August 25, 1986 - From people watching to making yard a parking lot, neighbors of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds adjust to the ordeal of hundreds of thousands of people descending on the Como area. MPR’s Kate Moos talks with a few of the local residents.
October 9, 1986 - Hennepin County Park Commissioner Patti Baker talks about the nostalgia, declining usage, and rehabilitation needs of Parade Stadium outside of downtown Minneapolis. The field was Minneapolis's first public football stadium (even hosting NFL games), though it was mostly meant for high school, amateur, and small-college games. It also was host to a number of high-profile concerts over the decades.
October 16, 1986 - William Raspberry, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated American public affairs columnist, speaking at Minnesota Meeting. Raspberry talks about issues facing the black family, including single parent homes and joblessness. After speech, Raspberry answered audience questions. Raspberry was also the Knight Professor of the Practice of Communications and Journalism at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. An African American, he frequently wrote on racial issues. Minnesota Meeting is a non-profit corporation which hosts a wide range of public speakers. It is managed by the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. This was the first live broadcast of Minnesota Meeting presented by MPR.
October 22, 1986 - Charles Atkins, commissioner of welfare for the state of Massachusetts, speaking at Itasca Seminar held in northern Minnesota. The seminar’s topic was "Self Sufficiency: Is It Possible?", and Atkin’s addressed his state's efforts to place welfare recipients into jobs. After speech, Atkins answered audience questions. Mr. Atkins has developed a program in Massachusetts to move women off the welfare rolls and into jobs. 25,000 women have become employed through the Education and Training Choices program since 1983. Prior to becoming welfare commissioner, Mr. Atkins served as deputy commissioner of the addiction services agency in New York City during the early '70s. In that position, he created a program to find employment for ex-drug addicts. In 1973 and '74, he was manager of employment operations for Citibank in New York, where he found other employment within the organization for low-level employees whose jobs had been eliminated by automation. When he was in Boston's Employment and Economic Policy administration, he succeeded in obtaining a 23-million-dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to reduce youth unemployment in Boston.
January 24, 1987 - MPR’s Euan Kerr reports on local Twin Cities version of Burns supper and celebration of Rabbie Burns, poet of the Scots. The day includes music, food and celebration of the famed Scottish poet, Robert Burns.
July 25, 1987 - MPR’s Mark Heistad interviews local St. Paul resident Jimmy Lee, whose shares his memories of the Rondo neighborhood.
September 9, 1987 - MPR’s Dan Olson profiles protests of pornography businesses on St. Paul’s University Avenue. Report includes commentary from Archbishop John Roach, St. Paul Councilman Bill Wilson, and Ferris Alexander, owner of controversial Faust Theater.
September 28, 1987 - MPR Journal presents the documentary “A Visit to Atwater.” The farm crisis of the early 1980s has taken a toll on small towns. MPR reporters Dan Olson and Stephen Smith spent some time in the West Central Minnesota farm town of Atwater to see how one small community is faring, and what the future may hold.
October 1, 1987 - MPR’s John Biewen produced the very first report of Mainstreet Radio. Biewen visits the southern Minnesota town of Good Thunder, where artist Ta-coumba Aiken was commissioned to create a massive mural along the grain elevator in town. The hope is it will help in keeping Good Thunder on the map.
October 12, 1987 - Mainstreet Radio’s Rachel Reabe visits Winnebego, Minnesota and reports on the Minnesota Community Improvement Program that the town is taking part in. Reabe interviews residents and officials about the incentives of MCIP.