[ Falcon Heights - Lauderdale - Little Canada - Maplewood - Roseville ]

“Persuasion, I suggest, should not be understood as an exercise in argument and counter-argument, as if it were a tennis match—won by hitting shots an adversary is unable to return. Instead, persuasion is best thought of as a process of making or finding space for a given outcome in another person’s world view. Rather than looking for arguments an adversary will be unable to deny, we should look for arguments an adversary will be able to affirm. This in turn depends upon developing as full and nuanced as possible an understanding of that adversary’s view of the world. Thus persuasion depends upon imagination, and in particular upon a certain imaginative capacity to see the world from the perspective of others. Reading may be the best way to develop that capacity.”

The Council of Metropolitan Area Leagues of Women Voters (CMAL) 2024 Annual Meeting and Program will be held on May 11, 10:00 a.m. Newly-appointed Metropolitan Council Regional Administrator Ryan O’Connor will be the keynote speaker  All LWV members are invited to hear O’Connor’s remarks and to ask questions about his vision for the future of the Metropolitan Council.

Greetings, Fellow Leaguers!

We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, May 7, at the Little Canada City Center, 515 Little Canada Road, for our Annual Meeting - 5:30 p.m. Mingle and Munch, 6:30 p.m. Guest Speaker, 7:30 p.m. Business Meeting.

Guest Speaker Debbie Montgomery:  Active in the Civil Rights movement and the youngest NAACP Board member. First female St. Paul police officer and former St. Paul City Council member. Featured in Votes for Women, Minnesota History Center exhibit

One morning as I was mulling over several ideas for Windows and Mirrors, my radio was ever-tuned to MPR. There was Angela Davis talking to students and teachers at Roseville Area High School (RAHS) about Ethnic Studies! There it was.

During the 2023 legislative session a law was passed incorporating ethnic studies into social studies curriculum for Minnesota classrooms K-12. This must be done by the 2026-27 school year. The scaffold for this is still being developed by the Minnesota Department of Education, with curriculum tailored to the age and developmental needs of students. Some districts, including Roseville and St. Paul, are already offering courses in high school. My home district, ISD 622 will have a course beginning next year.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed thinking about what you can do to help fight climate change?  Do you want to be part of the solution and not the causes? Join us, at the Ramsey County Library Roseville, for a talk and book signing by University of Minnesota Professor Heidi Roop, Dept. of Soil, Water, and Climate, College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.

If you missed this program, here is a link to the recording.

Join us at the Ramsey County Library Roseville, to hear panelists from Minnesota’s Indigenous organizations speak about their work addressing the needs of children, families and the environment in culturally respectful ways. Kelly Miller, head of the Department of Indian Work at Interfaith Action of Greater St. Paul, and Maggie Lorenz, Director of Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi, will share their work, obstacles and goals to illustrate the strength of Minnesota Indigenous organizations.

Windows and Mirrors for All is twenty. Not quite old enough to imbibe at Brews and Book Reviews, but old enough to reflect upon its age. When the first column ran in the March 2004 Voter seeing things through a DEI lens was in its early stages in LWVRA and those initials were not yet in vogue. As noted then, “The heading above, Windows and Mirrors for All, is gratefully derived from a wonderful essay by Emily Style ‘Curriculum as Window and Mirror’…Ms. Style states that “education needs to enable the student to look through window frames in order to see the realities of others and into mirrors in order to see her/his own reality reflected. I think people of all ages need both mirrors and windows with which to view the world, but too often we only have mirrors.” The goal remains the same.

[Read https://www.nationalseedproject.org/images/documents/Curriculum_As_Window_and_Mirror.pdf ]

In this latest issue of the Council of Metropolitan Area Leagues (CMAL) newsletter find information on the CMAL Watershed Study and the Metropolitan Council Governance Task Force.

View newsletter here.