The Alley Newspaper

On July 2, the City of Minneapolis announced a new effort to deal with the open-air drug markets that plague the city, especially the neighborhoods served by The Alley. By the time you read this, the announcement will be a month old, and we will hopefully have some idea of how the effort is going. […]

I recently attended the 2026 Nonprofit Leadership Conference, hosted by the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. During the opening keynote address, Ryan Vasquez (Executive Director of the Minneapolis Highrise Representative Council) commented on how important it is to develop friendship when you don’t need them. The middle of a crisis, he said, is a lousy time

Last month I wrote about the need to use power wisely, and the temptations that everyone faces when they get power over others. Power can be used for our own prestige and comfort, or for the good of others. We have plenty of examples every day of each of those options playing out in front

I recently reread James H. Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree, which looks at the parallels between Jesus’ crucifixion and the lynchings that occurred during the Jim Crow era (1880-1940). Cone expressed his astonishment that no American theologian, white or black, saw the similarities between an innocent man being tortured and executed with the

Food Deserts are neighborhoods where residents lack adequate access to food. Residents of a country as wealthy as the United States shouldn’t have to worry about getting enough to eat. Residents of a country that produces as much food as the United States shouldn’t have to worry about getting enough to eat. In other words,

Many years ago, I heard a debate about whether Greece’s Golden Age was represented by the great poets such as Homer, or by the philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Why should this matter to us now, thousands of years later? Because it might give us some insight into today’s situation. Homer gave us

I disagree with Mayor Jacob Frey on many topics, but I agreed with what he said during his press conference following the shooting of Renee Good. There’s so much to say about the current situation, but the part I want to focus on is Frey’s call for a peaceful response. We can debate if that’s

The Book of Genesis tells that in the beginning, God brought order out of chaos. We’ve been trying to do the same thing ever since, with varying degrees of success. For the most part, we seem to do okay, creating enough structure for society to function, but not enough to crush everyone. But even accomplishing

I think everyone is familiar with the magic trick where a coin disappears from the magician’s hand and then reappears out of someone’s ear. When we were little, we believed the coin really had disappeared. As we got older, we knew the magician had simply used slight of hand, and they were still holding the

I recently read The Cross and Lynching Tree by James Cone. Cone was one of the first and most respected Black Liberation Theologians who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, arguing that the dominant Christian theology denied the experiences of minorities and had nothing to offer marginalized peoples. The Cross and the Lynching Tree was