Un hearing

Continued from page 1 heard testimony included Juan E. Méndez of Argentina, and Dr. Tracie L. Keesee, an American who is the co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity (CPE). Six people gave testimony about the effects of solitary confinement, particularly on minors, followed by a coalition of families that gave testimony on having had a loved one killed by police.

Lucina Kayee, executive director of Atlas of Blackness, helped organize speakers who were willing to testify about their experiences in solitary confinement. Kayee says she personally experienced solitary confinement several times when she ended up in the shelter system as a youth.

Antonio Williams, who helps people of color reintegrate into society after completing their prison sentence, asked the UN to “put the full pressure” on the United States to ban the use of solitary confinement not only for children, but for everyone.

“You don’t ever stop thinking about it,” Williams said of his time in solitary confinement. “You just learn to kind of suppress it a little bit, so it doesn’t overtake what you’re doing in the moment. Prisons, in and of themselves, are an unnatural environment. Everything that makes us humans, prisons try to stomp that out of you.”

Williams spent 14 years in prison, approximately four years of which were spent in solitary confinement. He says the experiences of solitary confinement still deeply affect him. Loud noises startle him, and the sound of keys makes him uncomfortable since officers jingled their

“The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board

Recreation Board could have placed [Hiawatha] on the National Register itself, but they failed to do that,” Dean pointed out. “The majority of people who showed up at the Park Board meetings were against the master plan,” cited the pandemic and the unrest that stemmed from George Floyd’s murder.

“And we didn’t really know about it to begin with. And maybe if we had, we could have had more input and ideas to contribute.” Singh said she polled 20 area businesses; all except one of them had heard about it.

The agency says they might not have done outreach to those businesses because of staffing constraints—the project has only one designated outreach person—and the pandemic, which limited in-person outreach opportunities. To handle the staffing shortage, the agency said they prioritized conducting outreach at the exact locations where the stations will be built. They also relied on those working at the businesses to get the word to the owners.

Despite the lack of outreach, Golden Thyme owner Mychael Wright still thinks the project is a good idea. “When I did take the bus on University Avenue, there was an express [bus] that I could take. If they have the express [on Selby], I think that’s great,” said Wright, who adds that the only downside is people may have to walk farther to get where they are going. “But people will walk six blocks in order to take the Green Line, so in the same vein, a block or two isn’t going to hurt anybody.”

At the groundbreaking, Rep. Frank keychains as they made their rounds.

Also, the complete lack of touch for years while in solitary confinement has made all human touch something he has to force himself to do. Williams credits writing with saving his life while in solitary, saying he wrote narratives about the conditions inside the prisons he was in, even though his writing caused retaliation from the guards.

Beginning as a teen, Myon Burrell spent 18 years in prison for a crime he maintains he did not commit. “When I first came into [solitary], I just remember hearing people recalled Dean. In March, the Metropolitan Council also approved the Park Board’s Hiawatha Master Plan. Under state law, the Met Council must review longrange plans for regional parks, and if approved, then regional

Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis and chair of the state House transportation committee, said he anticipates funding three more lines as part of the transportation package this session. The three lines will serve Central and University avenues, between downtown Minneapolis and Blaine to the north, Rice and Robert streets between Little Canada and West St. Paul, and Como and Maryland avenues between downtown Minneapolis and Sun Ray Transit Center in St. Paul. Metro Tran- funding can be sought. However, according to its website, “Golfing is not considered an eligible regional activity and therefore not eligible for regional funding.”

That said, Dean noted that the Park Board may have a hard time implementing its plan unless they work with those who are opposed to it, especially raising the necessary funds, roughly $90 billion, to enact their Hiawatha Plan.

Dean says that their next step is to raise the community awareness of what will happen place next year. They plan to maintain transit service on Lake and Marshall avenues, where they can continue having a lane of traffic going in each direction during construction. to the Hiawatha golf course if the Park Board doesn’t reverse course with its master plan.

However, on Selby Avenue, intersections where B Line stations are proposed — at Hamline, Lexington, Victoria, Dale, Arundel, Western and John Ireland — will close for one month each. Dale and Arundel will close sometime between the Fourth of July and the state fair, while the remaining intersections will close sometime between May 15 and the Fourth of July weekend.

“It is on the National Register,” he concluded. “The public becomes stewards of this property and because we’re stewards that means we have to do the right thing. [The Park Board] is not doing justice to this community in insisting on destroying a cultural and historical golf course.” vice changes that will take effect in late 2024. All Route 21 branches except the E branch will be discontinued, meaning the 21 will only operate between the Uptown Transit Station and Minnehaha Avenue. The Selby Avenue segment of Route 21 would instead be served by a new Route 60 that operates between the State Capitol and the Midway area, with drivers taking their breaks at Pascal and St. Anthony, where the 21C currently stops. yelling and screaming and crying,” Burrell said.

“Me, as a child, it was a super devastating experience because I’d never seen grown men be so hopeless and have nobody to come to their aid.” Burrell says he still has to sleep with towels wrapped around his head, since doing so was the only way he could block out the fluorescent lights in his cell to fall asleep.

Elizer Darris was given a life sentence as a juvenile for first-degree homicide and was immediately placed in solitary. He later got the life sentence overturned on appeal.

After being given a life sentence, Darris stockpiled sleeping pills. He says he was “shocked” to wake up after taking an overdose of pills one night. He lost a friend in prison, who was also sentenced as a juvenile to a life sentence, to suicide. Darris says sit is accepting comments on where stops for the F Line–the Central and University Avenue line–should be located until May 14.

Construction service changes

Metro Transit plans to start building out the B Line stations the week of May 15. Construction will occur in two phases: construction of the stations and revising travel lanes east of Hiawatha will take place this year, while construction of the stations and travel lanes west of Hiawatha will take juveniles in adult correctional facilities are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than adults.

“The UN should issue a position statement calling for a commitment of all nations to end solitary commitment for minors and condemning such practices as torture,” he said.

“The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has already stated as much. I also call upon the UN Security Council to add solitary confinement as the seventh great violation of children and to express a commitment to ending the practice.”

The second group to testify to the UN representatives was a coalition of families who had a loved one slain by police in Minnesota. The group included Toshira Garraway Allen, Valerie Castile, Courteney Ross, and Mark and Cindy Sundberg, among others.

Mark Sundberg noted that Minneapolis was much smaller than the other large cities where UN EMLER was conducting hearings on their tour, such as New York, saying Minnesota should be known for beautiful lakes but was now known for “cops that kill people of color.”

McLean knows that the testimony for UN EMLER will not change things overnight, but he is hopeful something could come out of the testimony, noting how the Obama administration sometimes incorporated suggestions from experts on incarceration.

“We know there’s no way that these experts are going to say something and things magically change,” McLean said. “But with the current government, they might consider some of the things the experts say.”

In the meantime, between Hamline and Western, buses will run on Marshall Avenue and stop at every other block, as opposed to at every block as they do now on Selby.

Between Western and John Ireland, eastbound buses will run on Concordia and make no stops, while westbound buses will run on Marshall and make a stop at Farrington. The agency hopes to return the 21 to Selby Avenue before the state fair begins but emphasizes that they will not return Route 21 to Selby until stations at the six intersections are completed.

Local service changes

The project will result in local ser-

The agency does not plan to operate local service routes on Lake Street between Minnehaha and the Mississippi River, as well as on Marshall Avenue between the Mississippi River and Snelling Avenue. The agency has no plans to allow B Line riders on that segment to make “request stops,” where drivers can let riders on and off the bus in between designated stops in the evening, citing the need to keep buses moving. Drivers who feel safe doing so may make stops for riders to get on and off between designated stops in the evening, if they request it.

They also plan to decide the fate of Route 53, a currently-suspended limited-stop bus route that operated between Uptown Transit Station and the state’s Lafayette office complex, closer to when the B Line opens in 2024. H. Jiahong Pan welcomes reader comments at hpan@spokesmanrecorder.com.