Fashion for all shapes and sizes

ally been really good. All the businesses in the strip mall are family owned. They have been very welcoming to me. I’ve done collaborations with Down the Street Nutrition, where the owner had a ladies’ night. She would help them get pampered and then they came here to the boutique. They’d purchase pieces from me, and I gave them some style tips. So, they’ve been really welcoming.

MSR: What inspired you to start your business?

NW: What inspired me was my grandmother. I’m named after my grandmother. She was very stylish. She stepped wherever she went, even to the grocery store. She instilled in us to always look our best, no matter our size, especially if we’re plus. As women, we really have to make sure we look our best because there’s a stigma [with plus-size women]. She was our style icon. So that’s what inspired me. On top of that, I don’t like not being able to see or wear fashionable, plus-size clothing for women my age, and for women of color.

MSR: Where do you get your clothing from and what are your bestselling items?

NW: I get my clothing from different manufacturers. A lot of them are based in LA, so sometimes I’ll fly out there if we need to buy in bulk. If not, we shop online from different manufacturers. Our jumpsuits and bodysuits are our bestselling merchandise.

MSR: What has been your biggest challenge in owning your own business?

NW: To be completely honest, it’s purchasing a sign. Signs range anywhere from an idea to create a hotel and spa in Stillwater. It will be a staycation that’s far enough to get away, but still close enough to where you can go home and see your children and loved ones. I want it to be somewhere where women of color are able to go and feel safe and feel good. Because

$8,000 to $12,000. I’ve been applying for different grants and stuff like that, to help get established. I’d say being a standalone [business] has also been a challenge. It’s not like when you’re in a mall where you know everybody going into the mall will walk by your storefront.

MSR: What’s been the most rewarding part of your business?

NW: To be honest, seeing plus-size women come into the boutique. They come out of the dressing room and the look on their faces and the smiles, compared to how they were when they first came in and were skeptical. But once they try things on, they’re like, ‘this is for me.’

MSR: What advice would you give to an aspiring entrepreneur?

NW: Get a mentor who has been through everything—the ups, the downs, the highs and the lows. They can actually walk with you and give you the steps that you need to be successful.

Nadine’s Plus Size Boutique is located at 1444 85th Ave. N., Brooklyn Park, MN. For information, call 612-293-0371, or go to www.nadinesboutique.store. Nadine’s is hosting a sip-and-shop from noon to 6 p.m., on July 15, which will include other vendors of color selling their products.

MSR: What does success look like for you?

NW: My vision is for my business to expand. I actually have right now, it’s hard for women of color to feel safe and to be relaxed.

Chris Juhn welcomes reader comments at cjuhn@spokesmanrecorder.com.

Doj

Continued from page 1 misconduct. Activists cite the killings of Jamar Clark and Terrence Franklin as examples of MPD officers brutalizing Minneapolis Black and Native residents with impunity beyond the DOJ’s investigation window, which examined a period dating back to 2016.

At a City Hall press conference after the DOJ’s announcement, Toussiant Morrison recounted how he was handcuffed on top of a squad car in the fifth grade as he walked down the street after school.

“Walking down the street after school, I got pulled over by cops and bent over on the hood of [their squad car]. I had the same thought: Wow, everything has to change,” said Morrison. “How is it that we have [Mayor Jacob Frey] who needs to see a public lynching of George Floyd to think everything has to change?”

In 2017, activists founded MPD150, which prepared a report recommending abolition of the Minneapolis Police Department, citing findings similar to what both the Department of Justice and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights found—that MPD officers criminalize community members, escalate their interactions, and retaliate against those who try to hold them accountable.

Additionally, a report published this month by Global Rights For Women found that MPD routinely failed to adequately handle domestic violence calls. They’ve only taken reports or made arrests in 20 percent of those calls.

U of M

Continued from page 1 to the classroom. As enrollment dropped in recent years, the university has looked to make cuts to control expenses, forcing the AAUP and other campus groups to rally together.

“What we wanted to do in our AAUP chapter was to ensure that what would result from that would be equitable. The university administration, via a committee, had proposed an equitable pay cut to manage these expenses, starting at all employees earning $40,000 or more.

We felt that $40,000 is a low salary to start making cuts given the poverty rate, and living wage in the Twin Cities,” Gopinath said.

Soon after the university shared their proposed budget for the 2023-2024 academic school year, John Coleman, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, penned a letter to the editor of the “Min-

Pollution

Continued from page 1 their game indoors and was closed to the public. In spite of the human health effects, hospitals did not experience an uptick in cases or symptoms linked to bad air-quality.

The MPCA believes we can expect more such days, although not necessarily consecutive days, moving forward where air quality will degrade to conditions similar to last Wednesday’s. “It’s very possible we could have more events like this,” says MPCA meteorologist David Brown.

“It’s hard to say exactly how heavy the smoke will be. But these fires [in Canada] are continuing to grow and drought is continuing to worsen across the Midwest,” adding Canada’s wildfire season hasn’t have people meet with organizations and firms shortlisted to be the independent evaluator that will monitor compliance with the agreement. Communities United Against Police Brutality CUAPB) is opposed to the proposed monitors, reportedly made up of law firms that have worked with the city before.

“If you think Derek Chauvin was bad, look at the record for many of the officers who are part of the Minneapolis Police Department. It wasn’t just about one officer. It’s about a system and it’s about a culture that has refused to change,” said civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong.

Changes to Minneapolis police are expected to take years, said Mayor Frey. “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish that we did have that sort of magic wand where we could wave it and then suddenly everything changes,” said Frey. “There’s either a legal reason that we can’t, or there’s an extended process that we have to go through in order to make the change that is being advocated for.” across Minneapolis.

Chief Brian O’Hara said the officers who were involved in the incidents called out in the report have either been terminated or have otherwise separated from the department.

Frey doesn’t want dueling consent decrees and wants one evaluator to oversee implementation of federal and state consent decrees, with the goal of ensuring people feel safe going to the police if and when they need help. “We don’t want two distinct agreements, with two distinct monitors, with two different determinations of whether compliance has been met or not. That’s not a way to get to clear, objective success,” said Frey during the DOJ’s press conference.

With regard to the collection of racial data, Chief O’Hara says it is as simple as removing the option for officers to select “unknown” when they report the race of someone who they intercept, as the intent of the report is for the officers to make that decision.

Local organizations and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison welcome the findings made by the Department of Justice and look forward to fixing them. “I’ve always feared that after the convictions of Derek Chauvin and others for the murder of George Floyd, too many people would dismiss that tragedy as an aberration,” said Attorney General Ellison in a statement.

“This is an all-hands-on-deck moment where the community, state and federal government are on board with focus to address what is ailing policing in Minneapolis.”

“If you think Derek Chauvin was bad, look at the record for many of the officers who are part of the Minneapolis Police Department. It wasn’t just about one officer. It’s about a system and it’s about a culture that has refused to change.”

Meanwhile, a statement from the legal team that represented Tekle Sundberg, Amir Locke and George Floyd are concerned that the City is taking action contrary to what is recommended by the Department of Justice and the Department of Human Rights, and calls for the federal government to take action.

The DOJ’s findings come on the heels of an investigation led by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR) that also found the MPD engaged in patterns of practice of discriminatory policing. Both the city of Minneapolis and the MDHR have submitted a court-enforceable agreement to a judge for consideration.

Hennepin County Judge Karen Janisch is currently accepting comments on the agreement until June 23, and plans to hold a hearing on July 13.

The MDHR also plans to nesota Daily,” the school paper, to clear things up. According to Coleman, there was a budget coding error that reduced the teaching assistant and unassigned instructor budget by nearly a million dollars.

Despite this discrepancy, Coleman stated that cuts were necessary due to the decreased university enrollment. He pointed to low enrollment numbers at community colleges that have led to this reality.

The reduction of teaching assistant and unassigned instructor (TA/UI) spending by U of MN comes to $2 million dollars, which Coleman stated, is less than 6 percent of the budget reduction. He also shared that about $1 million in TA/UI spending goes unspent each year.

In a request for comment, the university responded by reiterating Dean Coleman’s points in an email: “CLA (College of Liberal Arts) undergraduate enrollment is down 1,300 students since the 2019-20 academic year, almost entirely even started. The early wildfires, coupled with drought, are linked to climate change, which is caused primarily by our burning of fossil fuels.

The MPCA does not have the authority to cancel any outdoor gatherings if air quality degrades again. “Our role is more to just provide them with input of how bad the smoke forecasts are,” says MPCA supervisory meteorologist Matt Carlson. And although many government agencies heed the MPCA’s advice, not every agency has a contingency plan on what to do.

The state does not have the resources to provide assistance such as free N95 masks to people who need them should we have another day with acrid air.

Both the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board as well as St. Paul Parks and Recreation plan to follow guidance from the MPCA

“We have people who are not qualified to apply for this thing,” said CUAPB founder Michelle Gross. “We want to see a real monitor. The thing about monitoring in any of these consent decrees is that they [monitors] are the secret sauce that makes these consent decrees work.

“If you want to bring in some person from out of town that has minimal experience and let them just check the boxes, we will get the result that the city desires. But the community will not tolerate that.” the result of a decline in transfer students. To reflect this situation in the proposed FY24 budget, CLA planned a collegewide $2 million reduction in the Teaching Assistants/Unassigned Instruction (TA/UI) line item. That reduction equals roughly 1.4 percent of CLA’s

As the DOJ begins to engage the community on what a consent decree should entail in the coming months, residents remain concerned about potential retaliatory behavior that Minneapolis police officers may exhibit given the findings in the reports.

They worry that MPD will exhibit similar behavior to what happened after Floyd’s murder, where they stopped collecting racial data of those who they detained. Both Frey and O’Hara insist officers need more direction in what behavior is expected of them.

“Now, two separate, independent investigations by state and federal authorities have found very serious and systemic problems that we have to fix.”

The Minnesota Justice Research Center, the organization that conducted engagement around informing the Department of Human Rights’ court-enforceable agreement, released a statement from its executive director Justin Terrell. “The Minnesota Justice Research Center welcomes this news and calls upon leaders within both the City and MPD to take this historic opportunity to re-imagine policing in—and with—communities

“Our legal team remains skeptical about Minneapolis’ commitment to change and accountability. We are deeply concerned that while City leaders appear to be cooperating with the DOJ directives to create change, the City is doing the opposite, and vigorously defending the conduct of the officers who shot and killed Amir Locke,” said the team.

“The efforts by the City to try and dismiss this case should be a red flag for the community that City officials publicly stood next to and supported the Locke family in the aftermath of his killing, but the City now seeks to avoid ALL accountability for Amir’s death.” total budget for academic departments,” they stated.

H. Jiahong Pan welcomes reader comments at hpan@ spokesman-recorder.com.

The university also noted that ethnic and gender studies will be funded at their current TA/ UI levels for the upcoming fiscal year. They emphasized that nothing has been finalized and anticipate an approved budget by late June.

Moore finds the timing of these cuts to be interesting as in determining whether or not to cancel their outdoor events or relocate them indoors, if possible. they came well after students petitioned for a change. “If it was a clerical error, all right. But these cuts still need to not happen, period. I think it is also very telling that it took students calling in and signing a petition, which I think we’re at 1200 or more signatures on our petition at this point,” she said. “Even if it’s not 50 percent out of the American Indian Studies Department, like any percentage of cuts is just wrong.”

Clubhouses owned by the Minneapolis Park Board that have air conditioning units are equipped with filters. Ramsey County invites people to go to one of their designated cooling shelters should they need respite from dirty air, which can be found at their website.

Should the Canadian wildfires affect the Twin Cities again, those seeking protection from dense air pollution should stay indoors. If you must travel outdoors, wear an N95 mask. For ozone air pollution, the MPCA advises driving less, not filling vehicles up with gasoline in the mornings, or carpooling.

H. Jiahong Pan welcomes reader comments at hpan@spokesman-recorder.com.

Gopinath responded to the university’s logic that these cuts have come due to low enrollment in the CLA program by saying that he believes that students can still gain a lot from a liberal arts education.

“They’re saying that fewer students are going into degree programs in the liberal arts and humanities because they don’t see them as degrees where they can have a future career,” he said. “That’s one of the things that I think is incumbent upon us, within the liberal arts and humanities, to advocate for how these degree programs are actually meaningful—both in terms of like, how there could be a more robust jobs pipeline that extends from our college into various professions.”

Gopinath stated that he believes this issue goes beyond modern-day politics given the fact that these programs have chronically been underfunded. He pointed to how student activists in the past had to fight for these programs to exist and believes that the same struggle must continue today.

The proposed cuts have led some to compare the university’s sense of direction and priorities to the political actions of conservative governors and legisla- tures working to ban culturally relevant curriculums across the country. Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, has recently pushed for these changes including a move to ban African American AP courses in school.

Jasper Nordin, a leader of the local SDS chapter, made this connection at the April rally.

“They are attacking diversity and ethnic studies programs all over the country. Universities are enacting budget cuts just like these,” he said. “In 1962, a group of 70 Black students took over Royal Hall and occupied the building for a moral cause.

“Out of that action came one of the first African American studies program in the entire country, which was established right here at the University of Minnesota. Now, 60 years later, the university is trying to undo the victory won by that struggle.”

Abdi Mohamed welcomes reader comments at amohamed@ spokesman-recorder.com.