Reading with Bill Onasch: A People’s Collection at ESFL

By John McKenzie I first heard of Bill Onasch when I was asked to help catalog his books, which had been donated to the East Side Freedom Library after his death in 2021. ESFL has been blessed with donations of books from a number of individuals, many of them...

Inspiration and Solace

By Ellie Belew My own lefty ways were forged growing up in a Minneapolis suburb. I live in Washington State now, but came to consciousness within the social disconnect of the Twin Cities of the 1960s and 1970s: a powerful coop movement, violent city police, expansive...

American Dream Underground: Stories of the 1916 Mesabi Miner Strike

The narratives of the “American dream” made the United States a wonderland for a promising future in the imaginations of European immigrants around the turn of the 20th century. Thousands of Finns, Swedes, Slavs, young or old, male or female alike, kissed goodbyes to...