Minnesota’s African American Leadership Model–A fine example of Totalitarianism…The 2009 version of how our own will sell us back into Slavery
By Donald W.R. Allen, II – Editor in Chief/IBNN
The Radical may resort to the sword, (in 2009: the keyboard), but when he does he is not filled with hatred against those individuals whom he attacks. He hates these individuals not as persons but as symbols representing ideas or interests which he believes to be inimical to the welfare of the people. (Alinsky 1946: 23)
On Saturday, (11/21) I ventured to General Mills to catch a glimpse of the 170 African-American “hand-picked” leaders for the African-American Leadership Forum. (Only two kinds of people can afford the luxury of acting on principle, those with absolute power and those with none and no desire to get any.)
Headwater Foundations Trista Harris and Northwest Area Foundations Gary Cunningham’s emails stating that there was a process one could follow in order to be invited to the Leadership meeting were misleading.
Rev. Jerry McAfee and Spike Moss were both invited on the insistence of Rep. Bobby Jo Champion less than 24 hours before Saturday’s meeting. This is not the “process” detailed in the meetings.
IBNN was later contacted by several participants at Saturday’s cattle herd. One of them said, “This was nothing but a breakfast and lunch to get a bunch of names so the Headwaters Foundation can seek future funding. Nothing got done. The circus-like engagement was a dirty shame and disrespectful to all African-Americans.”
After I had a 40-minute conversation with Northwest Area Foundation’s Gary Cunningham, it seemed that we both wanted the same outcomes for Black people in Minnesota. His statements were good – but the actions that he took excluded the real Minnesota black leadership and further delayed the attainment of justice for all.
You see Mr. Cunningham is not a radical. White Minnesota feels comfortable working with him. He will do what the master says, with little resistance. (IBNN will look at Cunningham’s involvement with Pilot City- now NorthPoint Health and Wellness– and the African American Men’s Project in an upcoming story.)
Although I was not allowed to enter the guarded area at General Mills, while Gary and I talked, several people that were not on any list were granted admission to this “private formal meeting.” Yet it was impossible for the interested public to become fully informed about the African American Leadership Forum.
The sad thing about the African American Leadership forum is, organizations “self-charged” with the organizing of this model – Northwest Foundation; Headwaters Foundation and the Stairstep Foundation recognize no limits to their authority and strive to regulate every aspect of Black engagement wherever feasible.
The element of authoritarianism, according to which ordinary Blacks have no significant share in decision-making, helps to maintain these organizations in positions of political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the controlled personality cults, along with regulations and restrictions of free discussion and criticism. This is the definition of totalitarianism.
An e-mail response sent to me by Mr. Cunningham reads: Read more
Part 3: “Riding the Minority-Ethnic Gravy Train all the way to the Bank.” Have the Minnesota Lynx forgotten about Black owned and operated Media in the Twin Cities? How do we score in the front office?
(l-r)MTN's Black Focus-Ron Edwards; Lynx-Anna Mercado; V-Media's Don Allen; Mpls Mirror's-Terri Y; Lynx-Conrad Smith and African News Journal-Ben K.
Local Black media has nothing to offer the Minnesota Lynx organization.
For more than 30 years professional sports have been dominated by Blacks.
Blacks on the courts.
Blacks on the field.
Blacks on the track.
But when it comes to spending valuable advertising dollars with local Black owned and operated media outlets, Blacks stay back! Rather than spending those dollars for advertising in local Black owned and operated media outlets – the Minnesota Lynx want to do trade with tickets in lieu of good old US currency.
We find that of no value.
Is it me, or is something wrong with this picture?
Is a Black media outlet, less than a White media outlet, if so, why? Is a media outlet that plays “Black music” owned by a “White” company better than a Black Station owned by a Black firm?
It’s clear to me; the Minnesota Lynx have chosen their battle by making it clear that – there is no room at the Target Center for Black owned and operated Media.
I wonder what Beyonce’s people will say about that.
In a recent meeting with the Minnesota’s Lynx Chief Operating Officer Conrad Smith, a coalition of minority-ethnic media outlets presented concern and criticism about the Lynx/Timberwolves organizations exemption of Black owned and operated media to assist with the promotion of the two teams. In that meeting were the African News Journal, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Mpls Mirror, V-Media Marketing and MTN’s Black Focus and others.
Early this year the MN Lynx invited select individual in for a “focus group” to drum up ideas on how to get the “community” and others interested in the team.
In an article from the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder titled, “The Lynx’s woes (or no’s) in marketing to the Black community,” it states:
- “I don’t see a representative from the Lynx over North [Minneapolis] at the Cub [Foods grocery] store on Broadway with filers or anything, saying, ‘Hey, we want you to come to the games,’” adds Onika Craven, Minneapolis. “Once you start doing that, to get more involved in the community, [Black] people will come.”
- Woman’s Club of Minneapolis Communications Director Dana Beasley says, “I’m not really sure, but we should wrap our arms around our people and support our success stories.”
- John Robinson, Burnsville: “Maybe if the players got out more in the community, and begin to market them more, maybe I would go [to a Lynx game].”
- “They [the Lynx] need to go through the Black papers, KMOJ, and go into those neighborhoods,” notes Lea B. Olsen, Minneapolis. “These young ladies should be seen by every little girl in North Minneapolis and South Minneapolis. These are the greatest role models that we could have in the African American community.”
Some of these same ideas were addressed and brought up by the group that met with Mr. Smith and Anna Mercado, Marketing Manager for the Lynx. Still coalition members received phone calls and said, “We’ve got some negative feedback from the meeting, we don’t want to be a part of a coalition.”
Local radio station KMOJ has reached out to the MN Lynx.
KMOJ’s Kelvin Quarles says, “We approached them about a marketing campaign. There have been times when I personally reached out to these players themselves, and we never got a call back.” He adds that the Lynx’s Black players must take the initiative themselves and reach out more.
But the Minnesota Lynx continue to want the “lights cut on” by sending out emails like this:
The Minnesota Lynx need you!
We’re making some exciting changes on and off the court. After three big trades on Friday, we managed to bring home Minnesota native Kelly Miller and secure another first round pick in the 2009 Draft. Recent front office additions include Chief Operating Officer Conrad Smith and Ticket Sales Manager Joe Schwei.
Bet you’re thinking…what does this have to do with me?
As a respected professional in the Twin Cities community, the Lynx are interested in your perspective and want your creative ideas to make the upcoming 2009 season the best yet!
WHAT – An informal brainstorming session to discuss new sales and marketing perspectives for the WNBA and the Minnesota Lynx.
# # #
Obviously, “changes” with the Minnesota Lynx don’t include Black owned media. Stay tuned – we’ve just got started.
Note: The MN Lynx is rumored to use one Black owned local cable television channel for ads, they wish not to be mentioned in this story.
U of M is building out at Plymouth and Penn
University of Minnesota, meet North Minneapolis.
Oops, try again. And again.
It hasn’t been easy for the University of Minnesota to work its way into the North Side. A child development program it originally planned to locate there brought out protesters with picket signs. Its land acquisition attempts resulted in a rift with Hennepin County. Its efforts to study the mortgage foreclosure crisis have been criticized as too little, too late, in neighborhoods that had already been dealing first-hand with the issue for more than three years.
And a recent hiring flap outraged many neighbors and public officials, to the point where some are saying that the U just doesn’t seem to get it.
University officials say they are “walking the walk” of a complicated and ground-breaking urban partnership plan, and some bumps in the road shouldn’t obscure the important work they’re doing.
Briefly hired
When the University’s Urban Research and Outreach/Engagement Center (UROC) recently hired former Jordan Area Community Council (JACC) Executive Director Jerry Moore for a short-term mortgage foreclosure research project, some community members said they were shocked. JACC had fired Moore in January after he got into a fist fight at a neighborhood meeting. He has been at the center of controversy that has included legal action and heated arguments at meetings.
Dottie Titus, former JACC executive director, wrote in a recent blog: “What I mostly feel is disappointment. There was a great deal of mistrust of the University when the [University-Northside] partnership was first proposed, but I saw an incredible potential if the University was going to bring some of its best minds to help solve the problems North Minneapolis has faced over the past two or three decades.”
Hiring Moore was a betrayal of trust, she added. “In my mind, it speaks volumes about the University’s real interest (or lack thereof) in the Northside Partnership. We simply cannot depend on that bright vision once held out to us.”
Robert Jones, U of M Senior Vice President, said UROC hired Moore for a “casual, temporary” job. Moore had various short term work assignments, including reviewing and analyzing newspapers for content related to mortgage foreclosure issues.
“His work has been completed, he was given notice June 22 and he is leaving our employment,” Jones said.
When asked if the U did a background check on Moore before hiring him, Jones said they had not.
“I understand the community has concerns. We were not aware of any accusations when he was hired. No accusations or concerns were ever mentioned to my staff. Our goal was to hire people from the community and we tried to do that. We typically don’t do background checks on casual temporary workers; you can be hired on Monday and let go on Tuesday. Because of this issue, however, I have asked staff to do background checks from now on.”
Moore, contacted last week, referred all questions to Jones and Associate Vice President for System Academic Administration, Irma McClaurin.
UROC under construction
Meanwhile, the University is moving ahead with renovating a shopping mall at 2001 Plymouth Ave. N. that will house the Urban Research and Outreach/Engagement Center, UROC for short. According to McClaurin, who is also UROC’s Executive Director, about 60 U staffers might move in by early fall.
UROC will include, among other things, The Center for Early Education and Development’s 500 Under Five Kindergarten readiness program, which McClaurin said is neither a day care program nor a curriculum.
“We’re not service providers,” she added. “We will be working with parents. The programs and activities we offer come out of research that scholars are doing.”
Four U of M extension programs—urban youth development, nutrition education, family development and master gardening—will move in, as well as the U’s medical school health disparities program and the Center for Innovation and Economic Development. UROC administrators and University Northside Partnership staff will also have offices at the site.
McClaurin said the City Songs program, which nurtures children’s leadership skills through music and choir, will reside at the facility and operate in partnership with Plymouth Christian Youth Center (PCYC).
“We decided that this kind of program would build a partnership with the community,” McClaurin said.
PCYC Executive Director Anne Long said, “I think that this may happen, but I haven’t seen the beef yet. We’re actively working with them on the arrangements for City Songs but it’s not in place yet. The U is verbally committing to carrying some of the costs, but it’s only verbal at this point. It may be a little too soon to say it will happen.”
Mortgage foreclosure
McClaurin said UROC’s health outreach includes North Minneapolis residents’ physical and mental health. Because the area was hit so hard by the mortgage foreclosure crisis, there is a committee, Effects of the Mortgage Crisis on the Individual, the Family and the Community, she said, that meets every Thursday from 10:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
“Committee members are looking at the mortgage crisis and what impact it had had on individuals and the community’s health. We will be sending out surveys to service providers, asking what people are saying about how this has affected their physical and emotional health.
“Part of UROC’s mission is to fill a gap. Our goal is to increase public awareness. We will create a policy brief. This is not just an economic issue,” McClaurin said. “Over a two-year period, using data that is already out there, including CURA (Center for Urban and Regional Affairs) and the City of Minneapolis, we’re trying to pull it together to tell the story of the impact it has had on community health. It takes an emotional toll, sometimes resulting in divorce or suicide. People say they are losing faith in their community because there are no neighbors around anymore. We’re trying to tell that story.
“It hasn’t been told.”
Roberta Englund, executive director of the Folwell Neighborhood Association, said, “I’m pleased with what the U will bring to North Minneapolis from their base at Plymouth and Penn. 500 Under 5 can be a meaningful, contributing program to families. The U could be a supportive partner for stabilizing and revitalizing North Minneapolis neighborhoods. But they need to come with an understanding of what their mission is and what they can contribute. I don’t think that, from the very beginning, the U was in touch with the realities of North Minneapolis.
“They simply don’t pay attention,” Englund said. “They came to North Minneapolis with what I believe were good intentions, but they fell into the North Minneapolis trap of organizational self-aggrandizement. There were organizations and individuals involved with their coming who thought they would benefit.
“The voices the U listens to,” Englund added, “are those most collaboratively supportive to the opinions they have already formed. They have structured outreach according to their rules, and they have imposed a structure they are comfortable with.
“This whole business of foreclosure crisis is like closing the barn door,” Englund said. “It’s too late. For the U to come to the table and talk about it is a waste of their time and money and will not benefit anybody. This is not a storm that is going to regroup. If the U wanted to contribute anything meaningful, they would have looked at information from 10 years ago, including what was going on with the Federal Reserve, that contributed to the social and economic damage to the community. I don’t think anybody expected the kind of financial malfeasance and exploitation that we had. I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off understanding that.”
The symposium
Last spring (2009), the University of Minnesota hosted a foreclosure symposium and invited representatives from different cities. What city didn’t get invited? Minneapolis.
Tom Streitz, director of housing for the city of Minneapolis, said, “They did not connect with either me or [foreclosure coordinator] Cherie Shoquist in an expeditious way. We were not included in an invitation to participate. It was a little bit of a disappointment to us, because the City of Minneapolis is considered a national leader in foreclosure delivery efforts. I’ve personally given presentations on foreclosure response in other cities.”
Streitz added that the U eventually invited Minneapolis, after city officials learned about the symposium. Shoquist attended, he said, but he did not.
Hiring locally
Sharon Banks, U of M senior project manager, said she monitors compliance to make sure that the U is meeting its goals to hire women and minorities and to contract with minority and women-owned businesses. Two high school graduates are working as laborers on the UROC project through the Minneapolis Urban League, she said. (The Urban League’s trade specialist, Roosevelt Gaines, said they were hired as summer construction interns, at $13 an hour.) The Minneapolis Urban League pays their salaries, Banks said, and the U reimburses the Urban League.
Louis King, CEO of Summit OIC, a Northside employment training program, said Banks had contacted him about the UROC project, but he turned it down. “This was a $2 million deal. We are involved in a $200 million project at Target and a $4 million project at the Twins stadium. I told her I was not interested in tying up my people going to those meetings for this job [to get this job], which was a relatively modest rehab over a short period. We want long term engagement, where people can launch careers. From our perspective, it was a whole bunch of talk about nothing. I told them they were putting in more hours in meetings than there were hours of work for our employees.”
Banks said that Summit students were more qualified than the entry-level laborers the U was seeking for the UROC project. Summit’s students would have had to be hired by the sub-contractors, not by the university, she added.
Banks said the U hired several subcontractors from North Minneapolis, including MN Best, Boone Trucking, Inc., and Vera Construction. An address check of the companies showed that MN Best is in Fridley and Boone Trucking is in Northeast. Vera Construction’s address is 2020 Aldrich Ave. N.
Cicchetti and the county
An initial 2005-2006 plan to partner with Hennepin County on a center for early education and child development, led by Dante Cicchetti, head professor at the U’s Institute of Child Development—triggered protests from a group called Leaders of African Americans Concerned Together (LAACT).
The group accused the U of not being forthcoming about its research plans, and said it worried that it would be similar to past projects that targeted low income African Americans for mental health tests without their knowledge or consent. The U denied that, and tried to move forward with plans to locate the child development center in one of three places: in NorthPoint’s human services building at Plymouth and Penn, across the street from NorthPoint on a vacant lot, or in a strip mall at the same intersection.
The University was working on buying the strip mall, once known as the King Shopping Center, from the Northside Residents Redevelopment Council (NRRC). The shopping center—which had fallen into disrepair and had a bad reputation for illegal activities out front formerly housed Snow Foods and Lucille’s Kitchen. The $1.25 million sale touched off a dispute between NRRC and the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP), with NRP demanding that NRRC pay back renovation and redevelopment loans with its proceeds from the sale. After the University declined to take on NRRC’s debt as part of the sale price, NRRC and NRP battled it out, reaching an agreement in November, 2007.
The University completed the sale and moved forward on renovating the shopping center to house a multitude of programs.
Meanwhile, its partnership with Hennepin County didn’t go so well, when the U decided that the rent the county proposed to charge was too high.
“It’s all water under the dam as far as I’m concerned,” Jones said, “But it was unfortunately framed that we were pulling out of the North Side, when we said we couldn’t afford to be in the building.”
Jones said they are still looking for a site for Cicchetti’s program. “That’s what the original partnership with the county was supposed to house. We intended to renovate the shopping center and address other critical programs the community said it wanted: early childhood education, health and nutrition, technical assistance to small businesses. The plan was to locate all of those in the shopping center, but it wasn’t big enough for the Cicchetti program, so we started talking to the county.”
The commitment
McClaurin said that the University is committed to UROC. “We are one of few Universities in country—if not the only one—that is doing community engagement that has situated its facility in the community that it has said it wanted to partner with. We’re walking the walk. We’re purchasing rather than leasing the building. The Board of Regents approved $4.4 million for purchase and renovation. Running the facility, including salaries, will cost $700,000 – $900,000 a year.
Jones, who lived in North Minneapolis for 20 years, said that from the beginning, the U has encountered “naysayers, people who are vocally against what we’re trying to do on the North Side.
“People have a right to their opinions. But UROC is a vision that [U of M] President Bruininks and I came up with. We are one of the largest, most complex universities in the world. We are a land grant U, which means that implicit in our mission is an obligation to serve the citizens in the state, and we’ve done that very well.
“When we launched our strategic planning,” Jones said, “we decided to reach out to the urban community. The thinking was, as North Minneapolis and surrounding communities go, so goes the economic vitality of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We have the objective to solve some issues that are critical to them.
“In this new strategic vision, we are an urban university.
“We need to have a vision of engagement to address some complex issues together. This is an opportunity to move the U of M in a different direction and create a partnership between the U and the urban community. Not many places in the country are making that commitment.”
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