Community

The value of comprehensive data collection

The community of Granite Falls (pop. 2,897) is on the banks of the Minnesota River. The town was settled on

Lead for Minnesota is a program that recruits, trains, and places recent college graduates around the state into two-year paid fellowships in or near their home community. There are currently 24 fellows in the 2020 class placed around Minnesota. Here are two of them.

For decades, money has been leaving our community. We are going to bring it back.

“We have learned how to make lemonade out of lemons.”

The sex education that youth are typically taught in schools is not comprehensive. It often focuses on abstinence only, which

If it were profitable, internet providers would be serving more communities.

“Many of them grew up adopting the negative narrative that there are no opportunities or equity in small towns. That is not true. This work is flipping that narrative.”

“Being able to ride the bus and see graffiti I knew was done by my friends that acknowledged our existence — this reminder to everyone that these buildings we are writing on are built on our land due to decades of genocide and forced attempts at assimilation — that was healing and empowering.”

There is, however, another layer to the mission: explore what it means to be a Black Minnesotan.

I approach a scene as a historian, aiming to find a universal truth or feeling in a scene or moment.

“We are all related, and that is how we will rebuild.”