Don Samuels wins the Ward 5 DFL Endorsement. More importantly, where the hell was his opponent? And who stifled her campaign?
Mr. Don Samuels
Personally, I do like and do support Ward 5 Council Member Don Samuels. However, I thought his chances for re-endorsement were shaky, offering an opportunity for an opponent with a strong campaign message to unseat him. But, as a result of his re-endorsement, one thing was very clear: Samuels and his team were prepared for this win.
Since I bide my time as a political spin doctor, I decided to tell a group gathered in north Minneapolis that I did not support Don Samuels to see what kind of reaction I would get.
I wasn’t surprised. Samuels’ supporters rattled off a litany of facts and reasons why anyone should support the councilman. Those who opposed him offered no facts, nor did they prepare a strategy that would effectively engage and sway support for Kenya McKnight, Samuels’ challenger. Read more
Disney Princesses: Black Girls Need Not Apply A Look at Disney’s Animated Royalty
In 1997, singer Brandy played Cinderella in the made-for-TV movie, but when it comes to “original” princesses — which generate millions in merchandising from umbrellas and comforter sets to phones and back packs — there are no African Americans. What is the effect of this on black girls?
Disney's Princesses
"Our Princesses"
By Angela Bronner, AOL Black Voices
Says Dr. Dorothy Cunningham: “I think that one of the things parents can do is to put the concept of princess in context — to present her as strong, as powerful, as black.”
“Mommy, why don’t any of the princesses look like me,” asks the beautiful brown girl, a mix of curiosity and confusion in her eyes.
It is questions like this that torment black parents or caretakers, who like everyone else, want their children to be respected, affirmed, and yes, represented. Read more
Rev. Walter Hoye Sentencing: A Message to African American Leaders part 1
Rev. Walter Hoye, Elder at The Progressive Missionary Baptist Church in Berkeley, CA was arrested and convicted in Oakland, CA for the “heinous crime” of holding a Pro-Life sign that read “God Loves You and Your Baby” outside an abortion clinic, breaking Oakland’s newly-adopted, unfair and unconstitutional bubble law or “medical safety zone”. Read more
President Obama “Ordered” to release Wall Street investor Bernard Madoff
Madoff, Obama and Netanyahu, "Whose bad?"
As reported on Live Leak, on Monday, March 23, 2009 by cukoo919 , Russian Intelligence reports are stating today that Israel’s incoming right-wing Nationalist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘ordered’ President Obama to release disgraced Wall Street investor Bernard Madoff or ‘risk full and total regional war along with airstrikes on Iran and Syria.
Not being reported in the United States media about its worst ever case of financial fraud involving former Mossad agent Bernard Madoff is that the billions in funds collected from the wealthiest American-Israelis were used to finance Israel’s Global intelligence network reported to have been responsible for numerous attacks against its perceived enemies, including the catastrophic attacks upon America on September 11, 2001.
According to these reports, Madoff was the chief financier for a vast Israeli spy and sabotage network set up by former Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) director Jacob Perry (Yaakov Peri) who ‘transformed’ himself into one of America’s most powerful businessman and led what FSB sources call the “Murderous/Fatal Gang of 7” which references the leaders of this American-Israeli cabal who besides Madoff and Perry include:
Read the full story at Live Leak.
http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/release-madoff-or-risk-war-israel-warns-us/
The City of Minneapolis Fails at hiring Minority Contractors!
The City of Minneapolis – Department of Civil Rights and elected officials have ignored a 2007 study on the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Contract Compliance Unit, making it impossible for minority-ethnic contractors to have a fair chance at social and economic goals with the City of Minneapolis.
Our Men and Women Need Jobs!
The Executive Summary reads:
- Page ii – MDCR “Community” Evaluation Report, May 2007:
“The City’s diverse community deserves to have a government committed to fulfilling the social and economic goals of the Civil Rights Ordinance and the intent of the Civil Rights Ordinance through effective implementation and evaluation, thus ensuring that the civil rights policy has the impact it was designed to produce.”
- Page ii – MDCR “Compliance” Evaluation Report, May 2007:
“Governmental and non-governmental entities governed by the Civil Rights Ordinance are NOT in full compliance with the hiring, contracting, reporting, monitoring, and enforcement mandates described in the contract compliance provision of the ordinance.”
# # #
On Friday, March 20, 2009 the Independent Business News Network provided a link to the May 2007 Evaluation of the City of Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Contract Compliance Unit Report.
Unfortunately the link to the city website that held the report and City of Minneapolis Council member Cam Gordon’s email alert to others was cut.
Today, you can read, review and print the report here or copy and paste the URL below in your web address browser.
Evaluation of the City of Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Contract Compliance Unit – May 2007 – the link to this report is http://v-newswire.com/MDCR.pdf. (We recommend Firefox for the download of these files.)
If you ever wondered why we never saw any Blacks, Hispanics-Latinos, Asians, Somali or other minority-ethnics on City of Minneapolis construction sites, this report explains why.
Comments are welcomed at info@ibnn.org.
Why Minneapolis citizens should hold Mayor R.T. Rybak accountable today, or elect a new Mayor in November
"Hey R.T., you knew about the problems in the MDCR in 2007. You should have fixed it then. Washington, DC is very nice in the Springtime!
(IBNN WILL HAVE THE FULL REPORT ONLINE ON MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2008. THE CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS HAS CUT THE LINK)
Yes We Can” and “Change.” These are two of the phrases that drove our nation to elect a President who was receptive to the needs of our people. Locally, Minneapolis city officials are using the same rhetoric as a way to align Mayor Rybak with the very people who voted for President Obama, and ultimately motivate these same people to vote for Rybak. This strategy may not work for Rybak because he’s failed on one key aspect — being receptive to the needs of our people.
In any number of President Obama’s speeches, he calls for a “transparent” process of government in order to keep citizens informed and aware, and as a way to fix the problems that occur in both state and local government. The Obama administration has even gone as far as establishing a Web site that will be maintained to outline how the Stimulus dollars are being disseminated, and how the money is being used in each state. To my knowledge, neither Mayor Rybak nor the city of Minneapolis has called for transparency in government, or implemented a Website detailing city contractual activities.
The City of Minneapolis is sitting on a powder keg of corrupt processes, which amount specifically to the city’s failure to deliver on contractual promises made to communities of color, and in general, to its mismanagement of programs that could best meet the needs of all citizens of Minneapolis.
Since 2004, City of Minneapolis has randomly cut programs it perceived were not working or were not benefitting the community. Programs like the Youth Summer Jobs Program and the Minneapolis Urban League’s Curfew/Truancy Center were programs that were working and were a benefit to the community, but were eliminated because they were perceived as not working. (The funding for the Urban League’s Curfew/Truancy Center was pulled and re-directed even though the program was working).
I ask where the process of transparency has been each time one of these programs was eliminated.
On Wednesday, March 25, 2009, Mayor R.T. Rybak will deliver his annual State of the City Address at 11:00 a.m. on at the new Coloplast North American Headquarters (1601 West River Road North, Minneapolis). Given the economic challenges facing our city, state and our nation, Mayor Rybak will use his address to lay out a road map of new initiatives for economic recovery.
In 2007, Rybak stated that “… my focus is on North Minneapolis, it and its great people. I’ve told the rest of the city that the focus will be to ‘clean up’ the north side.”
Thus far the “clean up” has been to identifying ways to “rid” the North Side’s Black community of economic power.
In 2007, you applauded the grand opening of ALDI’S at the corner of Lowry and Penn avenues. But what you didn’t say was how the new store was built without being in compliance the city’s goals of hiring a set number of women and minority contractors?
I ask where was the process of transparency when these women and minority contractors were denied or overlooked for this project?
Mayor Rybak you are no President Obama.
The citizens of Minneapolis deserve a superior individual to take the reins at the City; someone who will not talk about the “path to recovery” or “new incentives” — these are old ideas we’ve heard before. Just because there’s a Black man in the White House starting from scratch, doesn’t mean that Minneapolis has to start over – Mayor Rybak has been in office for too long!
Even at the General Mills Foundation’s – Hawthorne Huddle’s at Farview Park, you present a concern for the residents and businesses on the north side, but on Thursday, February 5, 2009 after Minneapolis Police had shot a Somali man more than 13 times, you still went on to announce to the audience what had happen earlier that morning, with no real concern. It was business as usual, just another Black man shot in north Minneapolis. What was even more disturbing was General Mills Foundation Executive Director Ellen Luger standing up and saying, “At least crime is down.” To us, a very poor comment made after Minneapolis Police had shot and killed a Somali man earlier that morning.
There are many reasons why Minneapolis citizens are fed up and in need of new city leadership. But what takes the cake is the utter lack of concern or attempt to abide by the compliance goals to hire set numbers of women and minorities for city projects. Why is there no concern? Because you believe your practices won’t be discovered.
To review the May 2007 Evaluation of the City of Minneapolis’ Department of Civil Rights Contract Compliance Unit, click here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/council/2007meetings/20070629/docs/CCU_Report_5-24-07.pdf, on page 20, under part III – Findings, states the following:
Findings: “Governmental and non-governmental entities governed by the Civil Rights Ordinance are NOT in full compliance with the hiring, contracting, reporting, monitoring, and enforcement mandates described in the contract compliance provision of the ordinance. The Civil Rights Ordinance mandates governmental and non-governmental contractors to comply with specific instructions during the pre-bid, bid, award, monitoring, enforcement, and closeout stages of the contracting process.
The Executive Summary also states: “The consequences outlined in the Civil Rights Ordinance for failure to comply with the provisions of the Ordinance are NOT being applied to firms that are in non-compliance. With the study also reporting that the Contract Compliance Unit does not have the capacity to effectively fulfill its mandate.”
Based on this report prepared by The Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations & Social Justice; Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the University of Minnesota, dated May 2007 – Commissioned by the City of Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights under Michael Browne, this unit has overlooked the population for which they should serve. If this were a movie script, we’d probably find out that people have been on the take.
Even Minneapolis City Councilman Cam Gordon posted this remark in the Topics in Minneapolis Issues Forum on July 22. 2007 at 5:5o p.m. which reads;
I wanted to call attention to a report, EVALUATION OF THE CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL RIGHTS CONTRACT COMPLIANCE UNIT, which will be presented to the Health Energy and Environment Committee on Monday, July 23rd:
“I am still reviewing it, but the conclusions are disturbing and show a need for serious reform. In the City we have policies in place to protect traditionally disadvantaged groups from discrimination and to expand employment and economic opportunities to all residents regardless of race, gender or disability. When we draw up contracts we often set goals about how many women or “minority” workers we expect a company to use –sometimes awarding them to companies who agree to our goals. We have a Small & Underutilized Business Program to help us better utilize women and minority-owned firms. To oversee these efforts we have a Contract Compliance Unit. The study evaluates the effectiveness of this unit of the Civil Rights Department.
If you are interested, I encourage you to look at this report and welcome your thoughts. It is well done and seems to reveal a gap between policies/goals and their implementation. Hopefully we can use the report to move us towards improvement.”
Cam Gordon
Seward Neighbor
Ward 2 City Council Member
Mayor R.T. Rybak knew that there were some contractors that have not met requirements for employment. With some contractors having 4-5 letters in their file for non-compliance, with one contractor in violation over 18 times that has never been considered for disbarment who continued to receive city contracts.
The Hiawatha Maintenance Facility was delivered to the Minneapolis City Council without being in compliance of set numbers of 6% Women, 11% Skilled and 11% unskilled as Compliance Manager Johnny Burns who says, “We received the certificate from the State of Minnesota, which means their (the contractor) are in compliance.” This is just one of the many examples of the lack of city oversight for pompous, unconcerned city managers to bypass the checks and balances and have no accountability for fact based findings.
This report shows catastrophic losses to the minority-ethnic and women contractor community, not to mention the soft-services that could have been provided to the City of Minneapolis Communications Department for outreach to build capacity to build the numbers in “calls for bid.”
A liberal point of view has not worked for the City of Minneapolis, nor will a cut-baby-cut, then spend-boy-spend help the city to regain its soul and return to the “pre-Rybak” years of prosperity and a fiduciary responsibility with jobs for youth and the opportunity for citizens of this city to once again be proud of Minneapolis and have a Mayor that “sleeps when the wind blows*.”
In 2009, it will not matter if the Mayor is a Democrat, Republican, Independent or a Green Party candidate. The people of Minneapolis are very intelligent. We are looking for mayoral candidate that will deal with us on a “community level” with “corporate” knowhow and sound business practices.
The heinous oversights in city departments deem Mayor Rybak a vote of “no confidence.”
At this place in Minneapolis’ history, we can’t afford another “bunch” of years wasted behind a pretty smile and a sharp dresser (sometimes). The Minnesota GOP, the Independence Party and the Green Party of Minnesota will not sit idle and let R.T. waltz into another term. There are also Democrats that will challenge the current mayor’s platform.
One thing I can promise the citizens of Minneapolis, if you elect a different Mayor in Minneapolis, the following things will happen:
1. You can remain a Democrat, Republican, Green or Independent.
2. No City of Minneapolis contract will leave city hall unless it’s in compliance, per city ordinances!
3. Youth will have summer jobs, as long as they stay in school.
4. The Minneapolis Public School System will be held accountable for ALL children passing and failures will not be an option!
5. Areas of blight in Minneapolis that need to build capacity for business will considered a “Fair Tax Zones” and “No Tax Zones” this is the only way to uplift an area like Broadway Avenue and other areas in Minneapolis.
6. With a change of leadership, and a party “principal” in charge, folks at city hall won’t have the opportunity to neglect local community any more.
…Listen closely, a new generation of leadership will be delivered to you.
*(“Sleeps when the wind blows” – A sermon delivered by the late Rev. Walter L. Battle in 1979 that talked about a man who made sure that everything around him was okay and in working order. When a storm came, the young man could rest peacefully at night because the work of the day for the people had been done.)
“In the case of the City of Minneapolis versus the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, we find ‘Probable Cause’ to let the Investigative Unit, its management and staff be CUT or re-assigned per the Mayors budget recommendations.”
By Donald W.R. Allen, II
I want to put into perspective the reason for my open letter to the City of Minneapolis’ Department of Civil Rights Compliance Unit, as well as my pointed argument to the management of the department:
I assert that since the City of Minneapolis’ Department of Civil Rights Compliance Unit has not adhered to its own policy of hiring 6% women and 11% skilled and unskilled minorities to work on city contracts, I estimate that more than $100 million has been intentionally mis-directed or denied minority contractors. The jobs these dollars could have created would have generated wealth and economic self sufficiency
four-fold for the contractors and ultimately for the community.
Former University of Denver Psychology Professor Thomas Seville said: “If the system to investigate a complaint in Civil Rights is not handled appropriately, you put at risk the individual who filed the complaint to resort to ‘other means’ that might harm others or give the complainant a sense of ‘hopelessness” which could then lead to acts that will stop the progression of life.” Dr. Seville goes on to say, “People, who use an advocacy group to voice complaints, expect trust, understanding and compassion from intake personnel. The demographics show that for the most part, people who have felt their civil rights have been violated or denied are usually people of color, poor and without the income to hire an attorney to file suit in court. Any failure in the process set forth by a local city or state government to have ‘seamless’ methodology of true investigation with community engagement is a failure for all people, not just people of color.”
The Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Investigative Unit is a very important part of a system that should set checks and balances and be a very large part of the minority-ethnic community as it pertains to the “watchdog” on Civil Rights for the people of Minneapolis.
But how do you investigate your own department or units within your department for failing to adequately make sure that compliance and civil rights are adhered to?
The Mis-Education of the Negro, by Carter G. Woodson circa 1933, stated that “History is a Weapon.” Carter criticizes the system, and explains the vicious circle that results from mis-educated individuals graduating, and then proceeding to teach and mis-educate others.” Point in case, employees of the Civil Rights department telling a coalition of community organizations that the Mayor is out of touch and this will be a great loss for the community…not true!
Woodson goes on to make a factual point that is valid in 2009.
“It is unfortunate, too, that the educated Negro does not understand or is unwilling to start small enterprises which make the larger ones possible. If he cannot proceed according to the methods of the gigantic corporations about which he reads in books, he does not know how to take hold of things and organize the communities of the poor along lines of small businesses.”
On February 27, 2009 IBNN and other media outlets and community organizations received an email for Taneeza Islam, an employee of the City of Minneapolis’ Civil Rights Investigative Unit. The email was a press release titled, “Minnesota Coalition of Civil Rights Organizations Oppose Rybak Budget Proposal Cutting Complaints Investigation Unit.” The press release went on to read, “A coalition of prominent Civil Rights Organizations announce their opposition to Rybak’s budget proposal which cuts the entire Complaint Investigation Unit at the City of Minneapolis Civil Rights Department. Rybak is calling it a “transfer” but this proposal is to cut five full time minority attorney investigators, two contract minority attorney investigators and one supervisor, minority law school graduate of Thurgood Marshall Law School, who has been in the unit for over eight years…”
Clearly, this press release was self serving and had nothing to do with the fact that with the increasing violations of Civil Rights directed toward people of color and complaints that continue to be submitted to the Unit, the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Investigative Unit has NEVER brought cases of utmost importance to the community to gain support and build capacity for an individual or a case with probable cause.
With the continuing injustices occurring daily, items that need public “top-of-mind awareness” should be brought to the attention of public policy and advocacy groups in Minneapolis. This is the only way to peacefully address issues in a community forum that should be a part of the process.
The mis-education and mis-representation of the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Investigative Units plight to the community by select employees of the unit was an attempt to keep the “House Negros in the house, so they would not have to pick cotton in the fields.”
On Sunday, March 1, 2009 I received an email that read, “Thanks for the info. What do you think about starting a group on Facebook? The title of the group could be ‘Opposing Mayor Rybak’s Cut of Civil Rights’ – would you be willing to start the group? Let me know. Thanks – Toni Newborn Complaint Investigator Minneapolis Civil Rights Department.”
Yes, okay – I started the group, but when I posted the official page, Ms. Newborn and Ms. Islam blocked me from their Facebook pages and asked not to receive any more emails from IBNN. Furthermore, they didn’t even join the Facebook group I created on their behalf. The press release sent out locally on IBNN’s platform had over 60,000 views with support building to stop the mayor from cutting the department.
On Monday, March 2, 2009, the Minneapolis City Council Ways and Means Budget committee had a meeting at Minneapolis City Hall. One of the items on the agenda was the proposed cut in the Investigate Unit of the City’s Civil Rights Department has directed by the mayor’s budget.
At the city council meeting, true community stakeholders attended. They were in outrage of the Mayor’s possible cut of the investigative unit. People whispered, “Why is he doing this; what give’s R.T. the right to even think about cutting the Investigative Unit.
But wait…This is the first time, in my lifetime that I’ve even heard about the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Investigative Unit. From outside looking in, it seemed like it was a well functioning machine, until you ask the salient questions like, “how many cases have been won by the unit “Or how many cases received a ‘no probable cause’ determination?”
With those very superficial questions, you open up a can of worms that would make every person of color look in the mirror and say, “Why am I here to support this people and help them keep their jobs? They have not attended to their own back yard by making sure that Equal Opportunity exists in the area of contract compliance, let alone civil rights violations.” This unit must implode on itself.
Also on Monday, March 2, 2009 a meeting was held in the basement of the Minneapolis Urban League to develop a strategy to garner public support for the possible investigators that might lose their jobs due to the mayor’s budget cuts. The two employees sat quietly while different suggestions were tossed around on how to make Mayor R.T. Rybak jettison his proposed cut to the department. But when observing the young women, it seemed like a cloud of nervousness and visible un-comfort shrouded the two. Something wasn’t right.
On Saturday, March 14, 2009 -IBNN received yet another email from Ms. Islam which read, “Once again, please take me off your defamatory list serve, or do you enjoy writing things about us and wondering how we will react when you send it to us?”
(Well…yeah?)
IBNN’s reply was simple and sums up the whole mis-leading process of saving jobs versus saving civil rights…
“…Dear Ms. Islam,
In response to your email, if you recall you and Toni sent me the press release (I do have the original email) that jump started this whole conversation because of the fact that some of the investigators might lose their jobs, and the community of color would suffer. Your position was misrepresented to my news organization and the community – which is clear after getting the details of the Terry Drake case.
The meeting at the Minneapolis Urban League (March 2), community stakeholders were led to believe that this “horrible” action by Mayor R.T. Rybak would deny the community of color rights as it pertains to the comprehensive investigation of complaints filed with the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights; when in fact, and as it always has been about you and some of the investigators keeping their jobs. The events of written and spoken protest of the Mayors possible cuts in your unit were never about the community. From the information I have and based on some of the cases that you and Ms. Newborn have handled – your cry to the community should have come months ago to assist in building capacity for individuals that had overwhelming, valid cases and suffered from wrong doing by being denied their civil rights. But what has happened is a reaction to a possible “job loss” situation, rather than a true community engagement or “loss in process” scenario.
Sources (A former Investigator that worked with the unit) alleges that you and Ms. Newborn have been there less than a year and you (Ms. Islam) have been off for more than 3 months in a calendar year. Secondly, it is alleged that the interns do the majority of the work and because of the lack of concern for usually low income and people of color that come into your office some with valid claims -for the most part leave with decisions of “no probable cause.”
Thirdly, I have never seen you at one community meeting except for the meeting at the Minneapolis Urban League – to make sure the “community” was in outrage about what the mayor had in store; but with hindsight being 20/20 and knowing what I know now, maybe the mayor and his staff knew what I knew and cutting a slow process that have yielded little or no successes would be better sent to a state/community level.
I will take you off the distribution list and I apologize for not peeping your card earlier. In an effort to be transparent in my communications with you, I have copied the two local Black newspapers, the Community Coalition organizations, contact at the Star Tribune and your management at the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights to include the mayor and his DOC.
In these hard economic times, facing possible layoff’s is difficult. I don’t want to see anyone lose their job…but maybe if the job was done “completely” we would not be having this conversation.
Remember – you and Ms. Newborn brought this to me…”
In closing, the City of Minneapolis has a choice now. Cutting the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Investigative Unit is one of the best plans that Mayor R.T. Rybak has come up with. This “cut” would make communities of color responsible to have an “in-house” civil rights investigative unit that could then partner with the State of Minnesota Civil Rights and clearly be a functioning machine with neighborhoods holding contractors and developers to a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) to ensure prosperity of the underserved communities.
I can only speak for myself, being a Black American – I have seen our people lose the passion of liberty and justice for all. No longer do we use our minds for weapons and a pen for a sword; we have fallen into a welfare state, dependent on others to do things that each individual can and should be responsible for. It’s no longer about race and color – it’s about green.
Before we move forward, can we fix what we left behind?
Civil Rights ain’t so civil: Open Letter to the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Project Compliance Manager Johnny Burns
"We raise our hand in hope of assistance."
Dear Mr. Burns,
On Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 3 p. m. – I followed up with you to obtain information about our March 3, 2009 meeting regarding the contract compliance on (OP 7057) for the construction of the Hiawatha Maintenance Facility.
The low bidder on this $9,868,000 project was Knutson Construction Services. When I asked what the set compliance goals were for this project, you answered: “6% women, 11% skilled minorities and 11% unskilled minorities.” But when I asked you to provide the written documentation your department provided to Knutson, you could not deliver. You went on to say that there was a “limited” amount of bids from minority-ethnic contractors; however, you could not provide the type of “outreach” conducted or results to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the department actually engaged Women Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (WDBE’s) and Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE’s) for this project, not to mention the many other projects that have passed by your desk.
Yesterday, V-Media Development Corporation and the National Research Institute* (*with offices in Portland, OR., Denver, Co. and Minneapolis, MN.) delivered a letter of request to a number of City officials, including you, Mayor R.T. Rybak’s office, the Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office and to other concerned City Council personnel. This request for information will help expose the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Compliance Unit’s negligence in providing equal opportunity to people of color regarding city contract awards.
It seems that when Black community members request information from your department, you and others in your department begin a tirade of meritless excuses, which seem designed to “obstruct” the process, and actually shed light on the lack of follow through in your department.
I assert that the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Compliance Unit has mishandled, ignored and intentionally obstructed the City compliance process, while maintaining a broken system of accountability by purposefully denying people of color the opportunity to work on City contracts.
Men and women of color need jobs! It’s your job to make damn sure that any contract between the City of Minneapolis and a contractor is in compliance. To this day, you and your department have failed!
If you remember your history, this process of exclusion and selling-out the Black community is no different than when White men purchased slaves from Black men in Africa. You and your department have sent Blacks, Hispanics-Latinos, Asians and Somali’s back to the times of “White only” drinking fountains as it pertains to the millions of dollars in lost revenue to the minority-ethnic contracting and soft-services that could be provided if you did your job.
The recent scrutiny placed on the Investigative Unit should have never occurred; your department is the one that should be scrutinized.
Questions:
Why aren’t compliance numbers in a City contract honored?
If you say you cannot secure adequate numbers of minority contractors, why isn’t effective outreach conducted to achieve the numbers?
Sincerely,
The Independent Business News Network.
Why Schools Fail To Teach Our Children
By Engines for Education www.engines4ed.org
Most six-year-olds can’t wait to go to school on that first day in September. It’s a sign of coming of age. They get to go to school like the big kids. For an alarmingly large number of these children, however, boredom, anxiety, and fear of learning quickly set in.
This happens because societies build schools that achieve much less than they promise, are frustrating for students, and generally fail to help children become adults who can think for themselves. Education has always been considered to be a process whereby some essential body of knowledge is transmitted to students; schools have simply been places where that transmission officially takes place. The development of flexible, inquiring minds has rarely been the primary consideration in the design of educational systems. Making students into proper members of society has usually been of much greater concern than developing students who are creative thinkers.
Today, the level of dissatisfaction and even outright anger at the educational system is tremendously high. We hear a great deal about the failure of our schools, about falling test scores, and about inequalities in education. A variety of solutions have been put on the table, solutions that run the gamut from applying corporate methods to gain efficiency to simply spending a lot more money. Some of the proposals to fix the situation are even more frightening than the situation they are trying to fix.
Clearly, the schools are a mess. Today’s schools are organized around yesterday’s ideas, yesterday’s needs, and yesterday’s resources (and they weren’t even doing very well yesterday). Consider the most common classroom approach: one teacher standing in front of thirty children trying to get each one to be at the same place at the same time. This approach has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive, but it flies in the face of everything scientists have discovered about children’s natural learning mechanisms, which are primarily experimentation and reflection. In other words, learning by doing. Consider also the concept of curriculum: that there is a particular body of knowledge everyone should know. This idea may comfort those who are concerned that our children know the “right stuff.” Children, however, learn facts about the world because they feel the need to know them, often because these facts will help them do something they want to do. What is the right stuff for one may be the wrong or irrelevant stuff for another.
Black History Month Does Not End With Black President
"Black America displaying its whipped back!"
The idea advocated by some that Black History Month should now cease because America has an African American president does not make much sense. One is actually not sure what one has to do with the other. Obama’s victory and presidency is undoubtedly historic but the teaching of the trials and tribulations of people of African descent in America should not end due to one’s election. As the teaching of the British Empire and European centered civilization did not cease with Bush’s presidency.
It is a different argument to say that Black History should be taught alongside American History, or World History. Of course it should. Similarly, the role of women in American history and world history too should be taught and equally recognized. It is often the times that students of color do not relate or see themselves in what is being taught. Black History is at a minimum necessary for these students to take a second look at where they’ve come from and where they can go. An opportunity they should get to see more than the 28 days allotted.
As the founder of Black History Month Carter G. Woodson noted and other scholars promoting an African centered or a global centered curriculum, the current education system also serves as miss-education for white students who get to see themselves as the center of the world, when in reality they are like everyone else a part of the global community. Why not teach European history along with a history of the West African Empires (black history did not begin with Slavery, See the Great Mali Empire) and Egyptian kingdoms, Aztec and Inca Kingdoms, and Chinese Dynasties. It’s time for a global educational perspective for a now interconnected world.
Read more on www.BlackState.com
IBNNNEW- The Death of North Minneapolis… Donald Allen
- IBNN Exclusive Report: Youth with weapon attempts to enter funeral of Alisha “Lele” Neely (Captured on Film) Donald Allen
- WCCO 4 (CBS) Television fails in journalistic integrity with “edited and spliced” tape of the Minneapolis Police Beating of Ira Stafford…rating F- Donald Allen
- MURDERAPOLIS – Code 4, No More Donald Allen
- Minneapolis’ Star Tribune newspaper’s bias reporting causes defamatory speculation at Internet marketing firm (Updated) Donald Allen
News Services
Stumble It!