November 2007:
Guest speaker, Kip Sullivan, author of one of the finest researched books on the American health care system entitled
The Health Care Mess: How we got into it and how we'll get out of it. He works at COACT (Citizen Organizations Acting Together). He has worked closely with HCCM (Health Care Campaign of Minnesota), and more recently the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition.
September 2007:
During the week of September 17, 2007, four executive committee members of the Luxembourg local of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) visited the Twin Cities. The tour was sponsored by the Washington Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The members were Koba Krause, Renata Fackler, Nikolaus Bahn and Bianca Bethke. There were several events scheduled around town, with the main theme of discussion being health care, renewable energy, Iraq War and European unification. The first major event was at the home of former Mpls. mayor and long-time Congressman Don Fraser and his wife Arvonne. 30 people from the DFL Education Foundation and Twin Cities DSA were present. The second day, MN Rep. Steve Simon (DFL) gave the visitors a two hour tour of the state Capitol building in St Paul, much more extensive than a regular tour. For lunch, there was a discussion with at the University of Minnesota Center for German and European Studies, led by director Sabine Engel. Representatives from the political science department, history, European studies, and others were in attendance-among them Minnesota's most famous historian, Prof. Hy Berman. Sabine Engel then treated the visitors to a tour of the University of Minnesota campus. There was also a brief talk with the dean of the Humphrey Institute, Brian Atwood. Wednesday, there was a roundtable discussion with ten or so labor union leaders at the AFL-CIO headquarters in St Paul, led by the editor of Workday Minnesota, Barb Kucera. The Luxembourg delegation then had conversations with staffers of a feminist bookstore in Minneapolis and also the "Wedge", the Twin Cities largest food co-op. A political report followed up their visit in October.
April 2007
Special guest, Saul Escobar Toledo, from Mexico's PRD party visits from Mexico City. Events in Mpls-St Paul included student student activities scheduled at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, DSA dinner in Minneapolis, and events in Chicago, IL.
