Trivia quiz: What do Japan’s Fermentation Research Institute, Secretary of Agriculture Earl “Rusty” Butz and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan have in common?

Answer: Each, in their way, helped foster America’s widespread adoption of high fructose corn syrup, the sweetener that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has vowed to ban.

The country’s dependence on corn syrup is the product of historical events that look like raw material for a Thomas Pynchon novel. They’re stranger than fiction — and they help explain the backlash Kennedy’s crusade will face, given the financial ripple effects expected across the many industries involved in getting food and beverages onto grocery store shelves.

Unlike conventional corn syrup, a form of glucose derived from starch that has been around for over 200 years, high fructose corn syrup wasn’t developed until after World War II, when scientists in Japan began tinkering with the grain, hoping to transmogrify this staple into new products.

They discovered that an enzyme produced by bacteria, glucose isomerase, could convert ordinary dent corn into a high-octane sweetener. In 1971, the chemist Yoshiyuki Takasaki, working in Chiba City, Japan, patented the process.

None of this would have mattered had not Butz, a profane member of President Richard Nixon’s administration, decided to overturn decades of agricultural policy, setting the stage for high fructose corn syrup to make its debut.

Butz hated New Deal agricultural programs, which stabilized prices by paying farmers to limit the acreage under cultivation. He wanted to foster consolidation and boost production, and he frequently warned farmers to “get big or get out” — telling them to plant from “fence row to fence row.”

He had important allies, most notably Dwayne Andreas, head of the food-processing company Archer-Daniels-Midlands Co. Andreas was a famously corrupt and secretive businessman who once quipped to Wall Street analysts that “getting information from me is like frisking a seal.” Andreas helped convince Nixon that Butz’s pursuit of overproduction was the way to go.

Ordinary farmers reasonably asked: What if they raised too much wheat and corn and prices collapsed? There wasn’t enough domestic demand to absorb the predicted surplus. Butz and Andreas hit upon an unexpected buyer in 1971: the Soviet Union, which had suffered crop failures and desperately needed grain to feed livestock.

The purchase led to a formal trade agreement, and the Soviets began buying billions of dollars’ worth of corn and other grains. By 1972, they bought upward of a quarter of the entire harvest. Corn prices tripled, fueling a planting frenzy in the American Heartland.

At first, the soaring price meant that high fructose corn syrup remained a curiosity. The year 1974, though, changed everything. Sugar prices increased fivefold, thanks to bad harvests, a surge in Soviet imports (again) and other disruptions. This sugar high, combined with declining corn prices — partly because President Gerald Ford scaled back sales to the Soviets — led to a glut of the crop.

Andreas, desperate to find an outlet for the surplus, now began building facilities to perform the alchemy of converting surplus corn into high fructose syrup. His plan was simple: Pitch the sweetener as a cheap alternative to cane sugar.

One of the first adopters was jam and jelly maker JM Smucker Co. Its CEO, Paul Smucker, told the Wall Street Journal in 1976 that ADM and its competitors “couldn’t have picked a better time to come on stream with new capacity.” Smucker insisted the sugar substitute was better than the real thing: “High fructose has the little extra we’ve been seeking to enhance the flavor of the product.”

While Smucker believed the ultra-processed ingredient had a certain je ne sais quoi, others were more skeptical — particularly after sugar prices began to fall, making the traditional sweetener more competitive. At the same time, corn prices climbed, thanks to the resumption of shipments to the Soviet Union. ADM’s experiment to find new outlets for surplus corn (a strategy that also included ethanol production) was in danger.

The Soviets, oddly enough, saved the day. After they invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, President Jimmy Carter slapped a grain embargo on the Soviet Union, ending all corn shipments. Prices tumbled, suddenly making high fructose corn syrup a much cheaper alternative. In response, Coca-Cola Co. made the momentous decision to replace some of its reliance on cane sugar with the new sweetener in 1980.

This was great news for ADM, but Andreas wasn’t taking any chances. Over the next year, he orchestrated the passage of a clever act of agricultural protectionism in Congress. Rather than subsidizing corn production (too obvious!), he instead funded a secret campaign to prop up domestic cane sugar growers, and by extension, the price of sugar.

Related Articles

David Brooks: The crucial issue of the 21st Century

Lisa Jarvis: The most valuable menopause fitness hack

Elizabeth Shackelford: Burning down America’s best tool for peace and prosperity

Ara Torosian: I fled persecution in Iran. ICE enforcement here today reminds me of Tehran

Noah Feldman: Congress is surrendering its last real power

His gambit led to the passage of federal legislation in 1981 that restricted sugar imports, guaranteeing that Americans would pay significantly more for the stuff than most nations around the world. Most critics of the legislation have assumed that this was a sop to domestic sugar interests, never realizing the role that ADM and Big Corn played in the legislation.

By the mid-1980s, most soft drink manufacturers had made the switch to high fructose corn syrup, as did a growing number of food companies. Consumption of the new sweetener kept increasing until about 2005, when it peaked. It has declined, however modestly, since that time.

Now RFK Jr. wants to get rid of it altogether. It’s a laudable goal, perhaps, though it’s not clear whether cane sugar is all that much healthier. Still, if he wants to have a shot at succeeding, an awareness of the decades of machinations that led to its ubiquity in our food supply is a good place to start.

Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, is coauthor of “Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance.”

Edward Lotterman

The week has been interesting. An early jobs indicator showed stronger growth in July than June. The first estimate of output in the April-to-June quarter showed an annual increase rate of 3.0%, up from the first quarter, but driven paradoxically by declining imports. The increase in the price index for “personal consumption expenditures” that some prefer to the CPI as an inflation measure was up 2.6% on a 12-month-earlier basis, but near 3% if you annualize rates of the last couple of months.

And then a meeting of the Federal Reserve’s policy-making Open-Market Committee saw two of the seven members of the Board of Governors dissent from the recommendation of Chair Jerome Powell. This is highly unprecedented, to put it mildly, but had been telegraphed so far in advance by the dissenters that it had little effect on markets.

We live in interesting times, to put it mildly.  As President Donald Trump announced a blizzard of trade-threat changes on the eve of his Aug. 1 deadline, one precept is essential. Don’t count your chickens – or trade war victories – before they actually materialize.

Ignoring that basic wisdom tends to result in fang marks on one’s posterior parts. This is especially true in economics where long and variable lags between some cause and its eventual effects are the rule rather than the exception. Yet while that should be common sense, it has not stopped a campaign of triumphalism among Trump supporters.

Fox News pundit Larry Kudlow led off with an article headlined “Trump’s trade strategy is working. The so-called experts are wrong, there is no tariff inflation, retaliation or recession.”

On “PBS NewsHour,” Jasmine Wright, the CNN political reporter recently moved to NOTUS, asserted: “Obviously, we haven’t seen this enormous downturn of the economy, which I think a lot of economists projected would happen by now.”

Sigh! Such optimism sounds like someone who falls off Dubai’s 2,722-foot Burj Khalifa and cheerily cries, “So far, so good!” after passing the top two stories. Trump has been in office six months. Four months have passed since his Liberation Day in April. Deadlines, offers and threats have changed on a daily basis. The number of actual signed “deals” is perhaps eight at best. These contain undefined and unmeasurable “commitments” for trade-partner nations to invest in our country. It is far, far too early to assess how things will turn out.

Yes, tariff receipts are up, although mostly from shipments rushed in under historic import duty rates rather than new ones. The to-and-fro blizzard of assertions and threats by the president has left U.S. Customs offices nearly as confused as U.S. importers and exporters. And since many of his declarations break solemn promises he made earlier, whether in his first term or just a few days ago, no one here or abroad can make firm plans about anything without incurring risks.

Citizens and voters need to understand that “lags” wedge themselves almost everywhere and every time between economic policy actions and their consequences.

Wright’s “a lot of economists projected would happen by now” is sheer nonsense. I don’t know of a single reputable economist who predicted that anything major would happen in four or six months. Only a few support the facile prediction that tariffs will result in a one-and-done increase in consumer or producer prices.

No economist need specialize in economic history to know, for example, that effects of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act were still manifesting themselves four years after its implementation. Charles Kindleberger’s classic “The World in Depression: 1929-1939,” good reading for anyone interested in contemporary issues, contains the most famous economic graph of the century, a spiderweb showing how the value of international trade fell month by month from January 1929 to March 1933. At that point, it was 70% below its start.

Without necessarily predicting equal disaster, it is hard to see how the effects of the current administration’s far broader changes in a far more complex global economy could work through any faster.

The problem of lags is not limited to trade issues. In the 1950s, John Maynard Keynes’ argument that governments could and should control the business cycle of booms and busts gripped most economists. He said that by manipulating both fiscal policies — taxing and government spending, and monetary policies – money supply and interest rates – governments could prevent both excessive booms and destructive busts.

In practice, delays or lags in the processes undercut desired results. Fiscal policies first had a “recognition lag,” actually seeing what was going on. Then Congress lagged in changing spending and taxes. Yet another lag delayed effects of such policy actions on the real economy.

Often, the actions were such that they hit just as the economy was adjusting on its own. Stimulus did not always counter slowing. It might piggyback on natural recovery. Fiscal belt-tightening did not come in time to offset booms. It might rather pile on to turn natural slowing into a power dive.

In any case, Congress’ love of stepping on the gas and refusal to ever use brakes made Keynesian fiscal policy unworkable in practice.

The money side of the new theory had been to increase the money supply so as to lower interest rates in the face of recession and to contract money to raise rates when inflation loomed. Yet Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, although parent of the economic school of thought called “monetarism,” warned against such jockeying with money.

Lags that were “long and variable” in his words could compound problems rather than alleviate them. Better to have steady, moderate growth in money over time, ignoring short-term yo-yos in output or employment.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Friedman’s intellectual heirs put all this in formal mathematical models “proving” that Keynes was flat wrong across the board. Their arguments held sway within the discipline but were ignored outside it.

So now bastardized Keynesianism, in which the Federal Reserve is supposed to cure all society’s ills except “distress in the lower tract,” dominates government and the media.

Just this week, Trump nearly foamed at the mouth when the Fed didn’t cut its rate target when the economy was doing so well. He ignored that a thriving economy may be a reason to tighten. He complained that central banks of other industrialized economies have cut rates and we have not. This ignores the fact that, while several have national debt-to-GDP ratios higher than we do, none are blowing up their annual budget deficits the way his “Big, Beautiful Bill” budget is for our nation. The deficit for fiscal year 2026 projected from Congressional Budget Office baselines is over 6% of GDP. The European Union average has been about 3.2%.

The policy arena will remain fraught for a long time. And it will take not only months but years for the U.S. and global economies to adjust to the largest and most abrupt changes in a century. Hang on for a wild ride.

St. Paul economist and writer Edward Lotterman can be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.

Breauanna Jennings, already a mother of two, worried something was wrong a few hours before she gave birth to her third child. Still, she said a certified nurse midwife assured her she and her baby were fine.

August Jennings, 6, on a swing in June 2025. (Courtesy of the Jennings family)

When baby August was born in Hudson, Wis., medical staff rushed to give him chest compressions and resuscitate him because he wasn’t breathing.

“I don’t think anybody was really telling us what was going on because it was an emergency situation,” Jennings said.

And the feeling in that moment for husband Anthony Jennings?

“Scared to death,” he said.

August didn’t get enough oxygen during his birth and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, according to a medical malpractice lawsuit filed by his family in St. Croix County, Wis.

A jury decided on a $29 million verdict for the family in March, though the amount was recently reduced to $17 million due to Wisconsin statutes, said Noah Lauricella, the Jenningses’ attorney.

The Jenningses said they want to ensure August will get the care he needs “for the best quality of life he can have,” which was a major factor for their lawsuit.

“August is pure joy,” Breauanna Jennings said recently. “I’m so thankful that we got to keep him, but it’s hard to watch how hard things are for him.”

“A lot of it could have been prevented,” Anthony Jennings said.

The Jenningses also want to help other families.

“The hope is … that we are making sure that medical providers are able to make the right decisions,” Breauanna Jennings said. “In the right time,” Anthony Jennings added.

Baby ‘near death’ at birth

The Jenningses also have a 13-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter, and Breauanna said their deliveries were not problematic. There was “nothing concerning” in August’s prenatal visits, the Jenningses’ lawsuit said.

Related Articles

For ‘mama bear’ parents, access to their college kids’ medical and student records can be a waiver away

States pass privacy laws to protect brain data collected by devices

States sue Trump, saying he is intimidating hospitals over gender-affirming care for youth

Researchers forecast what Trump’s bill will mean for patients: Debt and delayed care

Tribal health officials work to fill vaccination gaps as measles outbreak spreads

When Jennings, of New Richmond, Wis., went to Hudson Hospital for her son’s birth in September 2018, certified nurse midwife Robyn Cox told her the baby’s “heart rate wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible, either,” Jennings recounted recently.

A fetal heart rate monitor was used at the hospital and “the signs, symptoms … were such that the standard of care required that care be turned over to a physician and not to a midwife” for August’s delivery, the lawsuit said.

A doctor was paged at 6:19 p.m. and August was born at 6:24 p.m. The obstetrician, who wasn’t part of the lawsuit, didn’t make it into the room, Lauricella said.

The lawsuit said Cox “knew or should have known that in order to preserve the well-being” of August, “an immediate C-section should have been called for.”

A C-section did not happen and, when Jennings gave birth to August, he was “near death” due to brain damage from lack of oxygen, according to the suit.

Midwife’s attorney: She was trained, experienced

The Jenningses’ lawsuit initially named Hudson Hospital, though the hospital was later dismissed from the legal action. It then centered on Cox and her employer at the time, Hudson Physicians.

Samuel Leib, an attorney for Cox and Hudson Physicians, told the jury that Breauanna Jennings had experienced “decreased fetal movement” in the weeks before August was born, according to a court transcript of his opening statement.

He said experts would testify that August had a “neurologic injury” before his mother “ever got to the hospital.”

“When they arrived at the hospital, if they had done a C-section the moment (she) had arrived, … the outcome would have been no different,” Leib said, adding later that was because “there was a pre-existing problem.”

Cox “was trained, experienced, licensed to do this delivery and care for mom,” Leib told the jury.

Jury found midwife negligent

In a March verdict, a St. Croix County jury answered “yes” to the question of “Was Robyn Cox … negligent in her management of the labor of Breauanna Jennings and the delivery of August Jennings” and “yes” to the second question of “Was Robyn Cox’s negligence a cause of August Jennings injuries and health condition?”

The jury awarded $29 million for past and future pain and suffering, August’s past and future medical and care expenses, and other factors. Lauricella said they were told it was a record-setting verdict for St. Croix County.

Attorneys for Cox, Hudson Physicians and the Wisconsin Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund sought a new trial or to change the verdict, which Judge Scott Needham denied in a July order.

The attorneys also argued that Wisconsin statutes cap damages for pain and suffering at $750,000 total, which Needham agreed with.

Hudson Physicians is responsible for $1.5 million of the verdict and the Wisconsin Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund for $15.9 million, Lauricella noted in a July court document that calculated interest owed as of that date. When a health care provider pays up to their insurance policy limit in Wisconsin, the fund is responsible for the rest, Lauricella said.

“This was a lengthy, heatedly contested and tremendously emotional trial with nationally known experts testifying in support of the care that was provided by my clients,” Leib said in a recent email.

“Robyn Cox is an extraordinarily well trained certified nurse midwife who continues to provide excellent care to her patients,” he continued. “Although we respect the jury’s verdict, the motions after verdict contained many potential appellate issues. The courts provide the opportunity to resolve disputes, and this dispute continues at this time.”

Cox lists online that she currently works as a certified nurse midwife in Minnesota and that she stopped working for Hudson Physicians in 2019.

Lauricella said they are considering filing an appeal, challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin’s $750,000 cap on pain and suffering.

Auggie ‘makes whole room light up’

After his birth, August was transferred to a neonatal intensive care unit, where he spent about two weeks. The early months at home were just “living moment to moment” and getting him to appointments with doctors and specialists, Anthony Jennings said.

As the couple looked back at what happened on the day August was born, they had concerns and sought out the Goldenberg Lauricella law firm in Minneapolis.

Lauricella said, when his own children were born, they needed a lot of medical care. “They received outstanding … care and they’re doing great,” he said. The Jenningses “believed they weren’t so fortunate, believed that they could have had a different life for their son if things had been done differently.”

Most lawsuits are dismissed or settled without a trial. Going through the trial and reliving what happened was traumatic, said Breauanna Jennings, now 41.

It was “really sad and scary,” she said. “You put trust in a medical provider, hoping to keep you and your baby safe.”

August will turn 7 in September. He needs full-time assistance at home and school, which he will for his entire life, his parents said. He uses a walker to get around.

“He is a very social, happy guy,” Breauanna Jennings said.

Related Articles

Delays possible on St. Croix River bridge as crews work to remove epoxy coating

74-year-old found in Hastings ditch died of gunshot wound, coroner says

Canadian wildfire smoke prompts air quality alerts across Minnesota and the Great Lakes region

Want to bike 10 miles? 70 miles? Bridge the Valley Bike Rally covers it all

Twin Cities power outages, cleanup work remain after second storm in two days

August has “a fairly good understanding of language,” his mother said, and he uses an iPad as a communication device — he pushes icons to verbalize for him, and he has been learning letters and numbers also. He uses his own kind of sign language.

He finished kindergarten last school year and will soon be heading to first grade.

“He’s a little celebrity,” Anthony Jennings said. “It takes us like 10 minutes to get out of school with everyone saying, ‘Bye, Auggie, bye, Auggie.’”

He plays with other kids “with modifications and support from an adult,” said Breauanna Jennings, who works as an occupational therapy assistant and uses her expertise with her son.

Lauricella said August “makes the whole room light up” when he enters.

“You can’t help but smile when you’re around the kid,” he said. “To see what he faces and how hard things are that we all take for granted, that our bodies can do, and for him to still walk around through life in a (walker) with that kind of joy — it’s incredible.”

As a Black man in Minnesota, Timothy Brewington said that where he comes from, when you encounter a police officer, you turn around.

“You don’t want eye contact, you don’t want any type of communication,” Brewington said. “And it’s really the uniform. You try to stay away from the uniform.”

In Black culture, police often represent the opposite of what they’re meant to, he said. Instead of safety, they present fear among people of color – and the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 further cemented this for many.

Black communities also tend to be more aware that American policing as we know it evolved in part from slave patrols that were “empowered to control and deny access to equal rights to freed slaves,” as the NAACP explains it.

So, where do people go from there? In a country where policing is meant to serve as the system of safety, of protection, of servanthood, how does law enforcement ensure the well-being of their entire community is protected regardless of race, identity and ability?

Woodbury, a growing population of more than 80,000, does not claim to have all the answers, but it is being intentional in hearing everyone’s voices, according to Public Safety Director and Chief Jason Posel.

In 2019, Woodbury’s Public Safety Department and members of the community joined together to create the Multicultural Advisory Committee, or MAC, to help strengthen the relationship between police and the community. Each committee member volunteers to represent their various ethnic and cultural backgrounds and work alongside law enforcement to review policy, help create initiatives and form relationships, which all contribute to creating a safer community.

“Our mission, the reason why we exist, is to serve all people with compassion and courage,” Posel said. “The Multicultural Advisory Committee is an opportunity for us to connect with the community, to work with the community to help address issues.”

Bridging gaps

The committee started in 2019 after a woman called the police department and shared how her grandson had negative encounters with law enforcement outside of Woodbury. With the desire that her grandson and others would feel safe and connected, she suggested that the community and the department have conversations to try to build trust, according to Brewington. From there, the committee bloomed and now has close to 20 members who meet in person every fourth Monday of the month.

“Like in any relationship, you have to get to know the person and, over time, you can really open up and state how you feel,” said Brewington, who joined the committee in 2019. “But the timing of the formation of this group was important, because we started in the early part of 2019, and then George Floyd was murdered in May of 2020.”

The group wasn’t formed out of crisis, Brewington said, but rather to address an existing systemic issue. Floyd’s murder, which created a massive outcry in Minnesota and globally, became a sort of “testing ground” for the committee, he said.

“That experience taught me that the department was serious about building relationships,” Brewington said. “It wasn’t just something to check off the box, something to put on the website.”

Muna Abdi, a Somali-American Minnesotan who joined the committee in 2020, said it is an opportunity for community members to have a seat at the table.

“I feel like it’s a place for me to come and advocate for community members and actually build trust with law enforcement,” Abdi said.

MAC impact

Committee members are involved in new officer hiring processes whenever possible, and more than 20 officers have been hired with use of the members’ input, Posel said. Committee members separately interview potential hires with their own set of questions, which allows the department to evaluate candidates through different lenses, Posel said.

“What I appreciate is tangible outcomes as a result of us coming together,” Brewington said.

The MAC doesn’t operate under one leader but rather as a collective, through facilitated conversations led by community member Shawn Sorrell. They meet in community spaces like the YMCA, Hero Center and the Public Safety Department, and are always asking the question “Who’s not represented?” Brewington said. Posel said this can include seniors, youth, additional multicultural communities and the LGBTQ+ community.

During the meetings, the committee will cover things from community programming to law enforcement training to traffic stops, development, policy and practices, Posel said.

“But sometimes, something’s happening in the world and we change our agenda so we can talk about what’s happening,” Brewington said.

Related Articles

Minnesota State Patrol’s first chaplain retires, reflects on ‘pinnacle of his pastoral experience’

West St. Paul police arrest 2 carjacking suspects after pursuit into St. Paul

Eagan police hope new device helps stop some pursuits in their tracks

Artist of Suni Lee sculpture in St. Paul, now stolen, hopes it’s returned to community

Farmington woman charged with aiding boyfriend in fatal Apple Valley stabbing

Members are not shy, either, Brewington said – if something is impacting them and it’s not being addressed, they’ll make it known. Right now, conversations for the committee surrounding immigration and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are front and center.

Posel said the department has discussed what their role is in federal enforcement, and that Woodbury’s focus is to “enforce state law and to work with the community to address issues,” which has provided clarity to the volunteers on the role of officers. Brewington said, from the community perspective, members have shared information to help people know what their rights are, where to go if they need help and what resources are available to them.

“There’s a lot of this mutual sharing that happens during our discussions,” Brewington said.

Why it matters

Brewington said being a part of the committee has given him an appreciation for how complicated the role of an officer is and an understanding of how necessary it is for officers to have good moral values, to understand their prejudices and dispositions and not allow them to impact how they treat people.

He said it’s shown him that most officers want to come to work, do a good job and serve their community.

“In the past, my tendency has been to put everybody in the same group,” Brewington said. “Now, I don’t want that done to me, but I do that to officers. This has been an experience for me to see beyond the uniform.”

Abdi said she remembers her first ride-along with officers after joining the committee, which is something each volunteer is encouraged to do at least once a year, according to Posel. Abdi spent four hours observing how officers interacted with her community.

“Seeing the practicality of the work, it was really mind-blowing,” Abdi said. “When you see an officer who’s handling the work with care and respect, it’s really amazing.”

Everyone in Woodbury wants to feel safe and respected and experience fair treatment, Abdi said, which is why she’s involved to advocate for others. Committee volunteers often feel as though they are ambassadors for the community, Brewington said, and their experiences carry with them in conversations with family and friends.

“The history of distrust between the police department and communities of color, it’s always present, and this group works to restore that relationship,” Brewington said.

Fear is what brought the members to the table, Brewington said, and unfortunately, while he feels safe, seen and valued in Woodbury, that doesn’t necessarily translate outside of the community. Woodbury’s is one of the few departments in the state to have a Multicultural Advisory Committee, according to the department.

“I still get that nervous feeling when there’s an officer behind me or within eyesight of me as I’m driving around (outside of Woodbury),” Brewington said.

An amazing place to live

Woodbury is an amazing place to live, Abdi said, a place where she feels at home and safe.

Brewington added that he believes Woodbury is a great place to live because of leadership from the mayor, city council, police department and other entities that focuses greatly on community engagement.

As the parent of a child with special needs, Brewington said he’s long been concerned with how officers would interact and misinterpret his child’s unwillingness to abide by commands, a fear he said many parents of neurodivergent children have.

Related Articles

Republican joins 2 DFLers in race for Nicole Mitchell’s former Senate seat

Twin Cities road closures this weekend for I-94, I-694, I-35W and I-35E

Gov. Tim Walz calls special elections for 2 vacant Senate seats

Divided government means high stakes for Woodbury special election

Wisconsin man pleads guilty in crash that killed Mahtomedi High School classmates

Now, because of what he knows of the training and resources of the Woodbury department, “if something happens with my son, I feel comfortable calling the department to come and provide aid,” he said.

It’s important to engage the community in building relationships with law enforcement and creating solutions together, Brewington said, which is as important now as it’s ever been, he said.

“This is our proactive antidote to what’s trying to divide us,” Brewington said.

Other Minnesota cities that have similar committees include Roseville, Maplewood, Coon Rapids, Hopkins, Columbia Heights, St. Louis Park, Bloomington, Edina and more.

Woodbury Multicultural Advisory Committee

To learn more about the committee or get involved, visit woodburymn.gov/881/Multicultural-Advisory-Committee.