diversity : Featured Stories

It's been an article of faith since Central Corridor light rail (Green Line) construction began that, despite all the disruption and traffic chaos of the building stage, the line would eventually become a magnet for local entrepreneurs. That scenario appears to be playing out; here are three entrepreneurial ventures that were lured to the line by light rail's promise.

The young entrepreneur's Royal Bangkok Restaurant is just one of the Vong family businesses at 315 University Avenue--a building that enshrines the enterprise and hope of a clan whose patriarch fled Cambodia in the wake of the Khmer Rouge.

The onetime marketing professional made a career u-turn when he discovered how gardening--and cooking and eating healthy produce right from the soil--could change lives. Now his nonprofit startup helps inner-city newcomers to gardening make healthy foods part of their lives.

The achievement gap between white and black students in Minnesota is real, and a cause for concern. But a Minneapolis schoolteacher adds nuance to the debate by pointing out that black students in Minnesota public schools  are doing better than black students nationally.

Governor Mark Dayton signed Minnesota's law legalizing gay marriage on a bright, clear day that broke temperature records. The theme of the outdoor signing ceremony was love, just as love had been a major theme of the campaign to get the law passed. Where else might we use this big word?

The local office of the Chicago-based Women's Business Development Center gives majority-women-owned ventures here support and connections they might not otherwise have--as long as they can pass a rigorous qualifying process. It's women helping women to shatter the glass ceiling.

The May Day Parade and Festival is our Mardi Gras--a heartfelt explosion of color, music, art, fun, and earth-friendliness after the weariness of long winters. Bill Kelley caught the parade action last Sunday in the Powderhorn neighborhood as Minneapolitans dressed up and rocked out to say goodbye to the cold.

Images from a concert of ecstatic music in three traditions: Hindu Indian, Islamic and Christian Persian, and Sephardic Jewish, played and sung by some of our most accomplished local world musicians. The setting? Minnesota's Hindu temple. The purpose? To bring hearts and minds together. The result? Joyful catharsis after a terrible week.

This week: A new incarnation for what may be the only pan-African restaurant in the Twin Cities--and a fan of West African cuisine has a delicious lunch of Jolof rice and chicken.

Consolidating its position as a laboratory for cutting-edge design thinking, the University of Minnesota's College of Design hosted the first Public Interest Design Week. Its climax was an awards show that displayed ingenious design-driven solutions to the dilemmas of poverty and ill health in America and around the world.

Art lives in the Twin Cities--and not just in the tonier parts of town. Thanks to initiatives like Twin Cities LISC's Building Sustainable Communities program, art and artists are taking major roles in helping some of our most challenged inner-city communities thrive.

Last Wednesday, some 150 Minnesota Muslims got together to share concerns and hopes with their legislators at the ninth Annual Muslim Day at the Capitol, organized by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. Here's a video look at the event, from our friends at Minnesota 2020.

It's weathered industry exoduses and foreclosure--but now the proud old East Side Saint Paul neighborhood is home to a hot new bar/restaurant, Ward 6, that's both a sign of, and a force in, a wider renewal. 

Once the exclusive province of privileged young white men heading for law degrees, debate is flourishing in inner-city schools here, thanks to the Minnesota Urban Debate League. The disciplined, demanding, and fun "mind sport" is helping kids of color and of lower income develop study and thinking skills--and get into college.