WCCO-TV, branded on-air as CBS Minnesota, is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving as the CBS outlet for the Twin Cities area. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division, and maintains studios on South 11th Street along Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis; its transmitter is located at the Telefarm complex in Shoreview, Minnesota.
The Minneapolis City Council is the lawmaking body of Minneapolis. It consists of 13 members, elected from separate wards to four-year terms, via a ranked-choice method. The council structure has been in place since the 1950s. In recent elections, council membership has been dominated by the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL). As of 2022, 12 members identified with the DFL, while one identified with Democratic Socialists of America. Until the 2021 Minneapolis City Council election, the city's government structure was considered a weak-mayor, strong-council system. However, a charter amendment was passed that gave the mayor more power and reduced the council to purely legislative duties.
Cameron A. Gordon is an American politician who was a Green Party member of the Minneapolis City Council from 2006 to 2022. He was a co-founder of the Green Party of Minnesota and was called "the most prominent Green elected official in the US."
Minneapolis, officially the City of Minneapolis, is a city in the state of Minnesota and the county seat of Hennepin County. As of the 2020 census the population was 429,954, making it the largest city in Minnesota and the 46th-most-populous in the United States. Nicknamed the "City of Lakes", Minneapolis is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks, and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins as the 19th century lumber and flour milling capitals of the world, and, to the present day, preserved its financial clout. It occupies both banks of the Mississippi River and adjoins Saint Paul, the state capital of Minnesota.
The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) is the primary law enforcement agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It is also the largest police department in Minnesota. Formed in 1867, it is the second-oldest police department in Minnesota, after the Saint Paul Police Department that formed in 1854. A short-lived Board of Police Commissioners existed from 1887 to 1890.
Andrea Jenkins is an American politician, writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. She is known for being the first Black openly transgender woman elected to public office in the United States, since January 2018 on the Minneapolis City Council and as the council's president, since January 2022.
Jacob Lawrence Frey is an American politician and attorney who has served as the mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota since 2018. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, he served on the Minneapolis City Council from 2014 to 2018.
Elizabeth Peterson "Lisa" Bender is an American politician, city planner, and a former member of the Minneapolis City Council from the 10th Ward. In 2018, she was unanimously elected president of the Minneapolis City Council.
The 2017 Minneapolis City Council election was held on November 7, 2017, to elect the members of the Minneapolis City Council. The political composition remained unchanged, with the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) retaining 12 seats and the Green Party of Minnesota one seat. Three DFL incumbents were defeated by intraparty opponents. The new City Council convened on January 8, 2018.
Local protests over the murder of George Floyd, sometimes called the Minneapolis riots or Minneapolis uprising, began on May 26, 2020, and within a few days had inspired a global protest movement against police brutality and racial inequality. The initial events were a reaction to a video filmed the day before and circulated widely in the media of police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds while Floyd struggled to breathe, begged for help, lost consciousness, and died. Public outrage over the content of the video gave way to widespread civil disorder in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and other cities in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area in the five-day period of May 26 to 30 after Floyd's murder.
False rumors of a police shooting resulted in rioting, arson, and looting in the U.S. city of Minneapolis from August 26–28, 2020. The events began as a reaction to the suicide of Eddie Sole Jr., a 38-year old black man who was being pursued by Minneapolis police officers for his alleged involvement in a homicide. At approximately 2 p.m. on August 26, Sole died after he shot himself in the head as officers approached to arrest him. False rumors quickly spread on social media that Minneapolis police officers had fatally shot Sole. To quell unrest, Minneapolis police released closed-circuit television surveillance footage that captured Sole's suicide, which was later confirmed by a Hennepin County Medical Examiner's autopsy report.
A mayoral election was held on November 2, 2021, to elect the mayor of the U.S. city of Minneapolis. Incumbent DFL mayor Jacob Frey won reelection to a second term, becoming the first Minneapolis mayor to win a second term since R. T. Rybak in 2005. Minneapolis mayoral elections use instant-runoff voting, also known as ranked-choice voting. All candidates appear on the same ballot and there is no primary election, nor is there a runoff. Minneapolis's twin city, Saint Paul, also held a mayoral election on the same day, using the same system.
The George Floyd Square occupied protest is centered at the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States and features several makeshift memorials and street art. The street intersection is where Derek Chauvin, a White police officer with the Minneapolis Police Department, murdered George Floyd, an unarmed 46-year-old Black man, on May 25, 2020. The day after Floyd's murder, people began leaving memorials to him. The street intersection soon transitioned to a controversial occupation protest by people who had erected barricades to block vehicular traffic and transformed the space with amenities, social services, and public art of Floyd and that of other racial justice themes. The unofficial memorial and occupied protest zone was referred to as “autonomous”, "no-go", and "police-free", but local officials disputed such characterizations.
Lisa Ruth Goodman is an American politician serving as a member of the Minneapolis City Council from the 7th ward. Elected in 1997, she is the longest-serving member of the council. The 7th ward holds some of Minnesota's wealthiest neighborhoods, including Bryn Mawr, Cedar-Isles-Dean, Downtown West, East Isles, Elliot Park, Kenwood, Loring Park, Lowry Hill, and Stevens Square.
38th Street is a major east-west roadway in the U.S. city of Minneapolis and an officially designated cultural district in the Powderhorn community. The area developed into a residential zone when the Chicago Avenue street car line was extended to East 38th Street in 1880. Since the 1930s, the area has featured many Black-owned businesses, and the surrounding neighborhoods have had distinct histories from other neighborhoods in Minneapolis due to racial settlement patterns that concentrated Black residents there.
The police abolition movement gained momentum in the U.S. city of Minneapolis during protests of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and culminated in the failed Question 2 ballot measure in 2021 to replace the city's police department with a public safety department. The measure would have removed minimum staffing levels for sworn officers, renamed the Minneapolis Police Department as the Minneapolis Department of Public Safety, and shifted oversight of the new agency from the mayor's office to the city council. It required the support of 51 percent of voters in order to pass. In the Minneapolis municipal election held on November 2, 2021, the measure failed with 43.8 percent voting for it and 56.2 percent voting against it.
Protests and civil disorder occurred in reaction to the killing of Daunte Wright on April 11, 2021. Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by police officer Kimberly Potter during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, United States. Protests that first began in Brooklyn Center spread to other locations in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area and then to other cities in the United States. Several nights of civil disorder in Brooklyn Center and adjacent cities resulted in sporadic looting and damage to a few hundred properties, including four businesses that were set on fire.
Civil unrest began in the Uptown district of the U.S. city of Minneapolis on June 3, 2021, as a reaction to news reports that law enforcement officers had killed a wanted suspect during an arrest. The law enforcement killing occurred atop a parking ramp near West Lake Street and Girard Avenue. Police fired several rounds, killing the person at the scene. In an initial statement about the encounter, the U.S. Marshals Service alleged that a person failed to comply with arresting officers and produced a gun. Crowds gathered on West Lake Street near the parking ramp soon afterwards as few details were known about the incident or the deceased person, who was later identified as Winston Boogie Smith, a 32-year-old black American man.
George Floyd Square, officially George Perry Floyd Square, is the commemorative street name for the section of Chicago Avenue in the U.S. city of Minneapolis from East 37th Street to East 39th Street. It is named after George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered there by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. The streetway and memorial site is centered at the 38th and Chicago intersection.
