[Mpls] Must Read for Ward 8: MN Spokesman-Recorder Interviews of 8th Ward Candidates-Glidden/Hauser

[wmmarks]

Shawn Lewis wrote:

>Who can balance class, race and geography in Ward Eight?
>By: Shannon Gibney
>Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
>Originally posted 10/26/2005 
>http://www.spokesman-recorder.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=62882&sID=4
>
It's wonderful when the small papers have enough space to just let the 
candidates talk.

Elizabeth Glidden has a clear picture of the connection between public 
safety, police community relations, and the economic changes we've been 
working toward with the Sears site-Chicago Corridor redevelopment. She 
clearly understands the federal instruction to clean up the 
police-community relationship and the blow to people of color, poor 
people, and immigrants that stalling the Police Community Relations 
Council effort signals. She pointed to 11 years of confronting the 
system to apply human rights law where her clients and her pro bono 
clients concerns are being infringed.

On the same issue Marie Hauser says we need more cops. She cites her 
work as a nurse teaching people how to navigate the welfare system, her 
long time residency in the north part of the ward and working on 
committees and boards in the neighborhood, as well as her one term on 
the Park Board.

What I heard from Glidden in the Spokesman Recorder was an appreciation 
of how to finesse the interplay of police, economic change, and pushing 
the envelope in the direction of getting people working and striving. 
What I heard from Hauser did not show any grasp of that interplay as 
part and parcel of building the economic strength in the eighth, sixth, 
and ninth wards and the northeast corner of the tenth ward. I did not 
hear anything about how she would approach dealing with the real issues 
for the 8th ward's residents. Hers is a traditional approach in a ward 
dominated by non-traditional circumstances with no philosophical 
underpinnings about how race and class figure into the equation. Hauser 
does not know where the fulcrum is to lift the weight of the ward.

I have a great deal more confidence in my assertion that Glidden is the 
better of the two candidates in the 8th ward for a seat on the city 
council. At this juncture in the ongoing history of the South Side, 
Hauser won't have either the skills or the perspective that will keep 
the progress we have made and keep the ward moving forward.

WizardMarks, Central