North Minneapolis: NAACP President “Uncovers” two of the North side seven and an estimated $4 million dollars
I could possible owe Mr. Booker Hodges and the NAACP an apology. It looks like we are on same team, maybe playing different positions…
By Donald W.R. Allen,II – Editor in Chief/IBNN and USA Radical Black.com
Poverty pimps, community hustlers and clergy bamboozlers have made a good living off the Black people in Minnesota. I have been writing about this for over three years – still today, a few of you still don’t get what’s going on. Now I have to lay some more information on you.
Why haven’t we heard anymore about Annshalike Hamilton – found murdered with her body frozen to a cement garage floor; Quincy Smith, former KMOJ DJ tased to death by the Minneapolis Police Department or Ahmed Guled, a Somali man shot more than 13 times on Golden Valley Road by the MPD. We have to ask ourselves, “How did Gregory Washington, the choir director charged with having sex in the church with a minor – travel under the radar for so long?
Charez Jones, Alisha Neeley – two teenage girls shot dead in the prime of their adolescent lives.
What about Ira Stafford, brutally beat on a traffic stop by the Minneapolis Police, who said they stopped him because his brake lights were not working – later on we find out from a Fox 9 News investigative report, Mr. Stafford’s brake lights worked fine.
All the above incidents have one thing in common: Our community “spokespersons” remained silent. Read more
The Repetitive Exploitation of Black Minnesota: Here we go again…
African-American Men Project; Prostate Screenings; HIV/AIDS; Breast Cancer Screenings; Dairy Queen;Tires Plus; Siyeza, Inc; NRRC; Synergy…
“Good intentions have funded projects with the same point people that continue to fail Black Minnesota. When will Black Minnesota get tired of the blatant Exploitation of their Community?” ~Don Allen
By Donald W.R. Allen, II – Editor in Chief/IBNN
Several years ago, St. Paul Pioneer Press journalist David Hawley wrote a story titled “Minneapolis: Study Details Problems Facing City’s Black Men,” dated January 24, 2002.
The story details, the results of a two-year study in which Hawley stated the outlook for African-American men in Minneapolis is grim. In the article Hawley wrote: “If you’re an African-American man ages 18 to 30, the odds are roughly 50-50 that you live in one of the city’s poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods and that a single mother reared you. There’s also about a 50-50 chance that you didn’t finished high school and only a slightly lesser chance that you will be arrested in the next year, most likely for a minor offense. If you are arrested, the odds are greater than 50-50 that you will be charged again within the next two years.”
In response to Hawley’s “grim” article, Gary L. Cunningham, the former Director of NorthPoint Health and Wellness and the overseer of the African-American Men Project, an organization that once had the power and respect of the community to make meaningful change, but has now has been reduced to a glorified referral service, had only one thing to say, “This report deals with what people call “wicked problems’ in our society.”
Wicked problems” are still not solved today – even by the people who identified them 8 years ago despite an incredible amount of funding and resources. Read more
North Minneapolis Politics-Part III: A vote for Natalie Johnson-Lee is a vote for self-respect
Editor’s note: IBNN has offered to publish stories from candidates, their representatives and concerned citizens about the current Ward 5 Minneapolis City Council Race. IBNN does not endorse or represent any candidate running in Ward 5.
By Mel Reeves, Contributing Writer
I have read with a sense of shame and downright awe at the amount of apathy and downright trifling that has got black Minneapolis to this point. That is the point where a self-hating Black man can not only be elected to the majority Black and working class 5th ward, but has been proudly running around peddling the vilest and backwards of racial theories. If that’s not bad enough he has treated his constituency with downright condescension. Don Samuels has done this without bothering to hide his disdain for poor black folks and poor folks in general and the issues that are important to them.
In all my years I can not remember a black man bragging about coming from House Negro stock, where in his words his family got a “leg up,” while working in the “Big House.” If you don’t believe me just ask the folks that heard him talk about it at a Northside forum in 2005 when he ran against Natalie Johnson-Lee. He even wrote these ideas down in an Insight News commentary several years ago. Who and what kind of person does such a thing? This is not someone that should be leading anything that has a majority black constituency. And its not hard to read between the lines of what he is saying, its clear, the obvious interpretation is that –he is not one of us, he is better than us, he is our color but not our kind. I am not sure he even likes his constituents! Hell it doesn’t really seem like he likes himself.
Obviously, Samuels doesn’t know as much history as he claims, otherwise he would know that, being a House Negro, or coming from House Negro stock is nothing to brag about. It’s well known that the House Negro lorded it over the field Negro, snitching on him and otherwise playing the Uncle Tom for the Master. Samuels has played his self-proclaimed role well however. When Rybak coughs, Samuels asks, “What’s the matter boss we sick.” This guy loves the downtown power structure more than he loves his constituents.
Shockingly, this same man actually admitted in a public forum, sponsored by the Citizens League, that he had made fun of the attributes of darker skinned black folks when he was a youngster. But why remind us of this now, unless he is trying to tell us that he is not one of us (City Pages, “Black on Black Grime,” October 26, 2005)
If anyone thinks that I exaggerate, check out Samuels interview with Steve Marsh of Mpls/St.Paul Magazine (“Q&A with Don Samuels,” November 2006) Samuels comes off so caustic toward blacks in the interview, that Marsh asked him, “do you consider yourself Black.”
In the article Samuels passes off street corner hypothesis, half-baked pseudo science and crackpot theories as real analysis, while being used to say the things about Black folks that the establishment and obviously this magazine wants to say about Black folks. And since when did this magazine begin deciding who should speak for the Black community? When was it given the call to choose our leaders? Lord have mercy!
This man is wrong for North Minneapolis. And he is wrong, despite the efforts of the Mpls/St.Paul magazine and other media outlets to crown him as a black leader and expert on all things Black, including Black history.
He said of North High –which has been a fixture in the neighborhood for decades –that, “it ought to be burned down. My children will not darken the door of a Minneapolis public school in this city…. I’ve said burn North High School down. Something worse than vouchers could come along. If it works, if it sacrifices the entire school system, fine! Get rid of the damn thing! It hasn’t worked!” (Mpls/St.Paul Magazine February 2007 “the Great Black Hope”) And of course the Council-member is wrong. Public education, while clearly needing to be improved, especially in the inner cities, generally has worked – – ironically many of his conservative friends are products of that system. Where would the kids in the inner city go if their schools were dissolved, the suburbs have made it clear that they only want a handful at a time? And charter schools haven’t been all they were touted to be.
While cavalierly dismissing public education –which has been responsible for educating most of the folks in our community for decades — he also mocks the worth of books. He told a Star Tribune writer after voting against the Minneapolis libraries request for additional funding that, “When you are a person on the other end of a gun . . . the only use for a book is to throw it at them or block a bullet with it.”
Not surprisingly Samuels doesn’t practice what he preaches.
In the previously mentioned Q&A piece for Mpls/St.Paul Magazine he claimed that, Blacks and their institutions are undemocratic, including Black churches.” Our churches are not run as democratically as white peoples churches are,” Samuels said. He even poked fun at Rev. Jerry McAfee, pastor of New Salem Baptist Church in North Minneapolis, saying, “I can assure you that Reverend McAffee’s church is run much more autocratically than Nick Coleman’s church.” I doubt Samuels has set foot in McAfee’s church.
However, it appears to be Samuels who is undemocratic. He clearly has a problem with free speech. When he was challenged and ridiculed on an MTN broadcast by mayoral candidate and activist Al Flowers for making foolish and derogatory statements about the Black community, he very undemocratically sought to have Flowers and his partner Booker Hodges removed from the public access station. Flowers sued him and won.
Ironically, Samuels complains about violence on the part of his constituents, yet he has had to be restrained on more than one occasion. He was recently accused of getting in the face of a landlord that he doesn’t like.
Samuels, the man who would speak for black folks, bears his teeth against poor folks who can barely keep up their dwelling, sometimes encouraging the levying of exorbitant fines. However he has no teeth and no courage when it comes to demanding accountability from contractors, who continuously fail to comply with city requirements for the hiring of minorities and women.
Not surprisingly, in his efforts to denigrate and belittle black folks in his ward he leaves no stone unturned, he even picks on little Black children. In a forward for a position paper extolling the virtues of school vouchers, by local conservative think tank, “Center of the American Experiment,” Samuels asks aloud, “how many future murderers are in the first grade classes of the four elementary schools within a mile of my house.”
While everyone correctly sees the rash of foreclosures as a crisis and genuinely feels bad for the people who have lost their homes– many because of underhanded and deceptive practices by lending institutions and sub prime financiers– the Fifth Ward “leader” hints very callously, that there is a silver lining. In a February 9, MinnPost.com article, “Are foreclosures helping to improve the Northside?” – the 5th Ward Councilman said, “In the typical American city it has exacerbated the crime problem. But in Minneapolis, certainly north Minneapolis, the foreclosure crisis has improved the safety situation.” I don’t think folks who have lost their houses are going to take much comfort in the fact that their loss has made the neighborhood safer.
Speaking of public safety, Samuels has ridden that horse to death, to the point of putting much of the Northside under the eyes of Big Brother under the name of fighting crime. Minneapolis police surveillance camera’s dot the landscape, even unsuspecting Cub Foods shoppers are under the watchful eye of the Fourth Precinct police station.
Incidentally, he dismisses the very real and documented fear that many Black have of being racially profiled by police and consequently mistreated, by saying that only criminals have to fear mistreatment from the police.
Samuels offers little hope to Minneapolis with his knee jerk theories and rehashed conservatism ripe with is victim blaming. He tells black folks to take personal responsibility, yet remains silent while those in power or rich enough, rob the public till with their ponzie schemes, sub-prime loans and outright cheating.
W.E.B. Dubois aptly depicted would be leaders such as Samuels calling them, “ignorant social climbers whose only claim to fame is the ability to kick Negroes when they are down.”
Has Black Minneapolis no self-respect? This is 2009 not 1909 Step n’ Fetchit and his ilk have long been laid to rest. We no longer allow folks to sing Mammy songs and we don’t scratch where we don’t itch and we don’t laugh when we are not amused. Read more
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