By Frederick Melo, Twin Cities
What’s Minnesota’s most well-regarded export? From Chicago to Nashville to New Orleans, the answer may very well be its people.
MK Nguyen, left, and her husband, Thai Phan Quang, early this year with their dogs Tater Tot (brown) and Rowley (black). Nguyen grew up in Frogtown and the Midway areas of St. Paul and now works with youth of color in East New Orleans. (Photo courtesy of MK Nguyen)
Armed with expertise in music, politics, law and youth work, three former St. Paul residents and a Minneapolis hip-hop singer are spreading life lessons from their home state to some of the most diverse, embattled and famous communities in the nation. On a recent bus tour to Chicago and down the Mississippi River, a Pioneer Press reporter caught up with four Minnesota-bred leaders who are trying to change their world.
HIP-HOP MEETS ‘OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA’
In a break between songs at the Howlin’ Wolf in New Orleans, the Twin Cities hip-hop chanteuse known as Dessa is explaining to club-goers the benefits of buying locally grown produce directly from the farmer. The book that inspired her, she said, is Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and it gave her a major burst of insight.
Her brief sermon has become a familiar refrain for the Minneapolis-born singer and essayist, who has spent much of the winter traveling to Texas, Tennessee, Florida and Louisiana, among other corners of the Southeast, preaching a “buy local” gospel while introducing audiences to her new album, “Parts of Speech.”
At each tour stop, she checks into the website EatWellGuide.org to buy at least one meal a day from restaurants specializing in local food. At each club venue, she invites a local farmer to man a booth and connect with her fans.
“I partner with a Minnesota farmer in Minnesota, and an Atlanta farmer in Atlanta, and a Nashville farmer in Nashville,” Dessa said. “To buy directly from farmers, you’ve got to know where to look.”
Her music venues aren’t just limited to concert halls. Through a grant provided by the organization GreenNotes, Dessa also has been hosting free shows at farms and farmers’ markets. It’s all part of an effort to engage young people in what she deems to be a socially conscious movement toward “sustainable” agriculture.
“The concern is that when really, really big companies grow food, it becomes difficult for consumers to know and understand the conditions in which their produce or their meat was raised,” Dessa said. “So you have beef … that was eating corn in a feedlot, not eating grass in a pasture. For the produce that we buy, a lot of it is shipped in from very far away, so you’re consuming fossil fuels.”
Dessa sits on the faculty of the McNally Smith College of Music in downtown St. Paul and stills performs with members of Doomtree, the hip-hop group that helped launch her.
“To varying degrees, there’s real interest in the food system with a lot of those guys,” she said of the band.
On Dec. 19, Dessa will appear on Minnesota Public Radio’s “Wits” variety show live from the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul, opposite actor/performer Jason Ritter. Ticket information and rebroadcast times are online at witsradio.org .
COURT WATCHING IN NEW ORLEANS
Over a small basket of roast beef-and-gravy-smothered “debris” fries, former defense attorney Brad Cousins ticks off the differences between life in New Orleans and St. Paul’s Macalester-Groveland neighborhood, where he grew up.
“It’s the little things … like ‘Mr. Okra,’ who drives his pickup truck by my front door every morning, announcing on a loudspeaker what vegetables he has to sell that day,” said Cousins, “or the fact that every neighborhood I’ve ever lived in, parades just randomly spring up.”
Despite its captivating music, food, architecture and culture, legal experts have not held the state of Louisiana in high regard, historically, for its justice system. In the 1990s, for instance, Louisiana became the first state to be sued by the federal government over the infamous conditions in one of its most brutal youth detention facilities.
Nevertheless, a series of reforms have earned the state positive recognition in recent years for attempting to repair what some have deemed to be a broken legal system. Cousins, a graduate of St. Paul’s Central High School and Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, believes the state court system still has a ways to go, and he’s actively recruiting volunteers to help him monitor the courts.
Cousins worked as a paralegal for then-Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar before earning his law degree. He runs Court Watch NOLA (courtwatchnola.org ), which recruits students and retirees to sit in on criminal trials and monitor delays and other problems with the legal system.
“We’re always seeing interesting cases,” said Cousins, who previously represented low-income defendants in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of crime in New Orleans. We’re trying to do our part. … There are so many delays in the court process.”
Read the full story by Frederick Melo from Twin Cities.
