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🍀 Mid-March miscellanea

Mutual aid updates, community ed in the neighborhood, a chance to run for the LCC board, dance parties, baseball watch parties, bouquet subscriptions, egg hunts, and much more.

Longfellow Whatever
— 7 min read
🍀 Mid-March miscellanea
The latest from the Dorman Avenue window painter

💸 Donations keep rolling into the Greater Longfellow Neighbor Relief Fund, the neighborhood's largest mutual aid program for people impacted by Operation Metro Surge and its fallout.

The fund has raised more than $230,000 from about 1,500 donors since it launched February 1. Organizers say they've distributed $208,055 of that to 156 families.

While most of the money has come from small individual donations (augmented by at least 30 donations of $1,000 or more), a number of neighborhood businesses have also directed their own fundraising efforts towards the fund. Francis Burger Joint matched the first $2,500 in donations from its patrons in a fundraising effort that runs through next week. MoonStone Gifts gave 20 percent of its weekend sales earlier this month. Time Bomb Vintage printed another batch of its logo t-shirts and donated the full proceeds. Rare Press donated the proceeds of a pottery sale. Corazon Gifts hosted a series of benefit sales and raffles. Solcana Fitness hosted a pair of public workout fundraisers.

Organizers say they have a waitlist of more than 50 families seeking assistance and plan to keep the fundraising active for the foreseeable future.

🍻 The Hiawatha-Howe Elementary PTO also continues to raise money and collect donations for impacted families at the school. The group is hosting a fundraiser at Arbeiter Brewing tomorrow (Thursday) night, featuring live music, raffles, and a silent auction.

🍼 Resident Kelly Wilson, under the moniker Do'Gooders MN, has been collecting and distributing supplies and money to families sheltering in place. In addition to a steady stream of supplies, Kelly says the project has collected $73,000 in cash donations since the beginning of the surge and has helped 47 families pay rent.

🥐 Mother Earth Gardens is hosting a bake sale on Sunday from noon-5, with proceeds going to the Community Kitchen mutual aid fund.

🎨 Neighborhood writer and person-about-town Andy Sturdevant published a detailed guide to selling art for mutual aid fundraising, titled "Proceeds Will Go To..."

🖋️ Security footage showed a pair of vandals spraypainting antisemitic graffiti on the oft-tagged exterior of the former Elsa's House of Sleep building on February 28, covering up a series of posters with the faces of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. About a week later, a sticker with similar sentiments showed up on the door of MoonStone Gifts, which also displayed anti-ICE posters in its window, placed by four hooded vandals around 9 p.m. Stickers with other racial slurs were also posted at several places along Lake Street. All were quickly removed.

🏢 The group Rise & Remember is hosting a public "Grief Healing Room" in the Historic Coliseum Building this month, in partnership with building operator Redesign Inc. The room is open to the public Tuesday-Sunday from 10-8 through the end of March, providing what organizers describe as "a calm, low pressure space for reflection and care...offered in response to the fear, stress, and trauma many people are carrying during ongoing federal immigration enforcement activity in Minnesota."

The Longfellow-made Rebel Loon LED sign at Arbeiter Brewing

💡 Longfellow artist Noah Levine has been busy producing neon-like LED sign versions of the "Rebel Loon" logo that became a popular symbol of resistance during Operation Metro Surge. The signs are available for sale through his "Twin Cities Glow Shop" business, and he's donated a number of them to local businesses, including Arbeiter Brewing. “I feel like the idea of having a bat signal loon logo glowing out onto the street should signify that this is a good place, a safe place for people to go to,” he told the Star Tribune.

Noah makes the signs in his apartment near Adams Triangle, where he's lived for six years.