And who sits on this task force? Why, none other than representatives from AgStar Financial Services, one of the largest financers of factory farms, and the Agri-Growth Council, the state's largest corporate ag-lobbying group. Other members include the president of the Minnesota Pork Producers Association, who also happens to be an executive at Christensen Farms (the fourth-largest factory hog farm in the nation).

The Farmers Union and the Land Stewardship Project are working for policies that result in more farmers raising livestock in ways that protect the rural environment. And there is the Minnesota National Farmers Organization and the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota, who are working to develop ways to promote more livestock on family farms.

Livestock farmers want policies that promote open, competitive markets and encourage fair prices for a quality product. Lifestock farmers want to explore ways to increase profit, by meeting the growing consumer concern for safe, quality meat. Corporate factory farms have just the opposite effect, and should be kept out of Minnesota.

I think we need to show our support for our local family farms, and send a clear message to Pawlenty and his task force of corporate factory farm supporters that we don't want it here, and we don't need it here. Keep the factory farms out of Minnesota!!!!

Lori Sartori
Minneapolis, MN

Letter from 17-year-old Black male Minneapolis resident

Dear PulseTC:

I am currently at the Juvenile Detention Center in Minneapolis. I have been in here since October 14, 2004. I am here on a gun charge—possession of a firearm by a minor. I was detained at my arraignment, which means at my first court appearance the judge said I have to stay here until I go back to court, possibly be facing jail time. [My trial is scheduled for December 22, 2004.] I was detained because they said I was a threat to society, but I have never had a felony charge until now.

I am Black and Caucasian mixed, but considered Black by the system. Recently, when four white kids came in here on charges of making and blowing up a homemade bomb, they only spent one night here and did not have to go to court. The judge released them the next day without even going to court; they just got to go home. One of the kids told me this, “The police talked to the judge and the judge released us all.” They got to go home even though certain staff at the JDC heard one of the kids talking about what happened and telling us how to make a bomb.

Now, I feel I have been racially profiled (which the police in our system are taught to do). The prosecutor and the judge say I pose a potential threat to society, but those boys have already threatened society by making and blowing up bombs. Of course, they say they were not trying to hurt anyone, but that does not matter, they committed two federal offenses, but all their charges were dropped and their cases dismissed. One of the kids also told me, “I know white people got it good and that’s why I am going home.”

Because of racial profiling, 9 out 10 of the people in my MOD are non-white. The only white kid that is here said he had nine months of dirty UA’s with cocaine in them, and then they finally locked him up. I had a friend once, who is black; he had one dirty UA with weed and got sentenced to 4-6 weeks.

In case you didn’t know, that’s what it’s like in the juvenile system in Minneapolis.

Sincerely,

17-year-old Black male,
Minneapolis resident

Rockin' With Panzerfaust

I'm not from the Twin Cities area, but I did see something on NBC tonight about the wonder-brains at the "music" company called "Panzerfaust" in your area. In a stroke of what can only be caled "genius" (again with the quotation marks...I'm crazy for them) they seem to be handing out some of their enlightening white-supremacist CD's out to unsuspecting school kids, who are, no doubt, taking them home, giving 'em a spin and going out on lynching runs. But they do get a lesson about Nazism, too.

They all should be strong, and manly, just like that adonis Heinrich Himmler. They are portraying themselves as intellectual, just like that bastion of sanity, Rudolf Hess. They want to get rid of homosexuals, just as Ernst Roehm would have done, in-between giving the other manly party members a reacharound, of course. The non-aryans of America, according to them , are supplying the youth, the white youth, of America with drugs, something I'm sure Hermann Goering would have approved, after he came down from his last trip to the opium den. The Jews have got to go, so says the manly mono-testicled Fuhrer himself, who was , and I will be fair, supposedly of some Jewish descent. By fair I mean there is something like a .09% chance he was not.

Well, who said the kids aren't getting a well-rounded education? Anyway, my feeling is this: let these dim-witted, sorry, self-pitying, blame-someone-else-for-my-stupidity and/or bad luck dingleberries pass out that garbage. It's a war of attrition. They will spend money to hand out these freebies, and not have enough for jack-boots and strap-ons later. Little Johnny Open-mindedness isn't going to go racist when he hears this. Suzie Valedectroian isn't going to miss the stupidity of what they say, and Larry Quarterback isn't going to stop trying to bang Laetitia Goldstein, the sexy Afro-Jewish cheerleader, because some group named Armored Foreskin or some other hystericaly stupid name says that because they are too shit-brained to get it together, everybody should follow suit. No, they will be laughed at by the vast majority for the very stupidity they try to overcome with propoganda loaded with 79% of the thesaurus.

So bring it on skin-heads. We all could use another group to point to for a good laugh while we gay-it-up, sing rap songs and stroke it to Jewish supermodels, and generally be regular folks.

D.Long
Quincy, MA