Anoka County selects a new county administrator

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After a month-long search following the retirement of former administrator Rhonda Sivarajah, the Anoka County Board of Commissioners selected Jim Dickinson as the county’s new administrator on Tuesday.

Jim Dickinson (Courtesy of the Anoka County Board of Commissioners)

For close to 20 years, Dickinson was the city administrator of Andover and previously served as the city’s finance director and interim administrator for five years. Before Andover, he worked as an accounting manager for Anoka County, a city accountant for Cottage Grove and an accountant with Anoka County, according to a news release from Anoka County.

He received his bachelor’s degree in accounting from St. Cloud State University.

“I think the search process for a new administrator went well,” said Mike Gamache, chair of the Anoka County Board of Commissioners. “Jim stood out among the applicants because he has more than 30 years of experience in the public sector – as a city administrator, finance director, and he worked in accounting for Anoka County. He’s a great addition to our leadership.”

Dickinson said he foresees challenges in the county surrounding budgeting, employment, rise in population and the Anoka County jail project. Dickinson said he plans to tackle these challenges collaboratively with the municipality.

“The challenge is exciting,” Dickinson said. “I’ve been in Andover and we’re on a good trajectory in this organization right now so I’m looking for a new challenge.”

Dickinson will officially begin serving as the Anoka County administrator in September.

“Being the new administrator in Anoka County is kind of a homecoming for me,” Dickinson said in the release. “Many of the faces have changed since I worked here last, but there are a few people who are still here. I’m excited to reconnect with them, and work with new staff and commissioners. I’m thankful for the opportunity, and I welcome the challenge.”

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Kamala Harris: A Baptist with a Jewish husband and a faith that traces back to MLK and Gandhi

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By DARREN SANDS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Black clergy who know Vice President Kamala Harris, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, marvel at the fusion of traditions and teachings that have molded her religious faith and social justice values.

A Baptist married to a Jewish man, she’s inspired by the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and influenced by the religious traditions of her mother’s native India as well as the Black Church.

“She’s had the best of two worlds,” says her longtime pastor, the Rev. Amos Brown, who leads Third Baptist Church in San Francisco.

In interviews, religious leaders and theologians told The Associated Press that Harris’ candidacy has special symbolic significance following President Joe Biden’s departure from election campaign. Not only because she would be the nation’s first female president, but she’s a Black American with South Asian roots and her two cultures are intrinsically linked.

FILE – Rev. Amos Brown speaks during a rally in support of reparations for African Americans as Supervisor Shamann Walton, left, listens outside City Hall in San Francisco, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023. Black clergy marvel at the fusion of traditions and teachings that have molded Kamala Harris’ religious faith and social-justice values. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

The clergy and scholars noted that the concept of nonviolent resistance, a critical strategy in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, gained influence under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in India, who was an inspiration for many decades to America’s Black preachers and civil rights leaders.

“It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world,” Gandhi said in 1935 to a visiting delegation led by prominent Black U.S. theologian Howard Thurman.

Those shared cultural links can be found in Harris’ family history, too. Her maternal grandmother was a community organizer, and her grandfather P.V. Gopalan, was a civil servant who joined the resistance to win India’s independence from Britain.

Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, even met King as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, where she participated in civil rights demonstrations.

“She was conscious of history, conscious of struggle, conscious of inequities. She was born with a sense of justice imprinted on her soul,” Harris wrote of her mother in her 2019 book “The Truths We Hold.”

The Black Church tradition also influenced Harris.

“The vice president has a strong Christian faith that she’s talked about a lot,” said Jamal Simmons, a pastor’s son and Harris’ former communications director. As a Democratic strategist, he has helped candidates make inroads with faith communities.

“She was raised in a Christian church, and attended Christian churches throughout her life, and I think that still influences her, her worldview and her ethical commitments,” he said.

The Rev. Freddie D. Haynes III, a pastor in Dallas, first met Harris at Third Baptist in San Francisco, sparking their more than 30-year friendship.

Haynes – whose family has close ties to Third Baptist – was guest preaching at the time while visiting his mother. Harris, then the Alameda County district attorney, had just joined the congregation.

“She has always understood that Jesus and justice go together. So, it’s not hard to see why she chose a church that has that kind of justice DNA,” said Haynes, whose grandfather shaped Third Baptist’s social justice identity as its pastor. Then his father carried it on during his short time in the pulpit.

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Through the years, Haynes and Harris connected over their shared faith. Haynes said she admired his ability to blend Black Christian theology in the pulpit with the cadence and rhythm of hip-hop. It was Harris’s commitment to serving the most vulnerable that impressed him.

“Her spirituality has been informed by a sense of justice for those who are othered, disadvantaged, and treated as second-class citizens,” said Haynes, who leads Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas.

As a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Harris was immersed in a cultural environment influenced by deep faith. The fellowship and service she learned at her alma mater is key to understanding the spirituality driving her sense of purpose, said  Matthew Watley, pastor of nearby Kingdom Fellowship AME, one of the fastest growing churches in America.

Watley said Howard’s commitment to service through religious passion and academic prowess never leaves its students. Several of Harris’ friends, including a line sister in the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., worship at Kingdom Fellowship, where Harris has attended twice in recent years.

Joshua DuBois, former head of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said because of the influence of Eastern and Western cultural and religious traditions, Harris exudes a kind of ecumenism that makes her candidacy appealing to an array of religious voters.

“I think that presidents are grounded in their faith and inspired by their faith in numerous ways. It’s the wellspring that they draw from,” said DuBois, who worked under former President Barack Obama’s administration. “When you know the world is going mad how do you connect to something larger than yourself?”

“I also think faith can help you with prioritization,” he added. “Often times you can only focus on one thing as president and you face the question: Who needs you the most? I think that is certainly how Jesus walked. That’s how Gandhi walked.”

Black women, including clergy and activists who have not stopped organizing and praying since the COVID-19 pandemic, are quickly embracing Harris.

The Rev. Traci Blackmon, who joined 4,000 Black clergy on a recent pro-Harris call, said the outpouring of support for her is connected to the anticipated ugliness and opposition she is bound to face in her sprint against former President Donald Trump.

“She should be president because she’s equipped, prepared and the best candidate for the job,” said Blackmon, a St. Louis-based United Church of Christ minister, who spoke to the AP as Harris gathered delegate support.

The call was organized by the Black Church PAC, co-founded by the Rev. Michael McBride, a longtime Harris supporter and pastor of The Way Christian Center in Berkeley. McBride told the AP that he was still in the pulpit on Sunday when Biden withdrew his candidacy. After the benediction, McBride said, one of the church mothers stood up, shared that news, and asked, in effect, “What do we do now?”

McBride and many other Black pastors who have been calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war will be looking to Harris for leadership that would bring about peace. Brown, her own pastor, was among the Black clergy who visited the White House in recent months to appeal to the Biden administration.

“To me it’s a matter of peace and justice,” Brown said.

On Sunday, after Harris was endorsed by Biden. she sought out Brown with an evening phone call, about an hour before the AP reached him at his home in San Francisco.

“I’m calling my pastor,” Harris said in her typical greeting, referring to the man that staffers in her office are instructed to get to know during their first week on the job.

She wanted her pastor to pray, and pray Brown did, that Harris “would be the quintessential instrument to bring healing, hope and wholeness” to the United States of America.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Column: Simone Biles’ Olympic return is the best story in Paris

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By MIKE LUPICA | New York Daily News

The Olympic Games of Paris start now, and if they won’t bring the world together over the next two-and-half weeks — not this world — they might at least help us think about all the trouble in it a little less. Once again, this time from Paris, we will watch athletes like Simone Biles, who might end up the headliner of them all, do something great in sports. And that is always worth watching, every single time.

Of course Biles is not the only American story. There are so many other athletes and stories, just from our country, about which to care, far too many to list here. We will watch Sha’Carri Richardson try to run faster in the 100 meters than any woman in the world, outrun once and for all the ridiculous ban because of marijuana that kept her from competing against the world in Tokyo. We have always been so much a country of runners and jumpers. Three years later, but not too late, we will finally get the chance, on a stage like this, to see Richardson of Dallas chase gold.

Sha’Carri Richardson competes in the first round of the women’s 200 meters on Day Seven of the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Track & Field Trials at Hayward Field on June 27, 2024 in Eugene, Oregon. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

We will watch the great Katie Ledecky try to dominate the rest of the world in women’s swimming, perhaps win an almost ridiculous fourth straight gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle. All she has done so far in her career is win seven gold medals and three silver, to go with 26 world championship medals. When she jumps in the water again in Paris, swimming will feel like the same kind of main event it once did when Michael Phelps was back in the water at the Olympics.

So it is Sha’Carri and Katie. It is finally getting the chance to see LeBron James and Steph Curry on the same court, trying to win a championship, this time of the whole world, together after all the winning they have done in the NBA.

Members of the US Olympic Basketball team, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Tyrese Haliburton, Lebron James, Joel Embiid, and Anthony Edwards, pose for a photo before boarding an Olympic-themed Golden Train as they prepare to travel to Paris to attend the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, from the Eurostar departures terminal at St Pancras International train station in London on July 24, 2024. (Photo by BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images)

But with all that, Simone Biles will be the one from the United States to watch in Paris, looking to go all the way back to the top of her sport, literally reaching for the sky, three years after she was so afraid of crashing to the earth in Tokyo. That was where, as we all learned, this young woman’s mid-career crisis really was occurring in mid-air.

In the run-up to those Games in Tokyo, you felt as if there was Biles on the U.S. team and everybody else; as if all of the coverage on all of NBC’s platforms would be built around the most gifted gymnast our country had ever produced and the world had ever seen. But then, and even though she would come away with medals in the team competition and on the balance beam, what we didn’t know, but would sure find out, was that once she was in the air, doing things that really only she had ever done, how afraid she was.

Simone Biles of Team United States looks on during a gymnastics training session ahead of the Paris Olympic Games at Gymnastic Training Centre of Le Bourget on July 23, 2024 in Le Bourget, France. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

It was because of something known to gymnasts as the “twisties.” She would be doing a vault and spin through the air and not have any idea if she was going to be able to land safely. The twisties had afflicted her in the past. Now they were back, and about to steal one more Olympic moment from her, what could have been her last, at least at the time. Then her bravest moment became admitting her fears to us all. In so many ways, it really was as brave as flying through the air.

Here is something she told Alex Cooper in an April podcast about how the twisties can literally knock you out of the air when you are once again doing things in the air that no one has ever been able to do:

“I have no idea where I am.”

Simone Biles of the USA practices on the uneven bars during training ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 24, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

But now she is back, at 27, and knows exactly where she is, in the middle of the spotlight once again. An Olympian as small as anyone in Paris has a chance to become the biggest story of them all if she comes all the way back to win gold again. She has been winning gold and everything else since winning her first national title as a teenager 11 years ago. In all, she has won a ridiculous 37 medals between the Olympics and world championships. And might be better, right now, with these Games about to begin, than she has ever been. In addition to everything else she has done as the GOAT, now she is trying to write a comeback story like this.

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Simone Biles: Not the only story. Just the best one going at the Summer Games of Paris for the American athletes we’re talking about today. If you love basketball, come on, you know you’re going to love seeing LeBron and Steph together at last. You know you will be watching greatness again when Ledecky is again trying to touch the wall first, and watching American women try to win another gold medal in basketball, even though it would have been a lot more fun watching them try to do that if Caitlin Clark, the biggest women’s basketball star on the planet, had been added to the team as she should have been.

And guess what? It will even be big fun watching a talented 35-year-old gunner named Jimmer Fredette trying to win a basketball gold medal of his own in the 3-on-3 competition.

Again: This is just the short list of American athletes, some of whom will get this kind of stage for the only time in their lives. That is always the most enduring beauty of any Olympic games if you’re not Biles, or Ledecky, or LeBron.

The Olympics aren’t what they were, or were intended to be. You know how political they can be, especially in places like Russia and China. But in the end, they ARE still about athletes trying to do something great, against the world and in front of the world. You still come to them for that. And, maybe for the last time at the Olympics, you get to watch Simone Biles fly.

Harris tells teachers union she’s ready to fight for country’s future — ‘bring it on’

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By JOSH BOAK, Associated Press

HOUSTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris told Republicans to “bring it on” in what she described as a “fight for our most fundamental freedoms” as she spoke to the American Federation of Teachers on Thursday.

It was her latest stop in her whirlwind debut as the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee after President Joe Biden abruptly dropped his bid for a second term at the beginning of the week.

Harris praised unions as the foundation of the middle class, and she criticized Republicans for their views on gun control and public education.

“They have the nerve to tell teachers to strap on a gun in the classroom while they refuse to pass commonsense gun safety laws,” she said.

Harris added that “we want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.”

The American Federation of Teachers was the first labor union to formally endorse Harris, and its president Randi Weingarten said she “has electrified this race.”

Harris intends to travel aggressively to spread her message and rally voters. The outreach occurs as the retooled Biden campaign, now under Harris’ control, figures out its strategy for generating turnout and maximizing her time in a 100-plus day sprint to the November election against Republican Donald Trump.

In Trump, Harris is up against the survivor of a recent assassination attempt with tens of millions of loyalists committed to returning him to the Oval Office. Just as Harris is trying to draw a contrast with Trump, he is working to do the same with her.

Trump went on the offensive at a rally Wednesday in North Carolina, calling Harris a “real liberal” who is “much worse” than Biden. The former president claimed without evidence that Harris had misled voters about the health of the 81-year-old Biden and his ability to run for the presidency.

Harris’ appearance at the teachers union’s biennial convention in Houston follows a rally Tuesday in the Milwaukee area and a speech Wednesday to a gathering of the historically Black sorority Zeta Phi Beta in Indianapolis.

“We know when we organize, mountains move,” she told sorority members. “When we mobilize, nations change. And when we vote, we make history.”

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Her campaign is seizing on the growing pop culture interest surrounding her candidacy, releasing a video Thursday that is set to Beyonce’s “Freedom.” The video, designed for social media consumption, underscores a core message of Harris campaign — freedom on abortion rights, freedom from gun violence and freedom “not just to get by, but to get ahead.”

The 1.8 million-member AFT has backed Harris and her pro-union agenda on the premise that a second Trump term could result in restrictions on organized labor and a potential loss of funding for education.

The AFL-CIO, which represents 60 labor unions including the AFT, has backed Harris. But the vice president has yet to get the endorsement of the United Auto Workers, whose president, Shawn Fain, told CNBC this week that the union’s executive board will make that decision.

Fain spoke at the AFT conference on Wednesday and was blistering in his criticism of Trump. The former president has relied on blue-collar voters to compete politically nationwide, but he failed to win a majority of union households in 2020 when he lost to Biden, according to AP VoteCast.

Later Thursday, Harris will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.