After recently sharing his historical expertise on racial injustice in Minneapolis with several news outlets, Professor Michael J. Lansing, chair of Augsburg University’s Department of History, has been cited in “The Infuriating History of Why Police Unions Have So Much Power,” a story in the September/October 2020 issue of Mother Jones.
In the article, Lansing shares historical information about the conflict between Minneapolis Mayor Arthur Naftalin and the Police Officers’ Federation of Minneapolis in 1967. The story ends on a note of hope that in the future police unions will no longer hamper the push for police reforms. In Lansing’s words: “Anything that can be created can be uncreated.”