Episode 431, The Andrew Parker Show - Truth, Media and Minneapolis: A Conversation with Rick Kupchella

In this compelling episode of The Andrew Parker Show, Andrew welcomes veteran journalist and former KARE 11 anchor Rick Kupchella, executive producer of the groundbreaking documentary Precarious State. The two explore the rapid evolution of the media, the challenges facing Minneapolis, and the broader implications for Minnesota’s economy, safety, and education.

Kupchella shares his insights from over 30 years in journalism — from the optimism of early broadcast news to today’s fractured digital landscape. Together, they examine how ideology, crime, and business policy have reshaped the Twin Cities — and why Precarious State has sparked vital conversations across the state.

Transcript

Episode 431 Transcript

Andrew Parker (00:02)

Welcome to another episode of the Andrew Parker show and thank you once again for joining us as we talk politics, Israel and the law. Every episode been doing it for what are we going on? We're going on nine years and we're at about episode 430. So and so, uh, you know, it,

It really is amazing and I thank you all for allowing us to continue and for the increase in subscriptions in followers. You can go to theandrewparkershow.com that is theandrewparkershow.com and as I say, subscribe, give us your email whenever we drop.

A new episode, you'll get it immediately. ⁓ Follow us, like, and do all the other things you do on social media, whatever that might be. So this is a special show to me, this episode, as ⁓ I go back in time to the early 90s, even the late 80s, when I started practice of law,

There was another gentleman who was starting into his career ⁓ in media and I had the opportunity to meet him a few times and haven't seen him for many, years. But we have him as our guest on this episode to talk about in part the city of Minneapolis as we have an election coming up a week from the time we're recording this episode, a week from tomorrow.

And it's an important election electing the mayor and all 13 council members as well as the park board ⁓ But this is a special show also because we're going to talk about the media and a little bit about the change in the media and We're honored to have as our special guest Someone who's been in the news biz for well over 30 years. You remember him at Carol Levin

⁓ If you're my age, little younger, little older, geez, I think from about late 80s, certainly 89, 88 through 09, he was one of our favorite anchors. He was an investigative reporter and he is a journalist par excellence. He has won many Emmy Awards. He won best of show in the New York International.

film fast as well. just brings it to you ⁓ as he sees it. And that's the way it should be. And that is our friend Rick Cupchella. Rick, thank you very much for joining us on the Andrew Parker show.

Rick Kupchella (03:13)

Hey, I really appreciate it, Andrew. I do. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Parker (03:17)

So, Rick, let's first talk about ⁓ the media. mean, you're a unique personality to the extent that you have survived year in, year out, decade in, decade out in a very turbulent environment, and that is one of journalism. It has changed so greatly over the years in which

You came up in the business. You now are a senior in the business of sorts. ⁓ What are your thoughts about the changes, the evolution of the media as we see it here in the States?

Rick Kupchella (04:03)

Yeah, well, I remember one of my colleagues when I was leaving care, guy named Ron Geiselhart. He ran the desk, the news desk, elevated platform in the middle of the room. And he was dispatching people all the time. And he was retiring right as I was exiting care back in 09. And

He was he had this it was a back in in 09. You really started to feel that things were slowing down. Money was harder to attain in the news business. Budgets were dropping substantially. And, you know, it was the rise of digital. And it was a lot. What I remember about Ron.

Ron was at the assignment desk. He was standing up one day, and he was talking to me about my exit and his retirement. And he's like, man, I tell you what, isn't it just something, though, what's happening right now? His approach was radically different from mine. was kind of like sorrowful about just kind of what was happening to news. And he's like, no, no, no. This is about digital. This is about where this is going next. And he explained to me, know, I was in radio and then went into TV when it became a thing.

You know, when it got real big and it was so exciting, the stuff we could do was just nobody could believe it, you know, and it was just very exciting. And that's what's going to happen now with this group out in front of you. They're going to go into a whole new space. They're going to figure it out in real time on daily deadlines. And my God, I wish I could go back and join right now is what he was saying. That was a very optimistic and, you ⁓ sun is coming out kind of approach.

⁓ made me try to put mine in check a little bit. But you know, these things take time. They're not, it's not like, ⁓ we're in this room now. You know, it's, ⁓ this still has not really figured out monetization, you know. There are, know, examples of real mastery. You know, I look at ⁓ what Axios is doing, you know, today.

It's ⁓ I think it's just remarkable. And those were the Politico guys, you know, before that. And they've really been on the forefront of what this can be and where it can go. But it's a it's a painful transition. And it is certainly nowhere near as well financed as it was, you know, once upon a time.

Andrew Parker (06:39)

What do you think? ⁓ You mentioned Axios, which is interesting to me because I have found them to be, you know, I thought they were like so many others. Well, are you going to take the right position or the left position? And, know, whichever one you take, that's the way you make you scrap together a little bit of money because you got some firebrands on both sides and you can figure out how to make money that way rather than.

doing your job, which is delivering the news. ⁓ But ⁓ Axios, you I thought, ⁓ they're coming out, they're gonna be a left-door organization, et cetera, and they're gonna give a slant to all the stories in that direction. It really hasn't been the case, though. I think you're right about that. ⁓ They may have a tendency, but that's about it.

What about Barry Weiss? mean, that whole story ⁓ has been very interesting to me. Her leaving the New York Times, the way she left, the letter she wrote, the amazing coverage that that letter got across the country. mean, it kind of was an inflection point ⁓ in the media. Now she's what? She's going back to CBS News. She's going to be

Rick Kupchella (07:53)

Mm-hmm.

Andrew Parker (08:03)

some big wig over there and actually try to bring some legitimacy back.

Rick Kupchella (08:10)

It's, you know, that's hopeful. know, and it's, we're in such an odd time. the degree to which, you know, the ⁓really gets into the politics of it all, which is, I think, super unfortunate. You know, today, you know, when this comes out, everybody wants to know, OK, you know, who, what is your angle? And it's always in a right versus left kind of way, not a just

dig for the truth on this stuff, right? ⁓

Andrew Parker (08:40)

And we're going to talk about that with Rick,

believe me, precarious state, we're going to get into it deeply. And the whole issue of, okay, where's this coming from? Because that'll tell me how I should view it, rather than just viewing it for what it is.

Rick Kupchella (08:57)

Right, right. But the same kind of thing is happening in what you're talking about with Barry. They're just looking at, OK, what's going to happen and trying to predict or analyze it before it's even really a thing. And I think people are just kind of ⁓ they fall into a too simple.

Andrew Parker (09:05)

Yes. Yes.

Rick Kupchella (09:25)

too ready for this to be A or B. ⁓ It's kind of disheartening a little bit, to be honest.

Andrew Parker (09:35)

Yeah, no, I've got to believe it is for someone who, know, in following your career and seeing where you've gone, what you've done, you created, what was it called? Bring me the news, I think, ⁓ and have done so much in your career, but you've always been steadfast about the accuracy, about the truth of the matter, about the news in reporting.

And trying to avoid angles. ⁓ And you know, that's that's kind of well, it is refreshing. No question about it. And there just aren't too many left who are who are doing that. ⁓ You know, the reason I bring up Barry Weiss, Rick, is she is someone who I'm a bit more conservative. ⁓ And and this this show is is, you know, some would

say a bit more conservative as well. ⁓ But Barry Weiss came from a strong liberal foundation. ⁓ She checks several boxes in the liberal camp. ⁓ And she is a liberal on many, many issues personally. ⁓ But she speaks with clarity and sanity.

And and just has, you know, can can bring the message because of her background. Rick, let's turn our attention to the city of Minneapolis. I had. I've been doing a few shows recently about the city, the crime rate, ⁓ education falling both in the city and across the state of Minnesota.

which as you know, when you were growing up and when you were ⁓ in media here, we had one of the top education systems in the country. ⁓ And it has just plummeted, particularly over the last eight years. ⁓education crime, ⁓ economic ⁓ loss, people moving out of the state. It's a long time from the Time Magazine cover with Wendy Anderson. ⁓

on it and you decided to make a documentary called Precarious State and by the way you gotta go get this documentary and watch it. believe what is it, precariousstate.org and dot com. Alright and so you can get it with these. You can also get it by going to theandrewparkershow.com, clicking on resources and we've got it right there. ⁓

Rick Kupchella (12:13)

dot com. ⁓

Andrew Parker (12:27)

We believe it is a very, very important documentary for anyone who cares about the city of Minneapolis ⁓ to watch. And that really is where I saw this ⁓ documentary coming from, coming from a position, a place of caring. know, I mean, caring. We're a community here. And we have been one of the great communities and examples in the entire country.

for many, many decades, the city of Minneapolis. And that is just quite frankly changing.

Rick Kupchella (13:03)

It is. really is. know, and it is this this came ⁓ this came about out of

Just a honestly, initially, it was just my own curiosity. we there were it was bring me the news. I also partnered with another group called Go Card Labs. And and then that group launched another business that was the big no KNOW. And that was around an education platform for brands to educate. Could be employee groups, could be, you know, customer bases. But it was an educational platform. So we were all these different.

kind of executions, straight up marketing, straight up news, online education. And we had a really good run from like, I would say 2009 up through the businesses started selling between 16 and 20. And then I had to put one down in the middle of the pandemic just because we had the first couple of years, the pandemic was great.

23, it just, the bottom fell out and my clients were in recession planning, et cetera, et And I just had to close it. And I took some time off and I went around the country to see friends and family. I've been working a lot. ⁓And when I came back, it just hit me like a board. Sometimes you just need to leave the room and you come back in and you're like, wait, what's going on over there?

Andrew Parker (14:25)

Indeed.

Rick Kupchella (14:37)

And that's really how this started. And it was like, wait a minute. What I hear is from friends of mine, most of them are fairly educated, bright folks in business. They care about these things. And I would just ask them, come on downtown. Let's go for a walk. I'll buy lunch. We'll just go for a walk around town. I want you to tell me what you see.

Andrew Parker (15:05)

Yeah.

Rick Kupchella (15:06)

And these smart people were talking to me about, ⁓ know, Rick, is just going on everywhere right now. This is what post-pandemic malaise does to cities. This is 23. And then, you know, this is what work from home does. This does not end very well. This is happening everywhere.

This same thing is happening everywhere. I'd rip them. You still travel, You get out. ⁓ This is not like every place else, man. This is quite different. we were dealing with ⁓ a trifecta of trouble, which, yeah, we had the pandemic like everybody else had the pandemic. We had George Floyd, which was fairly unique.

Andrew Parker (15:35)

Yeah.

Rick Kupchella (15:58)

But it was also ⁓ that caused all kinds of, ⁓ you know, the torching of the city, which is its own thing. And it's how we respond to all of these things becomes essentially the fourth. ⁓ you know, everybody's had the pandemic. We have these couple other things that came along that were super challenging, unfortunate.

timing, unfortunate reality, unfortunate timing. But no ability, no ability to really build out of it. a real, it went right to.

The thing is we need to do is defund police, right? We're just thinking, OK, how is this going to end? Where does this go? And it ultimately gets to where the documentary gets to. We just ultimately try to. I told everybody up front, I'm looking at this through the eyes of business. If you believe, and not everybody does, I do, that our society is financed and driven by economic engines.

that are really intimately tied to business and business growth and ⁓ a host of different kind of manifestations. But that's the economic engine. And even when I was selling this concept early to community leaders, foundation people in particular, I got this right away ⁓ step back, ⁓ hey, not everybody thinks like that.

Not everybody thinks like that. I'm looking at it OK, well, where do you think the economic engine rests? And I never got a straight answer. I never got a straight answer. But everything they said made me think that they believed it was really government. And of course, my immediate question is, where do you think the government gets the money? I mean, let's just peel it back, right? Where's the core?

Andrew Parker (17:39)

Yeah.

Rick Kupchella (18:08)

And we had just gotten to a place where the businesses, frankly, were not growing. One stat we did not put into the documentary, but is still meaningful. A lot of stuff jammed into that 60 minutes. one was, it was a study done by the chamber. And it was done between 2021 and 2024. It could be 22 to 24. I don't have it in front of me, but recently.

and in this period of post pandemic. And they were looking at business growth. they started, somebody said on this panel of people that were studying this, know, we're just, the businesses here in Minnesota just aren't growing. They're just not growing. And somebody pushed back. This is from the, this was in the Minnesota chamber. Somebody pushes back and says, ⁓ well, actually, no, several of them here are growing. They're just not growing here. They're growing somewhere else.

OK? So that got them into a position of like, hey, let's add to this. Let's look at business growth, and let's measure how, to what degree do we see Minnesota businesses growing elsewhere versus businesses based elsewhere growing here. And a real interesting math. And what it said basically was that we were exporting.

between these in these three year period, we were exporting 50 % more growth than we've been importing. 50%. ⁓ We had ⁓ exported 50 % more jobs than we were importing associated with these expansions.

But the real holy smokes was value. If you looked at, let's just not all expansions and growth opportunities are equal, right? And when you looked at the value of what we were exporting versus the value of what we were importing, it was like 180 % off. We were exporting something on the order of $11 billion.

And we were importing, I think it was 10 billion out, 4 billion in. Just not a sustainable play, right? You're just exporting so much more than you're importing as an economy. It doesn't help our state, literally our victim.

Andrew Parker (20:35)

Mm-hmm.

No,

it clearly ⁓ doesn't. It was recently published an analysis of percentage income loss by state, looking at the 50 states, each and every state, to look at the income loss over the past

Three years and you know and everyone has it with inflation with the pandemic coming out of the pandemic it's ever so what you're trying to do is have as little income loss per capita as possible and Minnesota ranks

Eight from the bottom of the 50 states having the highest income loss.

I mean, Mississippi is doing well better. ⁓ Georgia, Louisiana, they're all doing well better than the great state of Minnesota.

Rick Kupchella (22:06)

Tell me the source on that one, Andy.

Tell me the source on that one.

Andrew Parker (22:10)

Well, you know, the, ⁓ let me, let me find here. I've got it. I believe, ⁓ the American experiment put this out and

Rick Kupchella (22:16)

See you.

Andrew Parker (22:25)

They say, uh, well, I'll get that to you. I will get, wait, wait, wait, source. The economic cost of the pandemic state by state Stanford Hoover Institute published in 2023 by Eric Hanyushek.

Rick Kupchella (22:32)

Hmm.

Andrew Parker (22:50)

You know, the Hoover Institute is a reputable source.

Rick Kupchella (22:55)

Yeah, it is a reputable source. is. Yeah, and there are so many measures like this, Andy. There's so many ⁓that you can find. And that's one of the things that as we started peeling back ⁓ these ⁓ angles, it just got deeper and deeper. And there was a lot of ⁓ similarity across different metrics.

Andrew Parker (22:57)

Yeah.

Right?

Rick Kupchella (23:19)

you know, importation of exportation versus, you in growth versus, you know, looking at one of the big ones we ⁓ were deep on was the Lineman ⁓ report, the Lineman letter that goes out of Wharton, an endowed chair out of Wharton ⁓ that put that group together. And ⁓ it it's really looking at a very simple metric that is payroll employment. OK, let's just look at payroll employment as a measure of economic health.

Andrew Parker (23:23)

Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Rick Kupchella (23:49)

And it was to a market, it was the question to all these markets has been and continues to be, where are you today with payroll employment in your large metro market, which is defined by each market, ⁓ relative to where you were in that market in February of 2020?

Where are you today relative to where you were then? And this is truly payroll employment. This is most people work for the company, and the company pays them on a regular schedule. And it's that kind of payroll employment we're measuring. And in the Twin Cities, we're looking at the 12-county metro area. And I monitor this. ⁓ I've been monitoring it ⁓ quarterly.

really these measures come out every month. We've been looking at them on a quarterly basis and it's we've been all over the map but we've always been net negative. We're net negative. Our answer is our city's 12 county metro area, all the counties in Minnesota. ⁓

⁓ We are minus, the latest data when we did the broadcast was minus 800 ⁓ jobs. But I will tell you, that was the best showing we saw in two years of monitoring. ⁓ We were largely in between minus 24,000 and minus 36,000. That's where we were. And it wasn't this, it wasn't getting better, getting better, getting better. It's this. And we tend to do better

Andrew Parker (25:25)

Wow.

Yeah. ⁓

Rick Kupchella (25:33)

in the summer quarter, which is the one we had. But that was still negative. And we're looking at what's going to come out next. And it's a dire ⁓ reading for us. It has put us, most of the last year, ⁓ second only to San Francisco on this list of the top.

48 markets in the country. have been 47th, San Francisco is 48th. ⁓ We were tied for much of last year with Baltimore. OK, I've been putting these numbers together going back to the 80s in the Twin Cities, about the Twin Cities, and I've never, ever, ever seen us tied with Baltimore on any kind of economic

Andrew Parker (26:17)

Yeah. Yeah.

Rick Kupchella (26:31)

measure. And, you know, of all things, know, Baltimore has been doing a lot better lately, particularly as relates to crime. think the first time they've been off the most crime ridden cities, top 25 most crime ridden cities, they're off of that list for the first time in the last couple of years here. You know, we're we're we're and we are crime story is his own.

Andrew Parker (26:48)

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, you have the economic loss story as you, as you talk about the crime story is ⁓ it's horrific. You try to adjust the numbers, move them, make them look as good as you can. They don't look good. They're just not good. ⁓ The, the education numbers are terrible reading and math, ⁓ embarrassingly terrible for the state of Minnesota, which has been

was a ⁓ beacon to the rest of the states in this country for many, many years. ⁓ You know, you take all of that, but then anecdotally, and what you did is so important. Just go out and look, just walk the streets, go to Uptown. Uptown is, you I used to live in Uptown in that area around the lakes. And it is a shell of itself still.

you know, colloquially said boarded up and it's ⁓ businesses have gone out of business. What does that do? That causes people to be unemployed. That causes people to be reliant on the government. But there are fewer people paying into the government because there's more unemployed. And you're just absolutely right about what the economic engine is. It is business.

That's what it is. And we need to have a climate that is favorable, not unfavorable.

Rick Kupchella (28:22)

Yes.

That is exactly true, Andy. And that was how we got to looking at what we looked at. It was OK. Just to think of how, if you believe that business is the economic engine of a market, then you look at, ⁓ what does it take to recruit business investment in a market, ⁓ to bring it in from elsewhere or get it started here?

versus elsewhere. the kinds of things that they look at, number one, they want to know, where is it on the kind of business-friendly metric? Is this friendly for business? Is this a place that ⁓ encourages business growth, that looks to bring in new business, to employ people and improve the economy of a given marketplace, or not?

So that gets a lot to regulatory issues, what are tax issues that ⁓ a new business would run into in the state of Minnesota. So that's business friendly, ⁓ up or down. And then you look at, is this place safe? Is it safe for my employees, for my family, for their families? ⁓ And then education comes into this.

⁓ So they want to know how the schools are going to perform because their workers are going to want to know how the schools perform and they're going to want to figure out where to put their kids ⁓ in school for the best outcomes. It's also relevant for the employees themselves seeking advanced degrees. Right. ⁓ And ⁓ the data points around demographics.

OK, and we had a few minutes in our hour dedicated to a conversation with the state demographer that just shows very plainly we are at an inflection point. And business cares about this because the inflection point is we now have more people who are seniors than in grade school. OK, that has never been true in the state of Minnesota.

Andrew Parker (30:49)

Wow.

Yeah.

Rick Kupchella (30:51)

You know, it's never been true before.

If this happens, is a natural occurring thing that can happen. It can also be influenced by becoming a magnet for growth. That can influence, bring people in here. So a business will look at the demographics of a market in part as a litmus test, part of the litmus test they're doing, to see, is this a place? Do I have to find and recruit people to come to this place?

to work for us or do I have a real bounty of people coming into the worker marketplace that we'd be able to select from? That's just another part of the equation. Right. So you got all of these elements, crime, education, demographics. ⁓ And, you know, the friendly it gets into how is this place being run?

right? And obviously in our documentary, we ended up honing in on the work of the democratic socialists of America in our government, which I didn't even know was a thing when I started on this. I just want to tell you, I like to think of myself as somebody who stays up on these things, but I really wasn't a close follower of what was happening in the city council. I was not. And I want to tell you very fast story here. Somebody

Andrew Parker (32:05)

Yeah.

Rick Kupchella (32:15)

gave me, ⁓ it was a business person, just gave me this thing. This thing was the DSA, right? And this is actually my iPod case, but whatever. They gave me this thing and they said, you're really, you're not going to be able to tell this story without talking about this thing. And ⁓ I pick it up and I'm looking at it and I'm.

I just, you know, like, you know what? This is going to make it political. And I don't, I don't, that's just going to be noise pollution. I don't want to go after things that just make it look political and discount everything else. I'm going to put that down. And that was it about this, you know, I would, that first came to me in like month three of my two year work. Okay. And then about month eight, it comes at me again. Okay.

I'm more intrigued now because I can start to see it. And I actually see how it relates to schools. And I actually see how it relates to crime. And I actually see how it relates to business growth or anti-growth. And I'm still like, gosh, I just don't want to go there. And I'd say shortly after about the year mark, it's like, no, we have got. You cannot honestly talk about what's going on.

Andrew Parker (33:15)

yeah.

Yeah.

Rick Kupchella (33:27)

without talking about this reality. And that was a hard thing for me to get over. But at the end of the day, there's no legitimacy to ignoring it.

Andrew Parker (33:43)

Yeah, that's absolutely right. We're talking to Rick Cupchella, the executive producer of documentary Precarious State. Go to precariousstate.com, precariousstate.com for the approximately one hour documentary. It is absolutely eye-opening. It is critical if you

care about the city of Minneapolis, state of Minnesota, ⁓ whether you live in the city or not, ⁓ it is critical that you go precarious state dot com and watch this documentary. ⁓ It is, ⁓ as I say, eye opening. You can also go to the Andrew Parker show dot com and click on resources and get it there very quickly. ⁓ Rick. ⁓

Once you had decided to do this, once you had decided, you know, the democratic socialists of America, can't really do this story even though I would like to without bringing it up. So I have to bring it up. ⁓ Is it just the basic conclusion that socialist ideology as is being pressed

by the DSA members of the city council is an ideology that results in the sorts of outcomes that you found when you were putting together the documentary.

Rick Kupchella (35:23)

Yeah, I mean, it is. This is not the end. It's pretty consistent. OK, I mean, ⁓ their their platform, which can be found at precarious state dot com also their platform ⁓ is ⁓ super clear. They also did something really wild. ⁓ So I've been looking at that platform, I mean, for the whole two years I've been working on this very familiar with it. OK, very familiar.

And just before we put it up on our site, just before the doc went live, that platform came down, got edited substantially, and put back up. And basically, they took out all the most inflammatory stuff, is what I would say. So this group advances the idea of they want to promote

the release of all incarcerated people. That's their language, all incarcerated people. And you think about it, you're like, are you serious? ⁓ And they want ultimately, they want to close all jails. They want to close all jails. Now, just think about this for a minute. What are you advocating?

They want to take guns away from police ⁓ officers. They should not be armed in this country. ⁓

Andrew Parker (36:58)

This at its

core, Rick, what this is, is a platform of anarchy, of revolution. ⁓ Revolution, not a shift or change or policy movement. Revolution at its core, and it has reached ⁓ the halls of city councils in various places around the country, but it also has reached the halls of Congress.

in certain respects not enormous but it's growing and it is alarming and that's why precarious state is you know at the forefront of reporting on this.

Rick Kupchella (37:32)

Mm-hmm.

It is, it's shocking ⁓ to see ⁓ this kind of thing happening. And frankly, it's shocking to see them quietly reward it as, know, really, Mom, Donnie, you know, is getting to quite the plateau here. ⁓ All indicators are at the moment that he could really win this race. ⁓

Andrew Parker (38:07)

Likely will.

Rick Kupchella (38:08)

Yeah, that is certainly what it looks like at this moment in time. ⁓ I think, again, the public doesn't really know. And it's like they try to, and they're literally trying to, soften their language in real time as they go into this. Now, I want to make ⁓ clear the point also. It's not like they had a big epiphany.

It's not like they called a meeting and everybody thought, wow, this is really too out of line for anybody, you know, rational. You know, we need to just redo this platform of ours. They didn't do that. There's no announcement made that says, hey, we're throttling back by like, you know, 40 % of what we were before. No. So there's no reason to believe that that other stuff isn't still real. They're just talking about it differently.

That's all. And what we've done at Precarious State is we've put up online the one that had been there all the last several years. We've highlighted it to help people see where things are in that multi-page document quickly. And then we say, here's the new one. And view it for yourself. that is a really

Andrew Parker (39:24)

Fantastic.

Rick Kupchella (39:32)

something folks should understand. And frankly, the DSA should acknowledge and talk about ⁓ what they're doing. Why did you change all these incendiary words just overnight? How did that come

Andrew Parker (39:48)

Yeah, no question.

⁓ Rick, ⁓ a couple of things. One, give us the teaser on precarious state. ⁓ If you go to it, what are you gonna see? Why should you go to it? And then secondly, what has the reaction been to, I mean, it's been a bit of a firestorm, quite frankly, at least in certain places. ⁓

Rick Kupchella (40:13)

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Andrew Parker (40:16)

speak to what the reaction has been to.

Rick Kupchella (40:18)

Yeah, I would say honestly, and I'm double checking myself with colleagues inside and outside the group, but I would say the overwhelming

⁓ response to this publicly is positive. When I say overwhelmingly, mean like ⁓ easily three quarters. And I'm reading as much as I possibly can on it. That's a lot by the way, that's out there on this thing right now. And ⁓there is a good quarter of it, I think that is, ⁓ you know, they're ⁓ attacking.

Right? Which I never thought I was going to get a free pass on this thing. Right? mean, particularly once a decision was made to own up to the fact that this has a lot to do with what's being done by the DSA. ⁓ And ⁓so I'm not surprised by any of that. is always, ⁓ you know, this is, thank God that I've had the kind of training I've had over time to just to be prepared.

for all of this kind of thing. Because I mean, I give you a quick example in the old care days, we did a big piece on understanding public schools and just how things were changing. And we put it out there over five nights back in the day. That's what we did every night for five nights, It never happens anymore. ⁓ But.

Andrew Parker (41:43)

Yeah.

Dev

Rick Kupchella (41:48)

You know, I walked into the newsroom. The phones were all lit up, you know, and I just they had people taking care of a lot of that stuff, but I would join in, you know, and I I only I picked up two calls that night. I picked up one and it was a family in a Tony suburbs like, my God, I'm so glad I I saw this thing. I had no idea. There's no way in hell I would put one of my kids in the Minneapolis public school system. I pick up the next one. And it's the commissioner of education.

Andrew Parker (42:12)

Yeah. Yeah.

Rick Kupchella (42:18)

who says that was the best told story of what we are dealing with as a organization here in the Department of Education. And how can we get individual copies of this to share with people to help them understand the challenges we're facing?

So, you know, that kind of thing happened all the time in news. You'd put one thing up, it looks like this, you know, you can describe this, you can talk about this, you know, and somebody says this is a, you know, ⁓ a square black box. And somebody else says, you know, no, it's a vertical glass. It's crazy. But that's how goes.

Andrew Parker (42:47)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

Well, it is and with precarious state, it is a an important story. It's a critical story really for the state of Minnesota. It is, you know, it's not called precarious city. It's called precarious state for a reason. City of Minneapolis is the driver, the engine for the state of Minnesota in many, respects. Not entirely, but in many, many respects. And

this documentary tells the story of what the city is facing. Now I live and work in the city and I know from what it speaks, this documentary, ⁓ and it is real. Every night, even every day, the sirens are two, three an hour. ⁓And it just didn't used to be that way. ⁓ And it is, ⁓ it certainly,

is today and the reaction and the response to precarious state 75 percent ⁓ really thank God and thanking Rick Upshela for the work that he did. ⁓ Hopefully it'll make a difference in not just the election but in how we try to take back our city.

Rick Kupchella (44:22)

Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Parker (44:24)

Rick, thank you so much for joining us on the Andrew Parker Show. It has been a real pleasure. Cupchella, the executive producer of Precarious State. Go to precariousstate.com, watch this documentary. Very, very important. And make sure to get out and vote if you are able to in the city of Minneapolis because you ⁓ carry with you.

You're a resident of the city. Get out and vote a week from ⁓ Tuesday, that's November 4th, and make your voice heard. Go to theandrewparkershow.com, go to resources, you can find Precarious State, go to precariousstate.com, but also subscribe, follow us, like what you're hearing.

Get your email and we'll send you each episode as they come out. Rick, thank you so much for joining us.

Rick Kupchella (45:26)

Andrew, really appreciate the opportunity and the time and the focus on this issue. It's ⁓ important right now.

Andrew Parker (45:33)

It absolutely is. Thank you for your great work and until next time, be kind to your neighbor.