Minnesota Now

Nurses at the Mankato hospital have voted to leave their union. Hear about the decision and it’s potential effects.

There are Minnesotans involved in the meetings between leaders of Canada's first nations and the Pope. We'll hear from them.

CPR saves lives - but do you know exactly how it works and how to give CPR? Doctor Jay Sheree Allen is here to tell you.

Richfield's youngest mayor is also Minnesota's first Latina mayor — and she's not running for reelection. We'll find out why and what's next for her.

And a new discovery about meat-eating dinosaurs. Get your inner paleontologist ready for some dino news.

If you have kids in your life, you may have fielded thousands of questions about dinosaurs. Like —  why do some meat-eating dinosaurs have such big heads and tiny arms? Well we might have an answer for you. University of Minnesota Professor Peter Makovicky wondered the same thing! And he’s one of the authors of a newly-published study shedding light on the evolution and biology of those dinosaurs.

The worldwide head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, is in Canada today for his second meeting with indigenous communities. His mission is to apologize in person for the atrocities of the Catholic Church against Canada’s first people. A Minneapolis based organization called The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has a representative at the meetings to ask for some specific actions from the Pope. Sam Torres, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, joined Cathy to talk about it.

Richfield mayor Maria Regan Gonzalez is the first Latina mayor in the state and that city’s youngest mayor. This spring, Gonzalez announced that she will not seek reelection, but her time as mayor has sparked a conversation on more representation in local government. Gonzalez joined host Cathy Wurzer to talk about what she has accomplished during her time as mayor and what she hopes her legacy will be.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Click the audio player above to listen to their conversation.

I never thought I would be in elected office, it was never something that crossed my mind. But then as I started to learn a little bit more about the influence you can make in your own community to make improvements for health and connectivity, I decided I wanted to run for office. But, I knew that it wasn't going to be my aspiration to stay and be in politics.

So I'm ready to continue that journey and making a difference in my community in a way that allows me to have space to have a family, to get married, to have kids and serve my community as well. And when you are in elected office at the local level, these are part time stipend positions. But in reality, the role of mayor is 24/7. And so maintaining a full time job, having a family and being an elected office, just really becomes near impossible.

Absolutely, always. And I would say I think it's good that you don't know what you're getting yourself into, because maybe you might not have made the decision to do it. I'm very thankful for my time as mayor, I think we've been able to make transformational and generational change that advances equity in the city of Richfield and a model for other for other cities. But I definitely feel like I got a Ph.D in human relations in the past few years.

Absolutely. I love the role of mayor, I would love to be a mayor and a mom. And the fact is that if I'm not retired, if I'm not independently wealthy — I need to have a full time job. And that's just not possible. But being a mayor is absolutely the best job and is the closest level of government to the people, they were literally in the grocery store. People can tell me what they think and what needs to be changed.

And a lot of times we can make those changes immediately. And you're affecting the things that affect the quality of life for everyone and the day to day things that matter, like water, do you feel safe and connected in your community? Do you have access to green space and great housing? That's what we get to work on every single day as mayor.

I mean to be honest, I think it is called the '“Obama effect.” When Obama became president, there was this thinking of “Oh my gosh, all structural racism is gone. We have a Black man in office as president” and people are feeling a little bit of that Obama effect.

Like, you know, there's one person in this role as mayor and that means this long history of structural racism and inequities are going to go away and people really having these outrageous expectations on one person, but not wanting to take accountability and ownership.

We all have a role in addressing these issues. And it's not just on the mayor, it's not just on one piece of our community, we all have to contribute. People think in some ways, that’s your job and you got to do it and why did you not fix this and generations of structural inequities because you became mayor.

Absolutely, I actually think we have made tremendous impact. So we have embedded equity as a core consideration to all of our work across the whole city of Richfield. We have our staff looking at what does that mean in every level of what they do. We were able to work with tenants to secure affordable housing and maintain affordable housing in Richfield. Our inclusionary housing policy is not only focused on affordable housing, but it also focused on accessible housing for people with disabilities, there's not many inclusionary housing policies that have that focus.

We worked with tenants to say we need a pedestrian bridge to connect some of our affordable housing neighborhoods to the direct source of pharmacy and grocery with a pedestrian bridge over the highway. And so I feel like if I haven't made a little impact, we together in Richfield have made tremendous amounts of generational improvements to concretely improve the lives of all of our residents. I'm very proud of that.

It is hard to see a lot of us retiring at the same time. I will say we have a large group of community members that is growing in their political engagement, in their advocacy. We have people in other city councils and Latinos in Shakopee and other areas that are running or are in positions currently. And so there is a lot of interest.

We have the largest growing constituency base of voters and new voters and a lot of political and social power in the Latino community. And in Minnesota, there's a lot of interest and engagement. Even if you look at Richfield 40 percent of our students are Latino. You look at cities like Willmar and Worthington, cities in greater Minnesota and you see Latinos fueling the rebirth of their downtown districts of their schools.

And so our influence in our ability to make a change in our community is growing. And while there's four of us retiring, we do have a strong bench of folks that are very politically engaged and are getting more of our residents and our community members engaged in the political process.

I will always be connected, in the sense that one of my biggest passions is supporting and mentoring other young women of color on their leadership. And so whether that has been supporting people to be candidates politically or start their own nonprofits and organizations, that is something that I'm always going to do.

As a mayor, I get to be nonpartisan and I absolutely love that. I get to put the community first above a political platform. And, you know, that's what I love to do, put community above partisan politics and so I can participate in that in so many different ways. So I will always be working on advancing community first and we'll see all the different ways that looks like running for higher office. I don't know. We'll see.

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Nurses at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Mankato have officially cut ties with their union. Nurses voted 213 to 180 Monday to decertify the Minnesota Nurse’s Association. Max Nesterak has been covering the union vote. He is deputy editor with the Minnesota Reformer, a nonprofit digital news outlet.

Dr. Allen is a physician at Mayo Clinic and host of the podcast Millennial Health. She joins Minnesota Now regularly to talk about important health and wellness topics. During her last appearance on Minnesota Now, she taught us how to recognize the signs of drowning. Dr. Allen joined Minnesota Now to talk about another important step in an emergency, CPR.

Listen to the full show here.

The worldwide head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, is in Canada today meeting with indigenous communities. His mission is to apologize in person for the atrocities of the Catholic Church against Canada’s first people. Brenda Child is Professor of American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. She joined host Cathy Wurzer to talk more about this story.

Did you know that the month of July is Disability Pride Month? More than 41 million Americans live with a disability, and multiple generations of disability rights activists have worked tirelessly to shed shame and share the joy. Kelsey Peterson is a dancer, choreographer, writer, and filmmaker who co-directed a documentary called “Move Me,” to share her own personal experience. She joined host Cathy Wurzer to talk more about her work.

Today marks the first day of Minneapolis’ Black Business week. The event will run for 6 days and feature a number of opportunities to support local black-owned businesses. Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal reporter Patrick Rehkamp joined host Cathy Wurzer to talk about that story and the rest of the top business news of the week.