They both grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and knew the family of Philando Castile, a Black man who was fatally shot by an officer during a 2016 traffic stop in nearby Falcon Heights.

“The interest in creating change started with Philando Castile. That was the initial gut punch,” Creighton said. “Flash forward to George Floyd in 2020, and it was like ripping off a Band-Aid to a wound that hasn’t healed. We decided we had to do something.”

Creighton, an accountant, and Frelix, who was in sales for Sony Electronics, left their stable day jobs in 2020. They teamed up with attorney Jazz Hampton, who is also an adjunct professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, and the three Black men launched a new company providing a technology-based solution to de-escalate traffic stops by police.

Timely launch

The motto says it all: “Drive with an attorney by your side.”

TurnSignl provides real-time, on-demand legal guidance from attorneys to drivers, all while drivers’ smartphone cameras record the interaction. The mission is to protect drivers’ civil rights, de-escalate roadside interactions with police, and ensure both civilians and officers return home safely at the end of the day.

As is true of many startups, the three co-founders wear multiple hats. Hampton serves as CEO and general counsel. Creighton is the chief financial officer and chief operating officer while Frelix is the chief revenue officer and chief technology officer.

When Daunte Wright was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, in April, that only accelerated their pace to bring the app to market. “This has been an issue plaguing Black and brown communities,” Frelix said. “We’re thankful to have the ability and skill sets to get this off the ground.”

They introduced the TurnSignl app in May after they were able to leverage the public awareness of police stops ending tragically to raise more than $1 million to bring the app to market.

How TurnSignl works

Users open the app and immediately get connected to an attorney vetted by TurnSignl to guide them in order to de-escalate the encounter. Service launched in Minnesota and will be expanding to 10 states by the end of 2021. The founders also have created a foundation to provide service for those unable to pay for the app, which is available on the Apple and Google app stores. They expect the foundation to support 25% of the app’s user base.

While the app is intended for anyone, there is increasing attention to how Black drivers are treated by police.

Twin Cities NBC affiliate KARE 11 in May that new data shows that the majority of drivers pulled over this year by Minneapolis police for minor equipment violations are Black: Black drivers accounted for more than half of those stops despite making up only about 20% of the city’s residents, according to city data.

In St. Paul, Black drivers were almost four times more likely to be pulled over by police than white drivers, according to a Pioneer Press from 2016 to 2020. Asian, Latino, and Native American drivers were stopped at roughly the same rate as white drivers, the Pioneer Press reported.

The TurnSignl founders say their product is more than just an app. It’s a signal for change. “There’s no better opportunity to impact change than this moment, now,” Creighton said.

Defense attorney Taylor J. Rahm is one of the lawyers who has joined TurnSignl to be on call for motorists. “Anything we can do to make sure these situations are safe and that no one gets harmed is something I hope any lawyer would want to get involved with,” he said.

Sometimes, a motorist making sudden movements is interpreted as cause for alarm and can be construed by an officer as the driver going for a weapon or drugs, leading to potential conflict.

“With TurnSignl, you have a lawyer on the phone to help individuals know their rights but also importantly know how to handle the situation so nothing goes wrong,” Rahm said. “The benefit is that the officer knows that there’s an attorney on the phone telling the person, ‘This is what you should do during the stop.’”

The TurnSignl app has the potential to make traffic stops safer for police as well as motorists, said Mylan Masson, retired director of the Hennepin Technical College law enforcement program and a former Minneapolis Park Police officer. “Every traffic stop can be dangerous for police officers,” said the police training expert. The TurnSignal app “could give someone a calming sense that, ‘I’m not here alone.’”

Business owner Phil Steger offers the app as an employee benefit for his 14-person Brother Justus Whiskey Company in Minneapolis, believing TurnSignl’s attorneys can act as mediators to keep a traffic stop from escalating into danger.

“If you think you’ve been stopped unlawfully, most people don’t know that they still have to cooperate,” said Steger, who was previously an attorney for law firm Dorsey & Whitney. “You can still be taken to jail.”

A TurnSignl attorney can advise in real time: “Every defendant has the right, if they think they have been stopped unlawfully, to challenge the case in court later,” he said.

Business project for ‘the times we’re in’

As the TurnSignl founders prepared to launch the company, they turned to Augsburg’s MBA program to assist them in developing the business plan.

“A key part of the Augsburg MBA experience is that we want students to have practical experience and apply critical thinking,” said George Dierberger, associate business professor and director of the MBA program.

Students in the MBA program grapple with real-world challenges faced by local businesses via a management consulting project, which supported TurnSignl’s launch. This is just one of the many MBA program experiences in which students collaborate on projects, case studies, presentations, and simulations.

The TurnSignl project represents Augsburg’s goals to be socially conscious, said Mike Heifner ’21 MBA, who worked on the pricing strategy of the TurnSignl business plan. “This was a good example of how capitalism could bring social value to society,” he said.

Augsburg graduate student Stephanie Oliver ’21 MBA hopes the TurnSignl app will open new conversations and foster a different way of thinking about how police and civilians interact during traffic stops.

“This project was my first choice because of the times we’re in,” she said.

Oliver’s role in the MBA group was to analyze the research and data about traffic stops nationally by race. What she found was a system with inconsistent reporting about race and traffic stops across states. What was clear was that even after accounting for those inconsistencies, the disparities were apparent in stops involving people of color.

One of the studies she reviewed was the , which analyzed data from nearly 100 million traffic stops and found significant racial disparities in policing and, in some cases, evidence that bias also played a role.

This didn’t surprise Oliver. Her husband is Black and was frequently pulled over when they first moved to their Twin Cities suburb years ago. Once, the police even questioned her then 5-year-old daughter about whether he was actually her father.

“I ask why I’m being pulled over when officers approach my vehicle, and they get angry at me,” Oliver said. “But I have a right to know why I’m pulled over.”

She worries about her two young Black sons but is optimistic that the TurnSignl app can start to change the dynamics during a police stop. “I know when my daughter goes to Augsburg this fall, I’m going to get this app for her.”

The TurnSignl app is available on the Apple and Google app stores.

Data on drivers and police traffic stops

Key findings from the national data research Stephanie Oliver ’21 MBA gathered for the TurnSignl business plan:

• On average, legal intervention death rates for Black men, were 4.7 times higher than those of white men from 1979 to 1988, and 3.2 times higher from 1988 to 1997. (2002 American Journal of Public Health study)
• Black men are 3 times more likely than other races to die from the use of police force. Oliver said this was particularly alarming as Black males make up only about 6% of the total U.S. population. (2016 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics Data 2010–14)
• When driver race/ethnicity was visible, Black drivers were nearly 20% more likely to be the subject of a discretionary traffic stop than were white drivers. (2014 San Diego State University research)
• Among males aged 10 years or older who were killed by police use of force, the mortality rate among non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic individuals was 2.8 and 1.7 times higher, respectively, than that among white individuals. (Racial/Ethnic Disparities in the Use of Lethal Force by U.S. Police 2010–14)
• Search rates for whites are significantly lower, at around 18% of the traffic stops, while search rates for Blacks and Hispanics total about 82%. (Compiled from Stanford Open Policing Project data for Connecticut; Illinois; North Carolina; Rhode Island; South Carolina; Texas; Washington; and Wisconsin; and municipal police departments in Nashville, Tennessee; New Orleans; Philadelphia; Plano, Texas; San Diego; and San Francisco)

Top image: Andre Creighton ’19 MBA (left) and Mychal Frelix ’19 MBA were motivated to leave their stable jobs in 2020 to focus on launching the TurnSignl app. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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In 2016, first-year student Olivia House ’20 kneeled during the national anthem before one of her first Auggie soccer matches. She was alone—the only Black person on the team, and the only person kneeling on either side of the field. For four years, House continued to kneel as a respectful gesture to highlight pervasive racial injustice. Fans and opposing players ridiculed her, she was the first on the bus after away games, and teammates unintentionally bruised her with microaggressions: “You’d look so pretty if you straightened your hair.” “So-and-so acts way Blacker than you.” “I always forget you’re Black.”

“Even though I was vocal and open about what I stood for, my teammates didn’t see even half of who I was. I left so much of my identity at the door because there would be too many questions, too many things I’d have to explain about my identity and community,” said House, a designer and art director for a creative agency in Chicago. “Having to code switch from diverse classrooms and social advocacy groups to being the lone Black person on the team was exhausting.”

Augsburg is among the most diverse private colleges in the Midwest—with students of color making up the majority of the last four incoming undergraduate first-year classes. On campus, House said she found her vocation: “to demonstrate the power of design to communicate stories and create a platform for voices who haven’t been heard.” And yet, her experience demonstrated more work is needed, even at the most equity-minded of institutions, and particularly in athletics, where 71% of student-athletes are white, according to a 2020 Augsburg internal survey.

“Me simply stepping onto a soccer field as the only Black player is political in and of itself, without me saying a single word,” she said. “Had I ‘just played the game’ and ‘kept politics off the field,’ I would have perpetuated the myth that athletes’ sole purpose is to entertain. You can’t ask us to put all of our lives on display except for our thoughts and opinions. It doesn’t work like that.”

Since House’s first year, the women’s soccer team has welcomed other student-athletes of color, and multiple soccer players and coaches have begun kneeling during the national anthem as matters of diversity and justice have remained prominent in conversations both on campus and across the United States.

Augsburg Women’s Soccer Head Coach Michael Navarre watched House address a crowd on the quad in September 2020 as a speaker at Augsburg Bold, a series of presentations for students to hear about important topics for the broader community. After House detailed a summer of racial justice protests and rubber bullets, of murals and oral history projects, Navarre commended House as the spark that ignited the team and inspired other student-athletes to take a stand.

“At the time, we felt as though we were supporting Olivia and our other players of color, but it wasn’t until the killing of George Floyd—just a few miles from Augsburg—that we truly began the difficult work that needed to be done,” said Navarre, who has led the women’s soccer team for 23 seasons. “That self-reflection and education illuminated how much more we could have been for Olivia and others, and how much more we are now because of her. Our team is driven to be leaders for social justice advocacy and action.”

‘An age of athletic activism’

Days after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Navarre asked the women’s soccer players to connect virtually each week to discuss topics and resources shared on what has become an 11-page document of articles, podcasts, self-assessments, and videos to spur awareness, community engagement, and education.

Midfielder designed a Black Lives Matter patch, and the team collaborated to design a warm-up shirt that read “Auggies against injustice.” The team supported several fundraisers and donation drives in honor of Floyd and Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old biracial Black man who was fatally shot by police during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. led a collection of personal items and clothing for neighbors who frequent Augsburg’s Health Commons locations, which are nursing-led drop-in centers that offer resources and support.

, women’s soccer volunteer assistant coach and human resources assistant, said the team took to social media as a way to educate and advocate for others. “Instagram, in particular, was a way for our players and our program to demonstrate our alliance to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Greathouse said. “For example, we have student-athletes personally impacted by the unrest in Myanmar and Colombia, and we wanted our shirts, statements, and discussions to address issues of injustice around the globe.

“I have learned more in the last two years about my own privilege than I have in my lifetime. It’s not enough for individuals to view diversity merely as racial diversity. We are doing ourselves and our students a disservice if we do not first educate ourselves about intersectionality,” Greathouse said, referring to the study of intersecting identities and dimensions of social relationships.

Across the Athletics Department, teams created T-shirts, facilitated discussions, visited memorials, and engaged in community activism. Augsburg Athletics partnered with Augsburg Day Student Government to hold a town hall featuring the voices of student-athletes of color and other members of the Augsburg community. , the university’s first director of athletic diversity and inclusion, facilitated this and other discussions and opportunities for community engagement.

“When I arrived in 2019, I knew my position was an important one, but little did I know just how vital it would be to help our student-athletes, coaches, and staff process, learn, grow, and begin to heal—together,” said Dixon, who also serves as assistant coach for the men’s and women’s track and field teams. “We are in an age of athletic activism, and Augsburg is invested in this work to bring awareness and take a stand. We empower our students, coaches, and staff to have difficult conversations and use their status as leaders to advance causes that matter.”

‘We can’t wait for the tide to shift’

To focus the department’s efforts and conversations, formed a Diversity and Inclusion Task Force in Fall 2020. The group of coaches and staff works closely with university administration and student-athlete advisory groups. Major initiatives include rewording of the national anthem introduction, offering training sessions, and developing a self-reported race survey of Augsburg student-athletes that revealed 71% of student-athletes are white, 12% are Black, 8% are Latinx, 5% are multiracial, and 4% are Asian. Results from a similar survey of coaches and staff are pending.

“We didn’t need surveys to point out that we lack diversity in athletics, but we wanted to get a self-reported baseline to assess how our students perceive themselves and the department,” Dixon said. “This work is personal to me as a Black father the same age as George Floyd when he died. Athletics has always been a battleground for people to advance causes. We reach audiences who might not be exposed to these issues otherwise, both in the locker room and in the stands.”

Dixon said that, although it’s difficult to turn inward and recognize gaps, Auggies are eager to learn and adopt best practices in recruiting and building inclusive team cultures. “We celebrate diversity efforts at the national and international levels of these sports, but we can’t wait for the tide to shift. We are striving to be more present in diverse neighborhoods and partner with programs that introduce these sports to people with a range of backgrounds.”

In Fall 2020, the women’s hockey team gathered at George Floyd Square, where 38th Street and Chicago Avenue intersect in Minneapolis. The 24 student-athletes, coaches, and staff walked around in silence as they took in the flowers, pictures, and artwork that , women’s hockey head coach, described as “a mix of pain, sorrow, and inspiration.”

“Our players were shocked at the long lists of African Americans killed by police, going back 20 years. We huddled and listened to each other, and the athletes’ perspectives were so powerful,” McAteer said.

The team also gathered on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January. Alongside McAteer, Assistant Coach shared information she learned during a diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

“We recognized we are two white women, and it was not easy or comfortable, but that is the reason why we should be doing this,” McAteer said. “We need to make these types of discussions more natural and ongoing. Avoiding talk and action because it’s not natural or easy is a big part of the problem. We’re not trying to lecture or convince but share information we’ve learned in a meaningful way.”

McAteer said players have begun kneeling for the national anthem, sharing information on social media, and educating family members and friends. The team routinely partners with the DinoMights, an organization that mentors Minneapolis youth through hockey.

Women’s hockey forward said this year changed her. “I’ve learned that I need to make my voice heard in the community because making change takes every single one of us,” she added. “I’ve learned what it means to be ‘not racist’ versus ‘anti-racist.’ Staying silent only hurts marginalized groups even more, so it’s important to have these tough conversations and speak out against racial injustice.”

Women’s lacrosse has been equally engaged. Teammates wore rainbow jerseys in support of a transgender player, who helped lead a discussion about transgender issues and terms. Augsburg Women’s Lacrosse Head Coach Kathryn Knippenberg said the team is working to be more than performative allies. “If one of my athletes feels called to protest but doesn’t have a ride, I will pick them up or find them a ride. If they want to kneel or don’t want to kneel, they know they have my support,” she said.

“Yes, we are here to win, but we are also here to equip student-athletes with valuable life skills, to prepare them for conversations and experiences they are facing and will continue to face.”

—Kathryn Knippenberg

“We want them to live out Augsburg’s mission to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders who are engaged in meaningful, transformative work.”

Allowing vs. actively supporting

All Augsburg teams agreed to adopt new wording to introduce the national anthem before each contest: “Augsburg University Athletics would like to recognize that the American experience has not been the same for everyone under the flag. As we continue the fight for equality and justice for all, we now invite you to respectfully express yourself for the playing of our national anthem.”

“It’s not easy getting an entire department and body of student-athletes to agree on wording, but it was an important initiative of our Diversity and Inclusion Task Force,” Dixon said. “By having these words in front of the national anthem, we are acknowledging that we—as a university—actively support people in how they want to express themselves. There’s a difference between this statement and simply ‘allowing’ people to kneel or whatever.”

Coaches and staff are expected to complete the Augsburg Diversity and Inclusion certificate program, which requires 18 credits of specified training and encourages additional training for advanced standing each year. In 2020, coaches and staff completed the NCAA Division III’s LGBTQ OneTeam Program, which stresses the importance of LGBTQ inclusion in college athletics and provides an overview of common LGBTQ terms, definitions, and concepts. The peer-driven educational program, which Dixon facilitated, also shares best practices to ensure all individuals may participate in an athletics climate of respect and inclusion, regardless of gender expression, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

“Social justice issues are incredibly important to us in the Athletics Department, and when our student-athletes are actively engaged in educating themselves about the current and historical context of what is happening and they are attempting to use their platform as student-athletes to create awareness and positive change, I feel incredibly proud of them,” said Kelly Anderson Diercks, who served as associate athletic director and director of compliance until July 2021. “Our student-athletes bring many identities and intersectionalities to Augsburg and their respective teams. To be the best we can be, we need to be able to show up fully as our true selves. This means we need to have spaces to talk about all those identities and intersectionalities and how the events facing our world play out differently for us all.”

Recognition of these different identities and experiences led to Dixon’s position; Augsburg hired him as part of a 2019 NCAA Ethnic Minorities and Women’s Internship Grant, which the university also received in 2012. In 2014 and 2021, the department received the NCAA Strategic Alliance Matching Grant, which also supports the hiring and mentorship of ethnic minorities and women in athletic leadership positions.

Alicia Schuelke ’20 MAE, former assistant coach for men’s track and field, said students are thrilled with Dixon’s enthusiasm and vision for the role.

“In a world where, many times, the odds are stacked against us, leaders of color provide hope and strength,” said Schuelke, a physical education teacher at Columbia Academy Middle School in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. “I came to Augsburg for the MAE program, but I was pleasantly surprised to find how diverse the campus is, and it is my absolute favorite part of my learning experience.

“If we can move the needle toward a more diverse group of leaders that better represent our country’s demographics, then students of color will begin to understand that the sky’s the limit in terms of their own hopes, dreams, and aspirations.”

House said she is encouraged by the department’s work to advance equity and inclusion. She appreciates the university’s willingness to be vulnerable and invite her and other people of color to share their experiences during this raw, unsettling time. But like any athlete knows, one must dedicate lots of hours and effort to see results.

Augsburg Athletics is putting in the work.

Top image: (Photo by Warren Ryan)

The post The Auggies who refuse to ‘keep politics off the field’ appeared first on Augsburg Now.

Robert Harper ’16 remembers the first time he was called the n-word.

His family had moved to Minnesota from the South Side of Chicago, seeking a better life. Since then, he’s achieved that better life, earning an undergraduate degree from Augsburg University and a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He is now a supplier diversity director for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.

“I think I’ve had a unique experience escaping poverty on the South Side of Chicago and North Minneapolis, only to be confronted with the daily decisions made by white people that only re-create those circumstances of oppression,” Harper said.

While he’s now a working professional in a state that prides itself on being “Minnesota nice,” Harper never gets too comfortable, recalling that painful moment when he was walking to middle school and a passing driver shouted the racial epithet at him. More recently, on a trip to northern Minnesota, Harper was told while visiting Gull Lake, ‘You don’t belong here,’ by a white man.

“It’s moments like that when you’re trying to do better, ‘pull yourselves up by your bootstraps,’ that society reminds you that there’s a glass ceiling for some,” Harper said.

Meanwhile, Augsburg University, one of the most diverse private colleges in the Midwest, is positioned to be a statewide leader in the turnaround, with students of color in the majority on campus after years of intentional work on diversity, equity, and inclusion. “I certainly feel that higher education is the clearest path to a middle-class life or better,” Augsburg President Paul Pribbenow said.

“Some people constantly remind you that they decide how far you go, what rooms you enter, and in the case of George Floyd, whether or not you live.”—Robert Harper ’16

Exposing the paradox

George Floyd’s murder three miles from Augsburg University put an international spotlight on not only the experiences of Black people at the hands of the criminal justice system but also the reality of the disturbing “Minnesota paradox.”

That’s how University of Minnesota Professor Samuel Myers describes how Minnesota has such a high quality of life and a history of progressive politicians but is one of the worst places to live for Black people.

“Measured by racial gaps in unemployment rates, wage and salary incomes, incarceration rates, arrest rates, home ownership rates, mortgage lending rates, test scores, reported child maltreatment rates, school disciplinary and suspension rates, and even drowning rates, African Americans are worse off in Minnesota than they are in virtually every other state in the nation,” Myers said.

The numbers illustrate the bleak story:

• Only 25.3% of Black households in Minnesota own homes versus 76.9% of white households, according to census data, a stark divide given that home ownership is considered the leading contributor to household wealth.
• The median household income for Black households in the state is the lowest of any group at $41,570, about half of what Asian and white households earn.
• In the Twin Cities, African Americans represent 9% of the overall population, but are incarcerated at 11 times the rate of whites who represent 76% of the population, the NAACP reported last year.
• Only 21.7% of Black people hold bachelor’s degrees or higher versus nearly 40% overall.

Meanwhile, between 2010 and 2018, the fastest growing racial group in Minnesota was the Black population, which grew by 36%, adding more than 96,500 people.

Many are immigrants but face the same backdrop of a state that hasn’t historically acknowledged that discrimination plays a role in the Black story here, Myers said.

“When it comes to race in the Twin Cities, in Minnesota, there was this instinctive belief that we already know what the problem is, that it’s not really a problem, and since it’s not a problem, we don’t need to find answers,” Myers said.

The COVID-19 pandemic compounded the inequities. The unemployment rate for Black Minnesotans in the aftermath of pandemic shutdowns rose to 15.3% last July, up 9 percentage points from a year earlier, versus 6.3% for white workers, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development reported. According to a Pew Research report published in December: “Among Black Americans, 71% know someone who has been hospitalized or died because of COVID-19.”

The path to today’s Minneapolis

High profile police killings of Black men in this region—including George Floyd, Philando Castile, and Jamar Clark—have heightened the protests and urgency for change. The viral video of Floyd’s murder with his neck under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer seemed to dawn a new era in the fight for justice.

Protesters took to the streets for weeks around the globe. Graffiti images of Floyd sprang up worldwide, even on a West Bank barrier in the Middle East. CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations in Minnesota wrote an open letter of outrage. Athletes of all races took the knee before matches to show their support for racial equity.

In the city of Minneapolis, at the center of the controversy, there was swift action against the officers, something unprecedented.

“Despite decades of police incidents that resulted in the deaths of people of color, today’s actions by the mayor represent the first time in modern history that Minneapolis police officers were fired within 24 hours for unjustly murdering a citizen,” said Michael Lansing, associate professor and chair of Augsburg’s history department, in a about the Minneapolis Police Department. (Lansing’s comments on the history of uprisings and Minneapolis police were also carried by and .)

Now, many are acknowledging the systems that are behind today’s Minneapolis. Even the South Minneapolis street where George Floyd was killed is in a historically Black working-class and middle-class neighborhood created by housing segregation, Lansing said in his tweet series.

Indeed, Mapping Prejudice Project, a team of community members, geographers, and historians based at the University of Minnesota, have unearthed thousands of racial covenants in Minneapolis that reserved land for the exclusive use of white people.

Those restrictions served as powerful obstacles for people of color seeking safe and affordable housing. Racial covenants, dovetailed with redlining and predatory lending practices, depressed homeownership rates for Black residents. They also limited access to community resources like schools and parks.

While contemporary white residents of Minneapolis like to think their city never had formal segregation, those racial covenants did the work of Jim Crow in the Twin Cities, said Kevin Ehrman-Solberg ’15, a co-founder of Mapping Prejudice.

“The reputation of Minneapolis is that it’s a liberal bastion, yet there’s a racist reality that people live in.”—Kevin Ehrman-Solberg ’15

Looking forward with a pragmatic lens

While the period following George Floyd’s murder looked like a change moment, Augsburg University’s M. Anita Gay Hawthorne Professor of Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies William Green worries that the momentum started to diminish as the summer progressed. “The challenge that we face is to do the hard work to define what change means, and second, how to get at the root of the problems that lead to disparities in society.”

Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce President Jonathan Weinhagen looks ahead to the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder and to the question of how much progress has been made in raising awareness about and working to eliminate the disparities experienced by people of color.

“[Closing the racial divide] is not going to be resolved in a year. It’s going to take more time, but it’s going to have to be far more rapid than anything we’ve done to date.”—Jonathan Weinhagen

The implications of these disparities are wide-reaching, with government officials and the business community concerned that a growing population that isn’t able to fully participate in or benefit from the economy will threaten the vitality of the state as a whole.

“To have a large and growing part of our economy be marginalized is a huge disadvantage to all of us because it takes a huge part of the population out,” said Susan Brower, Minnesota’s demographer.

The NAACP’s 48-page issued in 2019 calls for a comprehensive, multi-pronged policy agenda anchored by five basic principles: economic sustainability, education, health, public safety and criminal justice, and voter rights and political representation.

The role of education

Many are looking to young people to be the lasting change.

The nonprofit in Minneapolis has emerged to support children from “cradle to career,” envisioning a future in which “every child has the academic, social, and emotional skills to thrive in a globally fluent world.”

Alan Page, retired Minnesota Supreme Court justice, and Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, amending Minnesota’s constitution to give every child a civil right to a quality public education. They define the current approach as a system that works well for children from well-to-do families but fails children from low-income families.

“A quality education is without question the most powerful tool we have to break the cycle of poverty and create a society in which everyone can fully participate,” . “It doesn’t just change one child’s life. It has the potential to improve the future for generations to come and lead to a more productive, vibrant society for all of us.”

Meanwhile, Augsburg University is positioned to be a statewide leader in the turnaround, with years of intentional work on diversity, equity, and inclusion. “I certainly feel that higher education is the clearest path to a middle-class life or better,” Augsburg President Paul Pribbenow said.

Despite Harper’s success after graduating from Augsburg, he views the disparate outcomes as a call to action, even forming his own economic development consulting firm, R.D.T.H Consulting, LLC, focused on social impact in addition to his day job. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

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Augsburg’s efforts to address disparities and work toward equity

After the murder of George Floyd only a few miles from campus, Augsburg University introduced in June the Justice for George Floyd Initiatives to focus on working to heal the community, creating leadership and structures that make tangible change, and ensuring accountability for the work of undoing racist systems.

New efforts were introduced to combat systemic racism, including a critical race and ethnicity studies department; diversity, equity, and inclusion training; and a requirement that all faculty and staff complete antiracism training. Augsburg also canceled classes and suspended operations June 4 and 5 so students, faculty, and staff could have an opportunity to grieve.

“We acknowledge the pain, fear, and trauma faced by the Augsburg community—especially our students, faculty, and staff of color—remain a lived reality every day,” Pribbenow said. “This work by Augsburg will be persistent, resolute, courageous, and integrated into everything the university does.”

This ongoing work includes several components:

• Augsburg named William Green, professor of history, the inaugural holder of the M. Anita Gay Hawthorne professorship of critical race and ethnic studies.
• The university is employing new accountability for inclusive, antiracist leadership across the institution and reviewing Augsburg’s major academic and administrative policies and practices with a special focus on undoing bias and discrimination and enhancing student success.
• Augsburg created a scholarship in memory of George Floyd and established a fund that matched donations from students, faculty, and staff for organizations doing important work, especially for Black-owned businesses and nonprofit organizations.
• Augsburg appointed the first Chief Diversity Officer, , in 2016 and became home in 2019 to , the nation’s largest workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion conference.

These moves are an important continuation of Augsburg’s efforts to build and maintain an equitable and inclusive campus that became a strategic focus in 2006, resulting in Augsburg welcoming its most diverse incoming first-year class ever in 2017. Students of color are now in the majority of traditional undergraduates, making Augsburg one of the most diverse private colleges in the Midwest.

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Top Image: Minneapolis is a city with a liberal reputation, but racial disparities persist. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

The post Confronting the Minnesota paradox appeared first on Augsburg Now.

A crime is committed. An eyewitness identifies a suspect in the lineup. The suspect is prosecuted and relegated to years of incarceration. Justice is served … until DNA evidence exonerates the suspect.

Augsburg University Professor of Psychology Nancy Steblay believes these crucial questions deserve answers: How reliable is eyewitness identification, and how trustworthy are the law enforcement procedures that collect eyewitness evidence?

“I was trained as a social psychologist. As I was teaching after graduate school, I saw that many of the principles I’d learned about social psychology and experimental methods really applied to this area of psychology and law,” said Steblay, who is entering retirement after 32 years at Augsburg. “What became interesting to me are principles through which we could change the justice system.”

Activists and community leaders in the United States have long decried the injustices of racial discrimination and violence perpetuated in the criminal justice system. More than six years before Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, prompting a growing number of citizens and leaders to call for greater accountability for law enforcement officers—with some calling into question the legitimacy of police policies and even police presence as a whole—Steblay and her team collected data, evaluated methods, and drew scientific conclusions about a specific mechanism within the law enforcement system that many believe is, at the very least, in desperate need of reform.

That component of the justice system is the police practice of lineups: a law enforcement process designed to confirm an eyewitness’s identification of a criminal suspect among a lineup of several people with similar appearance, build, and height as the suspect. However, this process is far from flawless.

Mistaken eyewitness identification is observed in seven of every 10 cases when the true identity of the criminal is revealed by forensic DNA testing, said Gary Wells, an Iowa State University psychology professor who collaborated with Steblay. “It’s a national problem and has major implications for our criminal justice system and our belief in the reliability of that system.”

Real People in Real Cases

Eyewitness identification of criminal perpetrators is a staple form of evidence in courts of law.

“Think of eyewitness memory like trace evidence, such as blood, gunshot residue, or other physical evidence,” Steblay said. “You don’t want to contaminate it.”

Steblay, along with Wells, is among the top national experts in eyewitness identification. As an experimental social psychologist who has conducted research on eyewitness memory, police procedures, and eyewitness evidence for 30 years, she is often called upon by defense attorneys to testify when they believe a suspect is being wrongly accused based on faulty identification.

Her ability to speak with authority on the subject has been reinforced by her research findings. Assisted by Augsburg student researchers, Steblay and Wells led studies that, for the first time, sought to understand and predict eyewitness identification errors using actual lineups.

Before these studies, scientific psychology’s understanding of eyewitness identification accuracy was based almost exclusively on controlled laboratory studies that simulate eyewitness experiences.

Steblay and Wells were awarded a National Science Foundation grant to pursue a four-phase study from 2014-2018. The research followed up on their prior work, in which police lineups were presented to real eyewitnesses by detectives using laptop computers with a software program developed specifically for the field experiment. Data was collected from 855 lineups in four cities: Austin, Texas; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; San Diego; and Tucson, Arizona.

The field data collected in these cities provided lineup photos and eyewitness identification decisions, investigator reports, and audiotapes of the verbal exchange between the lineup administrator and eyewitness during each lineup procedure. A startling discovery emerged from a pattern of cases when lineup administrators, who were also the case detectives, knew who the suspects were and behaved in a leading fashion with the eyewitnesses.

Learning From Lineups

Augsburg student researchers collected data and assessed 190 real lineups for fairness or bias. “It’s powerful to bring students into research by saying, ‘Here’s the problem of wrongful convictions, and let’s figure out how to solve them,’” Steblay said.

Psychology majors made up the research team at Augsburg, adding laboratory skills to what they learned in the classroom. Steblay and 27 student researchers conducted the first and second studies across multiple semesters.

Verbal exchanges between police lineup administrators and eyewitnesses to crimes were audio-recorded. There had never been an analysis of recorded verbal comments from actual witnesses because such recordings had never existed until this study.

The Augsburg students coded 102 audio transcripts to examine the association between witness comments and lineup selection, finding that an instant identification by an eyewitness was less likely to produce an error than when the witness was deliberative.

Natalie Johnson ’18, who’s pursuing a master’s degree in counseling psychology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, was one of the students who listened to police audiotapes and coded them based on whether the decision-making process was immediate or deliberative.

She and other students were startled to realize that the police push for a conviction could, in some cases, influence how criminal cases are pursued.

“Doing the work on police lineups made me realize how flawed our system can be,” she said. “It made me realize our criminal justice has a long way to go.”

 Sean Adams ’17, who is currently a legal assistant, said he was shocked by how poorly some of the lineups were constructed.

The tests were designed to include fake witnesses, and these mock witnesses in Augsburg’s laboratory studies represented the worst possible scenario: a witness with no memory of the offender. Mock witnesses should not be able to pick the police suspect from  a lineup at a rate higher than chance. “The worst lineup I saw had such a leading description that the [laboratory] witnesses picked the police suspect 80% of the time,” Adams said. “That should have statistically been less than 20% of the time.” Lineups should be constructed so that the suspect and the fillers (innocent people added to the lineup) match the suspect description.

Relevant Research

Along with stunning insights into eyewitness identification, these studies brought to light more questions worth exploring. The research resulted in 12 conference poster presentations involving 23 students, and it fostered two student honors projects and spinoff projects that are ongoing.

“It was time-consuming, but it was important. I think the student researchers had a sense of the importance,” Steblay said. “It was really fun to work with them. Their work enabled me to complete the project.”

Augsburg student researchers saw the subject material’s importance for effective law enforcement practices as well as its resonance with people beyond their research group. When Austin Conery ’17 began researching how to predict eyewitness identification errors, he discovered that his Augsburg University research project was a hot topic with friends and family.

“Every party or every family event, someone would ask what was going on at school, and I could talk about the research for hours because it was so relevant,” Conery said.

Besides a view into a major criminal justice system issue, students said the research opportunity gave them practical experience.

Conery said the research gave him the confidence to read, understand, and apply studies in his current job as a site director at a children’s mental health provider, PrairieCare. “It was a great way to implement the things I was learning in class,” he said. “It gave me the place to think critically in a controlled environment.”

As Adams considers his future work, he’s looking back to his time at Augsburg. “I’ve been thinking of what I enjoyed in college, and a lot of it was the work I did with Nancy,” he said.

Turning Research Findings into Practical Policies

Steblay’s influence may not make her a household name, but her research findings are being put to practical use in a variety of ways.

Minnesota judges view a webinar module she created, “Eyewitness Science: Protection and Evaluation of Eyewitness Identification Evidence,” as part of their judicial e-learning program. Steblay also published a chapter in the 2019 book, “Psychological Science and the Law.”

The findings of the research by Steblay, Wells, and Augsburg student researchers are leading to major reforms nationally. The best practices include critical stipulations: that lineups must be double-blind, meaning the administrating officer doesn’t know who the suspect is, and that the non-suspect fillers in the lineup must resemble the suspect and match the description of the offender that was provided by the eyewitness.

“There are hundreds of thousands of police officers who are using these eyewitness identification protocols that we didn’t use 20 years ago, and they don’t know Nancy Steblay’s name,” said William Brooks, a police chief in Norwood, Massachusetts.

Brooks travels the country training police on what he regards as groundbreaking science-backed best practices for lineups. “I don’t think there’s been as wide of an impact in other areas of investigation as in how we deal with eyewitness memory,” he said.

In mid-May, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed bipartisan legislation that requires uniform science-backed eyewitness identification practices for all law enforcement, which goes into effect in early 2021.

Still, the eyewitness identification best practices face resistance. “Some of it is individual police jurisdictions just not wanting to be told how to do things,” Steblay said in an interview with Yahoo News. “Sometimes police or prosecutors say they don’t want rules to be so rigid, because then if we just violate one of the rules, then that ruins our prosecution or we can’t catch the bad guys or whatever. So they feel like it’s undermining their ability to do the good job that they should do.

“I don’t see it that way,” Steblay said. “I just think these are not difficult changes.” Steblay views the recommended lineup reforms as a means to strengthen eyewitness evidence and reduce the likelihood of a mistaken identification.

The Innocence Project, a nonprofit founded in 1992 to exonerate the wrongly convicted through DNA testing, has worked to pass laws throughout the country that embrace the scientifically supported best practices advanced by Steblay and Wells.

“When we began our work, a handful of states had embraced best practices. Today more than half of the states in the country have adopted key eyewitness identification reforms,” said Rebecca Brown, the nonprofit’s policy director.

Steblay hopes more police departments will enact these reforms. “We have at least part of the answer to how police can reduce mistaken identification and wrongful convictions.”

Reforms in action

States where core eyewitness reforms have been implemented through legislation, court action, or substantial voluntary compliance:

via Innocence Project

 

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On and around the land that today houses Augsburg University’s Minneapolis campus, they celebrated births and mourned deaths. They spoke languages of love and laughter, stress and sorrow. They built families, businesses, and dreams.

They were here and many are gone, at once everywhere and nowhere because in the blistering pace and abundant distractions of the human ecosystem we all inhabit, it’s natural that we forget who came before us.

But what if—even for a moment—we turned our attention to who we were and who we are right now? To who worships next to us, or walks by us in the grocery, or shares an apartment wall?

“On This Spot” and “Each, Together,” bring into focus the history of the campus and the surrounding neighborhood, and the people who are the Augsburg of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

What would we discover if we intentionally took notice of who we are and where we’ve come from?

This idea is at the core of new art and historical exhibits that cover collectively four city blocks on 12 of Augsburg’s building facades and 37 window panes around campus. As part of Augsburg’s sesquicentennial celebration, artists and designers at the university wanted to give the community a chance to reflect on their history and their people. So the works, dubbed respectively “On This Spot” and “Each, Together,” bring into focus the history of the campus and the surrounding neighborhood, and the people who are the Augsburg of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

‘Humans at the center’

“Each, Together,” the larger of the two projects, is a Group Action of the international “Inside Out: The People’s Art Project” initiative that launched in 2011 after a French street artist, known only as JR, won that year’s TED Prize. First awarded in 2005, the TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Prize has become synonymous with visionary thinking meant to spark change throughout the world. Winners of the award—including educators, artists, chefs, journalists, and even former President Bill Clinton—have used the $1 million prize to fuel specific community projects, like healthy food initiatives and educational innovations. The winning projects all have one thing in common: They are designed to make people engage in their communities.

In the case of artist JR’s project, his vision was to create works that “shine a light on the unsung and give everyone the dignity they deserve.” And he hoped that beyond his capacity as one artist, people around the world would join in the celebration of others. To date, more than 260,000 people in 129 countries have participated in different versions of the project featuring faces displayed on billboards, buildings, sidewalks, and in digital collections. Augsburg is one of the latest communities to answer the call.

“We saw that invitation, that there was a related, common ethos to what we have here at Augsburg, and that the project was similar to public works we’ve done here,” said Christopher Houltberg, Augsburg associate professor of art and design. “It’s really about putting humans at the center.”

So a team that included a curator, nine photographers, and three designers—Houltberg, Maggie Royce ’15, and Indra Ramassamy ’18—worked for several months between Fall 2018 and Summer 2019. The photographers attended between 15 and 20 campus events, all working to capture as many faces as possible to best tell the Augsburg story.

“The way we went about it was really organic,” Houltberg said. “We started going to events around campus in Fall 2018 and then in the springtime, trying to get to as many different ones as possible. There’s a really big holiday event called Advent Vespers, and a lot of alumni come to that.” All told, the group took more than 900 photos and gathered about 300 additional images of historic Auggies.

“It’s very democratic; everyone is given the same amount of space,” Houltberg said. “From our president, Paul Pribbenow, to people who work on our janitorial staff, to our students, to our former mayor, R.T. Rybak.

“As we were defining the parameters [of the ‘Each, Together’ project] it was a fun surprise for us to see who self-identified as part of Augsburg.”

Bigger dose of Augsburg

R.T. Rybak, current president of the Minneapolis Foundation, was the mayor of Minneapolis from 2002 to 2014. He said it would be impossible to think of the growth and development of the city without considering the role Augsburg has played in that history.

“I’ve conservatively said 1,000 times in public speeches that the neighborhood where Augsburg is, is our Ellis Island. One wave after the other washes in and the next wave builds on top, and it’s something that no one wave could have created in isolation,” Rybak said.

That’s most certainly the story of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood that surrounds Augsburg and the story of Minneapolis as a whole.

“… I often think we just need a bigger dose of Augsburg. We need to realize that offering that ladder of opportunity to someone else makes all of us able to climb higher. We are better together.

—R.T. Rybak, former Minneapolis mayor

“Augsburg is a shining example of the very best parts of Minneapolis’ history. The university represents opening doors to people with strange names like Johnson or Anderson or Rybak, and keeping those doors open for people with names that come from Africa, Asia, and places across the globe.

“When I get down about what’s fracturing our deeply divided country and world today, I often think we just need a bigger dose of Augsburg. We need to realize that offering that ladder of opportunity to someone else makes all of us able to climb higher. We are better together.”

Houltberg said the “together” ideal is at the heart of the exhibit. “As individuals we are showing up, and collectively we can do something greater than what we can do on our own,” he said. “I loved seeing the portraits blocked together, seeing people stop and take selfies. There are people who say, ‘I recognize who that is!’”

Forward facing, historic reflections

Kristin Anderson, a co-creator of these projects as well as a professor of art history and Augsburg archivist, said she’s only heard good things about the exhibit.

“I have seen emails and tweets—sometimes emotional—with people responding to the wall as a whole, as well as to their individual images,” Anderson said.

The community is responding to the historical revisit that “On This Spot” installations provide, too, she said.

That exhibit features enormous panels that share Augsburg moments that photographers captured decades ago. The campus life of yesteryear includes images of young bobby soxer women from the 1940s in saddle shoes and flowing skirts in contrast with men wearing formal suits while tramping across a snow-covered campus.

“It has been a fun way to bring some old photographs to life and to show how the campus is layered on the site. Those ‘lost’ buildings displayed on the walls of the current buildings help to connect us to our past, reminding us of the imagination and commitment of our predecessors,” Anderson said.

The two exhibits are being admired by community members who see the campus regularly and by those who keep up with Augsburg from a distance.

Killa (Martinez Aleman) Marti ’08 came to Augsburg from her home in Honduras. Marti said she brought her own values with her when she enrolled, “but Augsburg put them to work. The Auggie community showed me that I wasn’t crazy to want a career with meaning.”

“Those ‘lost’ buildings displayed on the walls of the current buildings help to connect us to our past, reminding us of the imagination and commitment of our predecessors.”

—Kristin Anderson, university archivist

For Marti, “Each, Together” perfectly sums up her experience at Augsburg.

“My career is an intersection of what I love to do with the opportunity to serve,” said Marti, an attorney in Atlanta. “To think critically, to be socially and community-minded—all of the things I exercise in my life were supported and further developed at Augsburg.”

Houltberg said it’s difficult not to consider the greater impact that art, especially a work like “Each, Together,” has.

“Having a group of artists, designers, and photographers come together to make something this beautiful and to see it up and fully functioning is pretty great,” he said.

“It has created a tangible thread between all of us, which transcends 150 years and all our history,” said Ramassamy, who worked with the team to design “Each, Together.”

“We live in a visual world yet we can be unaware of each other,” she said. “This project is making us aware of one another, making us pay attention, making us curious about the person in the portrait above or to the left or right of us.”

“I love watching people who are walking down the streets looking at the portraits,” Houltberg said. “There’s an element of surprise to it that’s really fantastic. Sometimes the tendency is to put people in big groups. But if you look at these portraits, look at the eyes, and look at the humans who are represented here, you see just how wide a spectrum of humans we are. Anytime we can show the humans and not the institution, we win.”

Social Media Spotlight

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More than a decade ago, Americans plunged into the Great Recession. A wave of new and seasoned workers alike struggled to navigate the economic uncertainty of fewer jobs and growing debt in an ever-changing global landscape. But while the economy grew stagnant, the creative efforts of workers did not. An artisanal phenomenon gained momentum, which affects not only what people buy and the jobs they seek, but also shifts consumer expectations around the country. This is no new trend; it’s actually an old one.

The Artisan Economy

The modern artisan movement—craftspeople who focus on distinct, skillfully made goods produced in small quantities, often by hand—has deep roots in the past, before the relatively recent industrialization that revolutionized the global market by providing more affordable products to more people.

“The United States has had mass production of plentiful and relatively cheap goods for at least a century,” said Nancy Fischer, associate professor and chair of sociology at Augsburg University. “An appreciation for more traditional forms of making things—of craftsmanship—was a reaction to and coexisted with mass production.”

Fischer, who has researched vintage fashion and is writing a book on vintage clothing consumers, said artisans in the pre-industrial 1800s could make a living running shops that sold everyday items like furniture, candles, or shoes. However, artisan endeavors today form a niche market, often as side jobs for extra cash and personal fulfillment more than a stable income or employment benefits. The focus is not just on a product; the artisanal approach also focuses on the origin of the item, what it’s made of, and how it’s made.

You’ve seen the items: artisanal breads and cheeses, small-batch ice cream, hand-crafted chocolate and hot sauce. Many major metropolitan areas—and a number of smaller communities as well—boast independent coffee roasters, artisanal pizzerias, and craft butchers of locally raised livestock. Custom jeans and hand-tailored leatherworks are neighbors to yoga instructors, artisanal pickle producers, and specialty popcorn shops in tiny storefronts. Even international corporations and fast food franchises attempt to pique consumer interest using the terms “artisanal” and “hand-crafted,” much like they appropriated “gourmet” and “specialty.”

What is an Artisan?

Artisans appear in three often-intertwined variations: 1. maker artisans who produce tangible products, 2. personal service artisans who offer curated experiences, and 3. knowledge artisans who bring together people and ideas to enhance social capital.

“Artisans can look a lot different than what most would expect,” said Brian Krohn ’08, co-founder of Mighty Axe Hops, which supplies Minnesota-grown hops to craft brewers around the state. After studying chemistry at Augsburg and finishing graduate school, he became a serial entrepreneur, launching a company that uses 3D printing to make flame-emitting wizard staffs and founding Soundly, a smartphone app designed to reduce snoring. “A woodworker would normally be considered an artisan, but I think an experienced engineer who uses CAD [computer-aided design] and a CNC [computer numerical control] to mill wood or aluminum can also be an artisan.”

To seek a simple explanation for the artisan economy’s proliferation would be to ignore the multifaceted appeal of such products and services, as well as the diverse array of people who sell and buy them.

Consumer boredom, dissatisfaction with mass-produced options, and the feeling of overall instability could play a psychological role in the appeal of artisan alternatives. “When you think about the current state of economic inequality, recessions, an affordable housing shortage, multiple wars, ever-changing technology, outsourcing of jobs, and terrorism, we live in a pretty uncertain world,” said Bridget Robinson-Riegler, cognitive psychologist and professor of psychology at Augsburg. “We value nostalgic products because they make us feel more secure. The new wave of such products is possibly indicative of a society in turmoil and people in angst searching for comfort.”

The search for comfort doesn’t stifle the curious desire for variety, though. “If it’s beer, consumers are looking for something that is different, not formulaic,” Fischer said. “With woodworking items, ceramics, or clothing, they are looking for something that will last, as well as something that is unique.”

Artisan Underdogs

Jacquie Berglund ’87 found a unique angle in a competitive market: craft beer with a cause. After graduating from Augsburg and studying in Paris, she returned to Minneapolis and co-founded FINNEGANS Brew Co., whose profits are donated to alleviate hunger in the markets that serve FINNEGANS beer. “When I started my beer company, there were a handful of breweries. There are now more than 150 in Minnesota. FINNEGANS needs to make high-quality beer, differentiate our brand as a social business with more than $1.3 million in impact, and connect with our consumers and supporters.”

The craft beer boom is representative of the growing artisan movement in many industries. Almost half of the 150 breweries in Minnesota have opened in the past eight years, including Boom Island Brewing in Minneapolis, another brewery with an Auggie connection. Qiuxia Welch ’99 studied music at Augsburg and became a professional French horn performer and teacher. Today, she is Boom Island’s marketing manager and runs the business with her husband, Kevin, its founder and head brewer.

“Most of Boom Island’s beers are brewed using traditional Belgian techniques,” Welch said. “This requires expensive ingredients, no preservatives, years of experience, and time. It’s difficult for the large breweries to do this.”

Artisan Case Study: Craft Beer

Craft beer sales have grown to nearly 13 percent market share, according to the Brewers Association, which offers “certified independent craft” labels for breweries not owned by the handful of multinational corporations that have maintained dominant market share following the repeal of Prohibition. Because consumers pay more for craft beer, these corporations seek higher profits through consolidation, buying craft breweries with national reputations, and creating “craft” sub brands to mass produce.

“Mass production is not able to work with the small, local suppliers of ingredients like artisans can,” said Berglund, whose FINNEGANS pale ale features Krohn’s Minnesota-grown Mighty Axe Hops. “We have made more than 100 different beers in our taproom in the past 11 months with five barrel-aged brews—mass production is not this nimble.”

Though craft beer brewing and buying demographics skew toward Gen X and Millennial white males, some signs point to a more diverse artisan future. “More women, and particularly women of color, are playing important roles,” Welch said. “They are opening breweries, making great beers, and changing how we market and drink craft beer.”

Corporate Exodus

When you visit a Twin Cities craft brewery or farmers market, you also might see another kind of artisan: artist and curator Matt Swenson ’91, founder of the Minnesota Art Truck. Swenson displays local artists’ work in the truck to connect with people who don’t realize they can purchase original art at prices comparable to big-box stores while sustaining the local art community. “I don’t see art as just for the middle class or upper middle class or the wealthy. Art really is for everybody, and the more I get to interact with people, the more they see that themselves,” he said.

Before he started this “food truck for the soul,” Swenson studied communication and English at Augsburg and worked in sales and marketing management for 13 years. Today, he feels lucky and grateful that his wife supported his departure from corporate America in search of creatively fulfilling work: “We had to adjust how we live, but she knows that it’s something I’m passionate about, and I think it can be sustainable.”

Billy Mzenga ’13 is another Auggie who left the corporate world, turning his attention to graduate school and a new entrepreneurial initiative. The venture started when his wife, Megan, fine-tuned recipes of homemade almond butter, cashew butter, and peanut butter. In 2017, the couple launched these products into a small business: NutMeg’s Nut Butters. The Mzengas now live in Chicago and continue to develop new recipes. They distribute NutMeg’s products online and at farmers markets and Chicago-area grocery stores.

Hand-Crafted With a Conscience

Like FINNEGANS, NutMeg’s is a social enterprise. NutMeg’s donates half of its earnings to humanitarian nonprofits in Kenya. Staying nimble and avoiding stockholder pressures are key factors for artisan entrepreneurs like the Mzengas. “We are accountable to our customers to make sure we are providing a good product, and to the charities we partner with, making sure we provide them with financial resources,” Billy said.

Billy believes his Augsburg University education equipped him to see how his purpose intersects with causes bigger than himself. “My experience there opened my eyes to the issues facing the world, Minnesota, and those who were on the front lines as problem-solvers,” he said.

Berglund, whose social impact model with FINNEGANS inspired the Mzengas, can relate. “I got a strong sense of ‘We are here to serve others’ by going to Augsburg,” she said. “It shaped my world perspective and the way I designed and run my business.”

Augsburg’s communal support was also obvious to Boom Island’s Welch when she arrived in the United States to study music. “I came from a very warm place in China,” she said. “I didn’t come to Minnesota prepared for the winter. Professor Roberta Kagin from the Department of Music sent out a campus email asking for donations of winter clothing. I don’t think I bought any clothes for two years after that.”

Welch wants the same qualities of Augsburg in her business today. “This is a very caring community with an appreciation for a well-balanced life. I like to think Boom Island Brewing is the same,” she said.

The Complexity of Cost

What prevents the artisan niche from drawing more consumers away from mass-produced items? “The choice is between a $40 hand-crafted wood cutting board or a $7 one from Target,” Fischer said. “That kind of price differential for most Americans’ financial situation—which is more heavily weighted for folks with fewer resources—eliminates the choice, even if they would prefer the $40 cutting board.”

The higher price doesn’t necessarily mean artisan products are luxury items. In fact, artisan entrepreneurs often justify the higher cost of crafted goods in pragmatic terms. With some mass-produced products, Krohn is concerned that consumers will end up spending more money in the long run on subpar items that wear out rather than a quality item that lasts—“You get what you pay for,” as the adage goes.

From a sociological perspective, the benefits of less expensive production and more affordable mass-produced goods come with the risk of exploitation of workers and the environment in the supply chain and manufacturing processes. “Organizations and activists have encouraged us for decades to question the unsustainable model of buying more cheap goods shipped from overseas where the pay, working conditions, and factory harms to the environment are jaw-droppingly horrible,” Fischer said.

The relationship between quality, cost, and ethics is especially tangible in fashion. Zoë Foat Naselaris ’96 and twin sister Kaja Foat ’96 created FOAT, an environmentally conscious women’s fashion brand with a personal touch. Based in their Charleston, South Carolina, and northeast Minneapolis studios, they design, cut, and sew garments by hand rather than outsource the work.

“We are not interested in mass-producing our patterns and clothing overseas because it is important to us to produce our items ethically, locally, and with a lot of care,” Naselaris said. “When garments are mass-produced, they are designed with one body type in mind. Handmade garments are tweaked and tucked, pushed and pulled into a shape that is both comfortable and complementary to the customer’s body.”

Like FOAT, many artisans extend their care for customers and details to the overall industry and consumer expectations that influence business practices. “Most Americans are not accustomed to paying attention to, or even caring about, how their products are made,” Naselaris said. “There has to be a change of mindset.” FOAT encourages people to buy fewer well-made garments that last longer rather than many poorly made products that tend to fall apart more quickly.

Billy believes many consumers are ready for change: “People are speaking with their dollars and moving their business to more locally owned, locally made products.”

Stories for Sale

Will some consumers continue to lack the financial resources to choose more artisanal options? Will others grow weary of paying more for local, sustainable, quality products? Might this artisan movement form a robust economy of the future? It doesn’t show signs of slowing, perhaps because of the connection between crafters and those enjoying the craft.

Artisans offer alternate products as well as an alternate story, a different way to engage with the American tradition of consumerism. They invite others to see that more isn’t always better, that making something beautiful and enduring takes time. Many consumers are rethinking their economic relationships in society: how they engage with what they eat, what they buy, the issues they care about, and ultimately, how they engage each other.

“The craft-brew taproom has become a vital part of the community like you find in Old World Europe,” said Welch, who co-leads Belgium brewery tours to stay tethered to a historic beer tradition. “Our typical customer wants to connect with the people who make and serve their beer. They want to know where their food and drinks come from, how they are made, and who made them. This is how we lived for centuries. Now artisans are back.”

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[Top image]: Matt Swenson ’91 displays artisan creations on the Minnesota Art Truck.

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