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN talk with three of the Barbara Schneider Foundation’s principals about where the movement is taking us.

GUESTS:

• MARK ANDERSON - Executive Director, Barbara Schneider Foundation l and the Mental Health Crisis Response Institute

• CHARLES JENSEN - Mental health advocate with Barbara Schneider Foundation; 12 years homeless; arrested 89 times, including seven felony arrests

• PATTI KRESSLEY - police officer(13 years); MA, counseling psychology; Instructor, Argosy University

• “RUTH” - Mental Health Consumer

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Wednesday, Nov 11, 2009

TTT Nov 11: GOVERNING THE SCHOOL SYSTEMS: Who's in Charge? Who Should Be?

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NOV 11: GOVERNING THE SCHOOL SYSTEMS: Who's in Charge? Who Should Be?

The departure of two urban school superintendents in the same year, both Bill Green in Minneapolis, and Meria Carstarphen in St. Paul after a relatively short time in their positions, not to mention the continuing issue of achievement gaps, resegregation, state vs. local funding bases, teacher contracts and accountability, the politics of central office control vs. site-based management alternatives raise very serious questions over the best constructs for K-12/P-12 school governance.

Why have charter schools with their far less restrictive covenants become so popular among public school parents, despite data that show little or, in some cases, less academic success than traditional public classrooms? Is something much more fundamental at play here? Is the inadequate funding and public attention paid to K-12 education at all connected to the separation of education, in general, from all other aspects of the social contract and public policy? Did we create a mess of monsters with the creation of the independent school districts, essentially segregating education from all other aspects of life in our communities?

TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN examine those questions and query representatives of school boards, parents, teachers and policy observers as we begin a conversation about where school governance should go to make education the truly important and integrated system most everyone sees as grooming every next generation of citizens and leaders.

GUESTS:

• PAM COSTAIN - Minneapolis School Board member; former Chair

• ELONA STREET-STEWART - Vice Chair, St. Paul Board of Education

• LAURA BLOOMBERG - former Deputy Director, HHH Center for School Change; Director, Center for Integrative Leadership (HHH Institute/Carlson School); fmr school board member, Mahtomedi Schools

• MARY CATHRYN RICKER - President, St. Paul Federation of Teachers

• DENNIS SCHAPIRO - former Minneapolis school board member; Founder, Jola Publications; Editor/Publisher, Public School Montessorian

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Wednesday, Nov 04, 2009

TTT NOV 4: WOMEN IN THE MILITARY

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NOV 4: WOMEN IN THE MILITARY: Trauma Inside and Out

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More American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine."

Those words from the leaf of a stunning book, The Lonely Soldier, by Helen Benedict, and describing the still-burning issues that shame our military and civilian attitudes toward women serving in the military - both highlighted in two coming performances of At War with Women, starring and about Chante Wolf, in St. Paul – one on Veterans Day(Nov 11) at Hamline University's Sundin Hall, the other Friday the 13th at Macalester College’s Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel - revealing the traumas women soldiers and veterans suffer in and after combat and military service.*

PTSD - combat and otherwise - are often no different from those of the military men we hear about all the time, themselves often forced to suck it up rather than seek assistance for their nightmares and the violence memories trigger with little warning in the middle of the night. Add the dimensions of sexual predation and humiliation by combat comrades and the recipe is disaster.

TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN talk with a woman veteran, author Helen Benedict and another advocate in search of deeper and wider understanding of the plight of women in the military.

GUESTS:

• CHANTE WOLF - US Air Force Veteran, Persian Gulf War; Veterans for Peace activist and Photographer

• HELEN BENEDICT - Author, The Lonely Soldier (nonfiction); The Edge of Eden (fiction) - both about military women/families

• ESTHER OURAY - Director, At War with Women; Associate Artist/Puppeteer, Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre; advocate for art working on peace and justice issues.

*No website is available for this beyond the play venues

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Wednesday, Oct 28, 2009

TTT OCT 28: MplsCandidates09

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OCT 28: ELECTIONS 2009 #3: Minneapolis #2- Candidates in Review

In this, our last of three programs covering Twin Cities elections, journalists from around Minneapolis come together to talk about that city's Mayoral, Ward, Park Board, and Board of Estimate and Taxation contests, which are the hottest, the most obscure, and who may or may not deserve much more scrutiny that local media are giving them two weeks away from the November 3rd election. Questions: • Does Mayor RT Rybak face any serious competition. • How will Ranked Choice Voting affect the races? • Will this new voting system increase or decrease voter turnout? • Or will the lack of any serious competition and thorough media coverage of this year's elections affect turnout more than the system? • What role is the ballot proposal to eliminate the Board of Estimate and Taxation playing in city contests for Mayor, the Councilhttp://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/council/, Park Board and Board of Estimate itself? Some observers say plenty!

TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN will kick it around with our colleagues on which issues are fodder for which races and why incumbents are under fire by several candidates in this first year of Ranked Choice Voting as the tool for electing Minneapolis leaders. And we'll hear snippets of campaign speeches, candidate forums and interviews from key races around the city.

GUESTS:

• AHNDI FRIDELL - Director, KFAI News

• CHARLES HALLMAN - Minnesota Spokesman Recorder

• PAUL DEMKO - Staff Reporter, Minnesota Independent

• CHRISTOF TRAUDES - Staff Reporter, Southwest/Downtown Journal

• CHRIS STELLER - Staff Reporter, Minnesota Independent

• STEVE BRANDT - Staff Reporter, StarTribune City Hall Beat

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Wednesday, Oct 21, 2009

TTT October 21: CITY ELECTIONS 2009 #2: St. Paul Decides on Instant Runoff Voting

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Like Minneapolis in 2006, enough Saint Paul residents signed petitions to place a Charter amendment on the General Election ballot asking voters to approve a new Instant Runoff Voting (Ranked Choice Voting) system for city elections. Unlike Minneapolis, St. Paul's City Council, armed with a City Attorney's opinion allowing it to deny access to the ballot until the question of the system's constitutionality was settled, initially refused to follow the will of the signatories while they waited for the outcome of a court case challenging the Minneapolis system. The district court, finally affirmed by the Minnesota Supreme Court, upheld the system's constitutionality - and the St. Paul Council was then forced by law to place the question on this year's General Election ballot. In Minneapolis, the City Council supports the idea; in St. Paul, a majority of its councilmembers does not.

Meanwhile, for the first time in its history, Minneapolis had no need for a primary election this year; across the river while St. Paul's September primary drew less than 5% of eligible voters, a turnout figure cited by RCV/IRV supporters as one of the reasons to conflate city elections into one general election and allow all candidates to compete on a single ballot.

TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL queries advocates on both sides of St. Paul's campaign to determine if St. Paul voters should or should not go the way of Minneapolis and approve its Ranked Choice Voting system.

GUESTS:

• KATHY LANTRY-President, St. Paul's City Council

• JOHN HOTTINGER-former State Senate Majority Leader (supporter of IRV/RCV)

• JEANNE MASSEY-Executive Director, FairVote Minnesota - parent of Better Ballot St. Paul

• CHUCK REPKE-Co-chair, No Bad Ballots Committee - a Saint Paul group opposing IRV.

• RACHEL SMITH - Program Director, Excellence in Election Administration in the Humphrey Institute's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance

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Wednesday, Oct 14, 2009

TTT OCT 14: CITY ELECTIONS 2009:Minneapolis#1

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CITY ELECTIONS 2009: Minneapolis RCV/IRV Primer and BET Ballot Question

2009 is the year of Minnesota municipal elections, and among the most interesting of them are those in Minneapolis and St. Paul. This week and October 28th, we talk about Minneapolis election processes, candidates and the two ballot issues. We will talk about St. Paul's election issues October 21st.

Part One: Minneapolis implements its new system called Ranked Choice Voting (AKA Instant Run-off Voting), passed by voters two years ago and eliminating the primary election in the process. How will this work? How about multiple seat boards and commissions? How to make sure you get your vote counted? Our guests explain it all.

(Wonder where you vote? Find your PRECINCT.)

SAMPLE BALLOT (Ward 2 in this example)

PART ONE GUESTS:

• PAT O'CONNOR - Interim Minneapolis City Elections Director

• ONA KELLER - Minneapolis RCV Outreach Coordinator

Part Two: Minneapolis voters will decide whether or not to retain its unique Board of Estimate and Taxation. The Question: "Should the City of MInneapolis adopt a change in its charter to the composition of the Board of Estimate and Taxation so that the Board's membership consists of the members of the City Council, with the actions of the Board subject to the powers and duties of the Mayor?”

PART TWO GUESTS:

• DON FRASER - former Mayor of Minneapolis, former US Representative (*against BET abolition)

• JOAN NIEMIEC - former Minneapolis City Councilmember; Chair, Minneapolis League of Women Voters City Governance Study Committee; Access League Reports and Positions on City Governance Issues HERE (for BET abolition)

• _AND YOU!_ CALL 612-341-0980 and Talk to Us! Can't get us on the radio? Stream us LIVE and LATER

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Wednesday, Oct 07, 2009

TTT OCT 7: MediaTalk

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WEDS. OCT 7- 11AM: MINNESOTA MEDIA: Mainstream No More?

Minnesota's media landscape continues to shift-and not so glacially as generationally. Aging boomers cling to the printed word, some news and talk sources and the 10 o'clock news as younger consumers increasingly get their news and information from their computers and cell phones - when they care to find it at all. The Twin Cities dailies slipped away from reliably family-owned newspapers to never-satisfied Wall-Street controlled profit centers. Meanwhile, alternative outlets, some broadcast, some online are filling the vacuum in local and regional news coverages and blogs have replaced print columnists as opinion-makers.

TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN toss around past, present and future upheavals in Twin Cities and Minnesota media with four seasoned writers and producers in local and national journalism, themselves having been tossed about by the volatile industry they and their readers relied on for a stable sources of news and information we all need to govern ourselves. Now what?

GUESTS:

• NICK COLEMAN - StarTribune Sunday Op-Ex columnist and now free-lancing

• JUDITH YATES BORGER - retired Pioneer Press reporter, now novelist; author of _Where's Billie?_http://tinyurl.com/WheresBillie

• KATE STANLEY - former columnist and editorial writer, StarTribune; now free-lance writer/consultant

• JIM LEINFELDER - free-lance television producer; field producer for CNN, ABC, NBC, others

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