Minneapolis - St. Paul Metro

   A shelter-in-place order is in effect in Brooklyn Park after two state lawmakers and their spouses were shot by someone impersonating a police officer.
  Sources say Sen. John Hoffman and Rep. Melissa Hortman were shot.
  The shelter-in-place order is near Edinburgh Golf Course, and the at-large suspect is considered armed and dangerous.

Something happened at Lake and Bloomington, gossip was ICE but officials are claiming the feds were there on a warrant for drugs and money laundering.

BLOOMINGTON, MN — A child with a confirmed case of measles was infectious while visiting the indoor theme park at the Mall of America on May 24, according to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH).

Anyone who was at the MOA between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. that day may have been exposed, health officials said Monday. Symptoms of measles could appear between May 31 and June 14. Unvaccinated individuals, or those who have never had measles, are most at risk and should monitor for signs of infection.

The child, who is from Dakota County and is unvaccinated, has not traveled outside Minnesota recently and had no known exposure to measles, MDH said. Officials called the case concerning because the source of the infection is unknown.

Target's Pride Line Is, Uh, a Little Subdued

As someone who’s never quite understood why Minnesotans love Target so much, watching The House That Bullseye Built step on one public relations rake after another has filled me with a warm sense of schtargetfreude. After hastily dismantling its DEI initiatives to appease the Trump admin, a backlash from customers helped cause the Minneapolis-based company’s Q1 sales to drop 2.8% compared to the same time last year. I’m not a business reporter, can someone tell me if that’s bad?

The latest fumble from the retail behemoth next door? Its 2025 Pride line, which is overwhelmingly… beige? Almost as though Target, which was lambasted for pulling its Pride merch from some stores in response to a homophobic 2023 boycott campaign, didn’t want anyone to notice the new line. Maybe they could even find a special section of the store to house these items. A closet, perhaps?

Target said “this year for Pride we’ve abandoned all structural initiatives within the company that may have benefitted any queer people BUT we will help you avoid being hate crimed by blending in with this uninspiring beige ass bullshit” pic.twitter.com/a7EVpoQvOp

— Lydia Kauppi (@lydiakauppi) May 28, 2025

Go Mag has a roundup of online responses to this year’s Pride merch, and says “the designs feel like they were created by someone who Googled ‘gay’ and then immediately got nervous.” What’s more, the tags on many Pride include “lorem ipsum” placeholder text.

School Segregation? Here in Minnesota?

Kyle Stokes of Axios has a story on how open enrollment is shaping school districts in the metro area that gives readers a whole lot to chew on. (There are also cool maps, which—pro tip—will always give you a good shot at getting into The Flyover.)

Where do open enrolled kids wind up? Well, almost half of the students in Brooklyn Center schools live in other districts, while 40% of the students at Minnetonka Public Schools live outside that district, and six other suburban districts import a third of their students. In total, 13 of 47 metro districts enroll at least 20% of their student population through open enrollment.

"WHY THIS MATTERS," Stokes screams via Axios style on Twitter. "State dollars follow students who open enrolls So each incoming student brings additional state funding to a district, and each student lost comes at a cost."

On its face that seems, well, not ideal. Now toss in the fact that a third of the white students in open enrollment head to less integrated districts. The story quotes perpetually quoted U of M law professor Myron Orfield as saying that Minnesota’s longstanding open enrollment law only began to really trigger movement between districts in the 2000s, after the state weakened integration rules.

U of M Food Service Workers: “The Labor Relations System Here Is Broken”

If you’re an employer and there’s a story about you in Workday Magazine, you know you’ve done fucked up. So University of Minnesota alums shouldn’t be too excited to see their alma mater named in the latest from Workday’s Amie Stager about the U’s food service workers represented by Teamsters Local 320. In 2022, the school contracted out its food service to the private company Chartwells, and things have not gone well for workers since.

“According to Local 320 business agent Jackson Kerr, there has been an ‘explosive’ increase in harassment, discipline, suspensions, and terminations of dining workers since Chartwells took over,” Stager writes. Kerr accuses the company of “disciplining workers out the door,” a backdoor union-busting tactic, and failing to address grievances.

Truck Amok!

We’re not big on car crash news at The Flyover—highway mayhem tends to get enough coverage elsewhere. But sometimes an accident is so spectacular we’ve just got to go along with the crowd. Like when, for instance, an 18-wheeler somehow skids into the wall separating east- and westbound Minneapolis traffic in the Lowry Tunnel. And also when that truck is carrying ammunition. (Isn’t ammo among the “hazardous materials” vehicles prohibited from transporting through the tunnel? That’s a question for another day, I suppose.)

OK, let’s gawk:

Somehow, no other vehicles were involved in the crash and the driver is being treated for non-fatal injuries. That’s all great news, almost miraculous. In fact, if this was a Final Destination movie, Death would soon be coming to claim all the drivers who passed safely through that tunnel after the crash in an elaborately macabre fashion.

As a U.S. Army veteran who served five combat deployments, I’ve seen firsthand the physical and psychological scars that many of my fellow service members carry with them after returning home.

I’ve walked alongside soldiers battling PTSD, chronic pain, anxiety and the long-term effects of traumatic brain injuries. These are not just war wounds — they are life-altering burdens that often go unseen and untreated.

In the years since I returned home, I’ve come to see that the path to healing doesn’t always come easily. And for many veterans, traditional treatments aren’t effective, leading us to turn to alternative treatments like cannabis.

I say this not as an outsider or a casual observer, but as a patient, an advocate and a former member of the Minnesota Cannabis Advisory Council. I’ve had countless conversations with fellow veterans and civilians alike who have found relief through cannabis when traditional medicine failed them. I’ve seen its power, not as a miracle drug, but as a legitimate and effective treatment for various conditions.

That’s why I strongly support the push to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act. The work that started during the Biden administration on this issue appears to have stalled out, and it needs a jumpstart.

Rescheduling cannabis to Schedule III would be more than a symbolic gesture. It would represent a tangible, meaningful shift in how we treat cannabis and those who rely on it. It would open the door to comprehensive clinical research that has long been stifled under federal restrictions. Researchers and medical professionals would finally be able to conduct studies with the rigor and scope this issue demands, helping us better understand the full spectrum of cannabis’s therapeutic potential.

And let’s be clear: Support for this change is not partisan. In fact, President Donald Trump has expressed support for rescheduling cannabis, recognizing the benefits of modernizing our drug laws. When leaders from across the political spectrum — conservatives, libertarians, progressives and independents — are aligned on an issue, it tells us something: This isn’t a radical idea. It’s a reasonable one.

Despite this growing body of evidence, our federal government still classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug, putting it on par with heroin and declaring it to have “no accepted medical use” and a “high potential for abuse.”

Veterans, perhaps more than any other group, understand the consequences of bureaucratic inertia. We’ve watched the Veterans Affairs system struggle to keep up with the growing mental health crisis in our community. We’ve watched our brothers- and sisters-in-arms cycle through prescriptions, such as opioids, antidepressants and sleeping pills, many of which come with debilitating side effects and limited long-term effectiveness.

Cannabis has been a lifeline for many of us. And the irony is, in states where medical cannabis is legal, veterans often still face stigma from health care providers and risks to their federal benefits if they choose to use it. Why? Because cannabis remains stigmatized by outdated federal laws that ignore decades of research and real-world experience.

Reclassifying cannabis would legitimize it in the eyes of our health care system. It would allow providers, especially those within the VA, to have honest conversations with patients about medical cannabis as an option. It would remove the concern that many veterans face when they bring up cannabis with their doctors, fearing judgment or repercussions.

We can’t talk about supporting veterans and then ignore a reform such as this one that could improve our lives. We can’t claim to respect our service members while denying us access to a medicine that helps us live with dignity and purpose. We served our country with honor. We did our duty. Now we are simply asking our government to do theirs.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22488392

Every bit is worth something, even if no one person or group can do enough.

Minnesota lawmakers have voted to strip funding from the Northern Lights Express – the long-debated, proposed a passenger rail service designed to connect the Twin Cities and Duluth.

Both the House and Senate have approved a measure to redirect $77 million of approved state funding for the project.

Under the plan, which now heads to Gov. Tim Walz for his signature, those funds will instead cover unemployment insurance costs for seasonal school workers – a measure passed by the DFL in 2023 that Democrats wanted to retain during budget negotiations with Republicans.

House Republican Transportation Chair Rep. Jon Koznick (R–Lakeville), a longtime opponent of passenger rail projects, said the move means the Northern Lights Express train is "effectively dead."

“For years, Democrats have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on wasteful rail projects that Minnesotans barely use and can’t afford,” he said in a statement.

Approximately $108 million remains in state funding for the Northern Lights Express. However, lawmakers could also move to redirect those funds as the slim chance of receiving necessary federal funding grows smaller.

Koznick said he'll be focusing his effort on ensuring the remaining funds will be spent spent on infrastructure such as roads and bridges.

If constructed, the Northern Lights Express would operate on approximately 152 miles of an existing BNSF Railway corridor. The service would make four round-trips daily and be operated by Amtrak or a similar provider, according to the NLX Alliance.

With a train operating at speeds of up to 90 miles-per-hour, a one-way trip between the Twin Cities and Twin Ports would take about two-and-a-half hours.

A conservative advocacy group sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Tuesday on behalf of three female softball players who say Minnesota’s policy allowing trans athletes to compete on sports teams that match their gender amounts to sex discrimination against female athletes and a violation of Title IX, the federal statute requiring equity in men’s and women’s sports.

The lawsuit, filed in a Minnesota federal court, was brought by Female Athletes United, a national group that describes itself as an advocate for “fairness, safety, and equal opportunity for women and girls in sports.” It is led by three women with ties to the Republican Party and conservative legal groups.

Three female high school softball players from Maple Grove High School and Farmington High School are described as plaintiffs. According to the suit, the girls say they have competed with transgender athletes and believe it is “unsafe and unfair to play against a male athlete, particularly in softball.”

The Minnesota High School League has allowed students to participate on teams that best align with their gender identity for 10 years. Supporters of the policy say it’s worked without incident.

A recent executive order by President Donald Trump banned transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. Federal officials are pressuring the state now to comply with Trump’s executive order. That includes investigating the high school league policy.

Ellison has argued that Minnesota’s human rights law lets transgender athletes compete in sports consistent with their gender identity and that the state law supersedes Trump’s executive order. State lawmakers in March rejected an effort to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports.

The lawsuit is asking federal judges to rule that Ellison and other state officials are violating Title IX. It’s also asking for an injunction to preclude state and district officials from allowing trans athletes to compete with or against female members of Female Athletes United.

Lawyers representing Female Athletes United are from the conservative Christian Group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has won more than a dozen United States Supreme Court cases, including overturning Roe v. Wade.

Minnesota authorities would no longer be able to charge people with major drug crimes solely on the basis of the dirty water in their bongs — thanks to a provision in the 192-page judiciary and public safety bill that was sent to Gov. Tim Walz over the weekend. He’s expected to sign it.

Under current law, quantities of bong water greater than four ounces can be treated like the pure, uncut version of whatever substance the bong was used to smoke. That can lead to massive criminal penalties: 4 ounces of bong water used to consume methamphetamine, for instance, can trigger a first-degree felony charge carrying up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The new language removes that provision and specifies that for charging purposes, a drug mixture “does not include the fluid used in a water pipe or any amount of a controlled substance that is dissolved in the pipe’s fluid.” The change would apply retroactively to August 2023, bringing it in line with a broader drug paraphernalia decriminalization bill that went into effect at that time.

In practice, prosecutors virtually never charge bong water offenses because most people intuitively understand that 8 ounces of dirty bong water is not the same thing as 8 ounces of pure methamphetamine.

“Counting dirty bong water as pure drugs is like counting a beer bottle full of backwash and cigarette butts as 80-proof whiskey,” as one attorney colorfully characterized it to the Reformer earlier this year.

But it does happen: The issue drew national attention last year after a northwest Minnesota prosecutor levied first-degree drug charges against a Fargo woman, Jessica Beske, on account of the water allegedly found in her bong.

Because of the retroactive provision, that case would be thrown out if Walz signs the bill.

“The ACLU-MN is glad to see the legislature fixed this loophole that allowed rogue prosecutors to put people suffering from addiction in prison for smoking drugs out of a bong,” said Alicia Granse of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Beske in court. “Ms. Beske and others like her can no longer be subjected to this cruel and unusual treatment.”

Minnesota became the butt of national jokes after the state supreme court ruled in 2009 that bong water could be legally considered a drug. The justices relied, in part, on the testimony of a Minnesota State Patrol officer who claimed that drug users keep bong water “for future use… either drinking it or shooting it in the veins.”

Legislators attempted to decriminalize small amounts of bong water the following year, but then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed it in order to project a “tough-on-crime” image in advance of a planned presidential run.

O'Hara, Royce White, Liz Collin Badmouth Mpls in Sensationalist NY Post Story

We regret to inform you that the New York Post has written about the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death, in the thoughtful and comprehensive manner that once led Chuck D to refer to the paper as "America's oldest continuously published daily piece of bullshit."

The Post's Dana Kennedy says she spent a week here (that's a whole seven days), long enough to gather scattered anecdotes from cherrypicked sources and depict Minneapolis as a failed city that is, according to her report, "still burning." (Fact check: It's not—look outside.) An argument between "an angry local black businessman" and George Floyd’s aunt Angela Harrelson is put forward as somehow emblematic of the city as a whole.

MPD Chief Brian O'Hara takes time out from his busy schedule of pretending his budget has been cut to shit talk the city to Kennedy, comparing us negatively to Newark, New Jersey. “Here it’s very, very ideological and a lot of times it’s like reality and facts can’t get through the filter," O'Hara says of the people who pay his salary. "It’s a very detached, bourgeois liberal mentality… It’s bizarre.”

Meanwhile, failed U.S. Senate candidate/moon landing skeptic Royce White is given an opportunity to opine that protesters were bused in and "deliberately positioned here." Reports White, the type of guy who posts horseshit like this: “They came from these liberal colleges that had some connection either with the nonprofits, the NGOs or with some corporate entity.” ("Not everyone agrees with that theory," Kennedy helpfully adds; here's some other White theorizing.)

And, of course, the Post turns to Alpha News host/attempted author Liz Collin to "[push] back against the established Floyd death narrative" and claim that Derek Chauvin, the man the world saw kneel on George Floyd's neck for nine minutes, did not have a fair trial. We're not saying a Trump pardon for Chauvin is imminent, but this is the just the sort of abysmal coverage that would be cited to back it up.

Checking In With George Floyd's Loved Ones, Five Years Later

Moving right along from the Post! Here's an essential story published Friday by a reputable outlet, the Houston Chronicle, about the continued struggle for police accountability following the police killing that sent shockwaves around the globe.

In "5 years after his murder, George Floyd's loved ones reckon with a movement trying to erase him," HC reporter Sarah Smith compares the tenor of 2020, when companies, governments, and police agencies vowed immediate change, with what we have today: unfulfilled promises, a right-wing assault on anything under the DEI umbrella, and attempts to vilify Floyd and pardon his murderer. "The status quo fought back," she writes.

“When the enemies of equality feel like things are getting too equal,” adds civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represented members of the Floyd family, "there’s always an extreme reaction.”

Smith talks with various folks who knew and loved George Floyd: his Minneapolis girlfriend-turned-activist, Courteney Ross; his beloved cousin from Houston, Shareeduh McGee; and his good friend who's also from Houston, Tiffany Cofield. The story takes a dramatic turn when we learn Cofield was recently fired from her job and, when she objected, the police were called. After the cops arrived, they handcuffed Cofield and slammed her to the floor, she says. (Officers claim "she herself forced herself to the ground" in protest.) Cofield found herself in a terrifyingly similar position to her old friend.

"They're gonna kill me!" she cried before being uncuffed. "They're gonna kill me like they killed George Floyd! Ow! They're hurting me! You're hurting me!"

Concludes the Houston Chronicle: "[Cofield] would like the anniversary of the murder to wake people up."

'End of an Era': U Garden Will Close Later This Month

After more than 30 years in Minneapolis, family-run Chinese restaurant U Garden will close May 31. Co-owner Huy Ung tells Sahan Journal's Alfonzo Galvan that his phone hasn’t stopped ringing since they posted an announcement on Tuesday: “They message and call me directly asking why,” he says. A goshdarn U of M institution, the University Avenue restaurant has been a longtime go-to for U students and workers, and as an event center it has hosted hundreds of wedding dinners and other celebrations.

Ung explains that he's burnt out and wants to spend more time with his family—tough to argue with that! In the farewell he posted to social media earlier this week, he wrote that the restaurant was closing its doors "but not our hearts," and thanked customers for their support over the last 32 years. And it sounds like it isn't being sold to developers, either; Ung tells Sahan they're selling to folks who plan to open a Korean barbecue and hot pot restaurant.

In other Chinese institution news: Rainbow Chinese on Eat Street just announced it'll celebrate its 38th anniversary on June 10. You can find all the details here.

Who’s Naming Their Kid Maverick?

A lot of people! According to Social Security card applications, Maverick was the 22nd most popular name in Minnesota in 2024, with 136 boys christened with the moniker. Though Merriam-Webster defines "maverick" as an unbranded, motherless calf, it’s more likely that people were naming their kid after Tom Cruise’s Top Gun nickname… or perhaps after the massively popular Ford compact pickup truck?

The top names for Minnesota boys include Theodore (No. 3), Henry (No. 2), and Liam (No. 1). (Shout out to Jessica's dad, Ted!) Charlotte (No. 1), Evelyn (No. 2), and Olivia (No. 3) were the most popular names for girls. As for quirkier female names, we gained quite a few Athenas (No. 52), Paisleys (No. 64), and Novas (No. 67) last year. Click this Axios report to see some nice data visualization of our state's most popular baby names, including those that are most unique to Minnesota.

The recent double felony conviction of Minnesota painting contractor Fred Newell should send a clear message: Wage theft is a crime, and when workers come together through a union, justice is not just possible, it’s within reach.

Newell, owner of Integrated Painting Solutions, was entrusted with public funds for a publicly funded project. Instead of paying his workers what they were rightfully owed, he kept money for himself. He filed false payroll reports. He misclassified employees to skirt labor laws. He lied and told workers that prevailing wage standards didn’t apply to them. When workers spoke up, he said he’d pay them back. He never did.

Let’s be clear: this wasn’t a misunderstanding, it was intentional theft — plain and simple. And it’s far from an isolated incident.

As we know, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. This conviction could be a sign that wage theft is happening in our cities, on our job sites, and on the very projects meant to benefit our communities more than we think.

As union members, we see wage theft for what it is: a systemic exploitation of working people, particularly those who are the most vulnerable — workers who can’t afford to lose a paycheck, workers who fear retaliation, and workers who are told to “take it or leave it.”

This is why unions like ours exist. We are the first line of defense. When a worker is being cheated, they can’t just call 911. But they can call a union, even if they’re not a member. And when they do, we don’t just listen — we take action.

Our union stood up for the workers who were denied fair pay. A felony conviction was secured — a rare and meaningful outcome in a system where wage theft is too often treated like a paperwork issue instead of the serious crime it is.

Newell will be sentenced on June 6 and could face up to a year in jail. He is also effectively barred from working on city of Minneapolis projects going forward. That matters. That’s accountability. And it wouldn’t have happened without union involvement.

For too long, wage theft cases were limited to slow-moving civil enforcement. That meant justice was delayed — and often denied. But now, thanks to partnerships between labor and forward-thinking prosecutors, these cases are being prioritized. Minnesota now has some of the toughest anti-wage theft laws in the country because our legislators understand that when wage theft is allowed to go unchecked, it sends the wrong message to bad actors: that cheating workers is just part of doing business.

It’s not. It’s a crime.

When unions are strong, wage theft doesn’t stand a chance. We don’t just protect our own members — we protect the standards for everyone. That’s why the work we do matters not just for unionized workers, but for non-union workers, too. When we raise the alarm, the whole industry hears it.

We’re proud of the bravery of the workers who spoke up and called us when they were being cheated. We’re also proud of the future partnerships we’ve built with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, and the Labor Council Advisory Committee.

But we also know this is just one case.

Wage theft could be happening right now — today — on job sites across this state. It could be happening to workers without representation, without protections, and without a clear path to justice.

If you’re a worker experiencing wage theft, don’t wait. Don’t go it alone. Call a union. We are the first step, we are the frontline, and we are ready to fight for you.

Every worker deserves a paycheck they can count on and someone in their corner when that paycheck doesn’t come.

Taken from /r/minneapolis. A video of some of the aftermath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLfekhunw48

It’s 2025 and sex workers are everywhere. Literally.

Especially after the influx of OnlyFans accounts during and after the pandemic, some experts note that there are as many sex workers as there are cashiers. But popular depictions of sex workers tend to highlight either the rich, glamorous, always-having-fun stripper type (have you seen Anora yet? Well… the first 20 minutes of Anora?), or use sex workers as emblems of pity for the choices they’ve been forced into, which have them caught in cycles of drug use and incarceration.

Sex workers are the new gays (as they were pre-2000s)—a sexual minority that the masses often misconstrue, misunderstand, fear, and vilify. But as we’ve achieved cultural ubiquity, our reputations are slowly improving.

Sex workers are not a monolith: We are a complex but powerful and distinct group of people that includes every gender, race, ethnicity, class, ability, and residential status. Some of us are temporarily in the sex trade, dabbling out of curiosity or short-term necessity. Others are in the industry for a long time, with thriving careers both in and outside of sex work. For many, our job choices lie somewhere in between choice and circumstance—just like most people.

I’d also like to point out that sex workers are staunchly against sex trafficking, and many of us have experienced exploitation within the industry. Yet most people who have been trafficked in the industry do not identify as sex workers, but survivors. When talking about sex workers, it’s important to both distinguish the lived experiences and also to separate the labor rights component: Sex work is work.

Sex workers in the Twin Cities have a better time than many in our country because of favorable laws that are a direct result of advocacy efforts. We are a haven for sex workers (thanks, SWOP-Minneapolis!). Our strip clubs are thriving. We have a robust club domme scene. And our arrests for street-based prostitution are low. Unless you go to Bloomington—which is a story for another time.

But who are sex workers, really? To answer this question, I spoke with three local sex workers about their life, their work, and what they want us to know about them.

Kiki Caliente

Kiki (she/her) is a trans-masculine kink and fetish escort living in Minneapolis who advertises as “Femme For Pay” (which is brilliant, by the way, and if you don’t get why, let’s chat). Kiki started in the sex industry as a sugar baby at 20, then moved to content creation with OnlyFans, and eventually made the transition to full-service escorting. After being laid off from a sex toy company, escorting is now her main source of income. Kiki is also disabled.

Living with POTS and epilepsy, Kiki describes her ability to work a regular 9-to-5 job to be damn near impossible. With her condition, she reports losing consciousness sometimes upwards of 10 times per day (or more if her medications aren’t working as intended). If you have ever cared for a loved one with a similar condition, or if you have one yourself, you understand the toll this has on trying to maintain daily normalcy.

“Sex work has been my savior,” she says.

Let’s talk about Kiki’s impact on her clients and on the world. Kiki’s clients are attracted to her as they challenge their own sexual and gender identities, and just by being who she is, she allows them to find themselves as they explore gender transitions and different means of expressing themselves. “I show up in whatever ways they need me to and am able to show them the lovely things of womanhood,” she says.

In this way, Kiki acts as a gender surrogate, an emotional support companion, and an outlet for expression. It’s not just sex that keeps her clients coming back, but the rest of her humanity she is able to offer.

Vero Bunny

Bunny, like Kiki, is a trans femme-for-pay escort and content creator who finds solace in the arms of the thriving Twin Cities queer and trans scene. She/he/they are a transplant from Tallahassee and have been living in Minnesota for over two years. Bunny is really grateful to be surrounded by “people who get them.” Bunny is a cancer survivor.

Bunny has danced at DreamGirls downtown and occasionally goes back to dance, but she notes the vibe in the strip clubs does not always gel with her. In Tallahassee, strip clubs are illegal, but it was there that Bunny was able to find her first community of sex workers and learned about the harm stigma brings.

Even before Bunny came out as trans to her family, she was kicked out of her very conservative household for having regular, cis, straight sex, even after having to undergo chemotherapy. Her kinky weirdness never stood a chance in that environment.

She started camming at age 19, and because of this work, she says, she was for the first time able to live stably and without roommates. “For a lot of people, sex work is the only option or the only thing that makes sense. Capitalism has trained me to do this, to be a sex worker. It’s really not so different [from “civvy” work] except for the lack of political voice we have,” she says. “We are all just trying to have bodies and make ends meet.”

Bunny creates art—from painting to performance art, they use their spare time to build a world that works for them and is reflective of them. Bunny is also disabled and finds the sex work industry best suits her needs at this time.

Athena

Athena (she/her) is a stripper-turned-escort born and raised in the Twin Cities; she has worked for several strip clubs throughout Minnesota and now organizes with Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) - Minneapolis. Athena initially entered the sex industry out of survival, which usually indicates street-based sex work. The Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) reports that survival sex work can be the result of “numerous systemic factors or personal circumstances of poverty, homelessness, drug use and mental health,” and those who rely on it “as a result work in dangerous circumstances.”

“I won’t trauma dump on you, but I started as a survival sex worker, like so many folks do,” Athena says. “It wasn’t glamorous, and it wasn’t empowering at the time. It was survival, plain and simple. But over time, as my life stabilized and I began to heal, I reached a point where I was able to actually choose sex work. I kept doing it because I wanted to, not because I had to.”

“That shift completely changed how I moved through the industry,” she continues. “It’s been a privilege to reclaim my narrative and to be open and transparent about the work I do. I know how rare that is for a lot of sex workers, and I don’t take it lightly. Being visible in this way comes with its risks, but it also creates space for other sex workers to feel seen, heard, and valued. That’s what keeps me grounded in the work, not just the labor itself, but the community, the resistance, and the possibility of rewriting what this path can look like.”

Athena has played many roles in the sex industry as a consensual worker, including stripping, full-service sex work, and creating online content. She has also worked as a dominatrix.

“People love to categorize us, but I’m not interested in shrinking myself down like that,” she says. “Sex work is fluid, and most of us wear multiple hats throughout our journeys … I’m also in the process of becoming a sex therapist, not just for clients, but to build something better for sex workers, spaces where we’re affirmed, supported, and actually understood. For me, it’s always been about expanding the definition of what sex work looks like, and claiming it with pride.”

While Athena’s journey towards being an empowered sex worker in Minneapolis is hopeful, she offered some critical insights into the industry: “Let’s be clear, sex work is still criminalized here. All sex workers, but especially full-service workers, are still targeted, still dehumanized, still treated like they don’t matter. We need to decriminalize sex work in Minneapolis and across Minnesota, and honestly everywhere. Until we do, everything else is just surface-level.”

Decriminalization of sex work is a whole movement that will take legal as well as societal shifts, and it won’t be attained easily or quickly—but we are working on it.

“Doing this work in Minneapolis means pushing against systems that were never built for us and doing it anyway,” Athena says. “It means showing up in rooms where we weren’t invited and refusing to be ignored. It means calling out performative allyship and demanding real change. I'm proud of the community we’re building here. And I won’t stop until all sex workers, not just the ones people feel comfortable with, have safety, dignity, and power in this city.”

Land o’ Lusts is a love letter to the bohemian underbelly of the Twin Cities. In each installment, writer Melodie KG—a Minneapolis-based consultant, nonprofit leader, and adult industry professional—seeks to dispel myths, uphold truths, and inspire conversations that reduce stigma for local sex workers, erotic professionals, risqué artists, and other deviants.

Have an idea for a story or profile? Interested in being interviewed? Have a (hopefully not literally) burning sex question? Reach out to me at [email protected].

Minnesota taxpayers entrust our government with billions of dollars each year to make Minnesota a safe and dignified place to live — including for people in prison. It’s hard to believe we might throw away hundreds of millions of dollars trying to salvage 100-year-old prisons in deep disrepair. These facilities are dangerous for the people living and working inside. The only safe and affordable option is to close them once and for all.

In February 2025, the Minnesota Office of the Ombuds for Corrections released an urgent update to its 2024 report on the state of Minnesota correctional facilities. Both reports paint a dire picture for two of the state’s prisons in Stillwater and St. Cloud, which together house around 2,300 individuals: these prisons are crumbling.

Moreover, as these prisons continue to deteriorate, our state’s prison population is growing. According to a recent report by the Crime and Justice Institute — a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that partners with jurisdictions nationwide to improve justice systems — Minnesota’s prison population has been rising faster than in other states since the pandemic. From 2021 to 2022, our incarceration rate grew by 8% compared to just 2% nationally, for instance.

The human cost of the increasingly crowded prisons and their disrepair is devastating. In an op-ed last year, Maurice L. Ward — CEO of Justice Impacted Individuals Voting Effectively — described his experience in the Stillwater prison as “living in a coffin but not buried underground,” where the temperature inside felt like “120 degrees.” Folks inside have been moved to create powerful art, tell important stories and stage peaceful demonstrations to illustrate the inhumanity of such conditions. This alone should be enough to reconsider the future of these facilities.

But it gets worse. The old-fashioned layout of these facilities — with stacked cells — reduces corrections officers’ line of sight, creating additional safety risks in an already dangerous environment where lockdowns can, and do, emerge at a moment’s notice.

Additionally, the financial cost of facility maintenance is massive: The Department of Corrections estimates operating the correctional facilities in both Stillwater and St. Cloud costs almost $100 million, while the cost of urgent repairs at just St. Cloud is an estimated $71 million. We’re talking about nearly $200 million just for business as usual, which still leaves the people living and working in these facilities in danger.

Once you factor in the amount of work required to address the long-term infrastructure issues, this price tag skyrockets. Standing water, falling bricks, leaky roofs, plumbing problems, and excessive heat during the warmer months make living and working at these prisons inhumane. A 2014 study to replace the St. Cloud facility projected a cost that amounts to an estimated $730 million in today’s dollars. Should we spend this much to replace just one of these crumbling prisons? The DOC itself calls this “the epitome of throwing good money after bad.”

Minnesota lawmakers know the importance of an individual’s successful reentry after incarceration, as evidenced by the passage of recent laws that incentivize participation in prison programming for those in custody, like substance abuse disorder treatment, medical and mental health services, and vocational, career and education training. This programming is impossible in crumbling facilities lacking usable spaces.

We understand that breaking the law and causing significant harm to people, property and society requires accountability. We ask Minnesotans to imagine what accountability mechanisms will be possible if we invest in the human potential of those who live and work inside these facilities.

As statewide decision-makers consider long-term solutions, the economic and human costs of addressing the issues in Stillwater and St. Cloud mount daily. We can spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to fix or replace these unfixable prisons, or we can take that money and build a plan that keeps communities safe and uplifts the humanity of every resident. The Minnesota Justice Research Center joins the chorus of people urging the immediate decommissioning of these prisons.

Do you have thoughts about the future of Minnesota’s crumbling prisons? Join us for a community conversation hosted by the MNJRC and We Are All Criminals at the Weisman Art Museum on May 8, 2025.

We’ll view powerful pieces in the SEEN exhibit, hear from the Office of Ombuds for Corrections and CJI about their reports, discuss what we know, and work together to reimagine the future of these facilities — because we don’t have another option.

Preview:

Davis Moturi lay awake in bed last October, eyes on the ceiling, unable to shake the burning image of his neighbor pointing a gun directly at him through the bedroom window.