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
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Part 1: News Coverage of the 2009 Minneapolis Elections
By Donald W.R. Allen,II – editor in chief of IBNN, soon to present USA BLACK RADICAL.COM
This is a four part series that covers what happened in the news as IBNN saw it: favoritism to the DFL incumbents in the 2009 election cycle in Minneapolis. IBNN will cover what happened in the mainstream media and the Black Press, providing interviews with registered voters who read the Star Tribune and watched television stations WCCO 4 and KARE 11, and thus had no idea that 2009 was a municipal election year.
While on Election Day, the Minneapolis Urban League’s president R. Scott Gray hung out at Broadway Pizza with the CM Don Samuels group, the community suffered again with the lack of information about the 2009 Minneapolis Elections.
We hold the above-mentioned news agencies responsible.
Truth to the People – Power to the People, if not now…when?
Minneapolis’ Star Tribune paper is responsible, in part, for the lack of information received by the general public concerning the 2009 election cycle. The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in Minnesota. Its broadsheet covers the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.
In the recent election season, as well as the 2008 congressional campaign, political insiders from all parties watched in awe as the Star Tribune employed very selective parameters, giving the lion’s share of coverage only to DFL incumbents.
The 2009 Minneapolis mayor’s race had a field of 11 candidates, ranging from community activist Al Flowers to Minneapolis businessman Papa John Kolstad. Candidates like Richard Fransen, who reportedly spent over $14,000 on his campaign, went virtually unnoticed by the “Strib.”
Al Flowers’ minor legal troubles, which were dismissed for lack of evidence, were covered by the Star Tribune in a play-by-play reminiscent of a Minnesota Vikings football game.
Much like the Strib’s coverage of the minority-ethnic community, murder, death, and drug related crimes seem to be the priority for Minneapolis/St. Paul daily paper.
The Strib’s coverage of the 2009 Election cycle confirms the adage, “It’s not what you know – it’s who you know.”
Some things the Star Tribune did were a “gimmie.” Such as their endorsement of former employee and incumbent R.T. Rybak was one.
The popularity created by the Strib for the “fresh-faced, Minneapolis metro-sexual White-boy” let R.T. take full advantage of his miss-steps in city government by promoting and covering Rybak like the “Brett Favre of city politics” skewed the 2009 mayor’s race R.T.’s favor.
Rather than the Star Tribune or their partner station WCCO-4 covering the news objectively, the reality left much to be concerned about. Apparently, “news that’s fair and balanced” is only a FOX News slogan in Minneapolis.
With 238 stories mentioning the keywords, R.T. Rybak, compared to 6 stories for Papa John Kolstad and Bob Carney; 39 for Al Flowers; and 3 for William McGaughey, it’s clear that the Strib’s interest was having R.T. Rybak stay in office.
Many Minneapolis residents wondered if an election was really going on in 2009.
The Black Press in Minneapolis had issues as well.
Mixed messages were the flavor of the week in north Minneapolis’ Insight News.
The paper publicly endorsed Kenya McKnight for Ward 5 city council.
But in the last weeks of the campaign season, Insight News ran publicity shots of Congressman Keith Ellison shaking hands with incumbent Don Samuels, thus playing journalistic hoola-hoop in the weeks running up to the election. Mixed messages from the north Minneapolis paper confused the readers and political strategists, who wondered who they actually supported.
Other problems were evident at the Ward 5 debate sponsored by McFarlane Media and Insight News held at the new University of Minnesota/UROC building in north Minneapolis. Don Samuels declined the invite, and less than 20 people showed up for the event. IBNN attributes this to lack of coalition building and lack of a clear marketing strategy.
While Kenya McKnight received 336 first round votes (15.5%) Natalie Johnson Lee has received 649 (30.05%). At this writing there is no clear winner in the Ward 5 Minneapolis city council race. Incumbent Don Samuels has only 46.99% of the vote, and the new Rank Choice Voting system is the “ringer.”
When all is said and done, the mainstream media and Black Press misrepresented or confused the field of possible choices in 2009.
The mission of the press is to inform and empower the voters.
We find that they failed in their mission.
The WAVE Project on KFAI-FM 90.3 with Lennie Chism, IBNN’s Don Allen and local comedian “KJ” Sunday, July 26, 2009 from 6 – 7 p.m.
Tune into KFAI-FM Radio at 90.3 for the show “Mobilizing Impoverished Wealth.”
We will discuss strategies to improve and enhance local neighborhoods through community involvement are presented by Lennie Chism and his special guest the Independent Business News Network’s Editor and Chief Don Allen, who lately has a lot to say about “process” and why the same people are always at the table with little to no results. You can read his online Blog at www.ibnn.org.
Also included in this show will be live music by Soulasious along with special guest comedian and one of Twin Cities hottest up and coming comedian Kelechi Jaavaid. (KJ is the brother from the whopper freak out commercial. See more of KJ at (www.myspace.com/kjay02).
Subject of Program:
The questions of the day: “Why does everyone try to escape the high cost of Black address in an impoverished community?” What’s with the “attacks” on Black people from the news media to local “stratified” politicians whom have forgotten that in most cases some of them represent the poorest neighborhoods in Minneapolis?
- Why hasn’t the foreclosure crisis (opportunity) been solved? Who are the players that have created a new industry while throwing $100 million dollars at a “crisis” and still have no measurable results – should it be tolerated?
- The Minneapolis Department of Civil Right…Should they stay or go? This brings up an interesting topic that will be discussed in detail by Mr. Allen, who in his own words says, “They have not done the job for the minority-ethnic community – heads must roll, starting with the replacement of the director of the MDCR and Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak and most of the Minneapolis City Council. The City Council should at least look like the communities they represent.”
- What role should north Minneapolis non-profit social service play…and why is the Minneapolis Urban League so dysfunctional?
- The mayor’s use of the “N” word. “North Minneapolis.” We see no measurable results, but a plan to uproot a community.
- We will discuss the rolls of local social service agencies that have become an institution unto themselves with money in and no “pipeline” to the community.
We will explore the strategies to cure the stigma of having an impoverished address. The community problem solver often spends an enormous amount time addressing the symptoms without finding the cures. Example: We are so busy swatting the flies but often neglect to remove the excrement that draws them.
What kind of people will be interested in this program and what will the listeners gain?
Grassroots community organizers who strive to improve the lot of the impoverished community will find the strategies practical and put them into action.
We will take an “inside” view of local politics and “process” that have left communities of color on the outside looking in.
Our community has been denied information for over 40 years. This is an opportunity to tell what’s really going on.
Tune in Sunday, July 26, 2009 from 6 p. m. to 7 p.m. on KFAI-FM Radio – 90.3 on your FM dial. Listeners can also tune in via the Internet by going to www.kfai.org.
“Chism for Cures” in North Minneapolis’ Ward 5 – The Replacements: Chism and McKnight run for Samuels Ward 5 City Council Seat
Today in downtown Minneapolis local north Minneapolis businessman Lennie Chism and Community Activist Kenya McKnight have filed to run against incumbent Minneapolis Ward 5 City Councilman Don Samuels.
Chism says, “North Minneapolis has seen the worst of times with Samuels in office that has created groups that for the most part overlook that woman on the corner with three children and no job in favor of a ‘peace’ group to have an ‘Art Crawl.’ This does not address the many issues that north Minneapolis has nor does it create education, independence or wealth for the community. Don Samuel’s must go!”
“His comments about ‘burning North High School down’ and lack of interaction with the stakeholders of Ward 5 must change. I am the candidate that will bring a change of perception to north Minneapolis while inviting the private sector to participate in the growth of the community.”
Chism went on to say, “We need groups like the University of Minnesota/UROC in north Minneapolis – we’ve had nothing for years. But we also need Community Benefit Agreements with organizations that come into the northside that will help us grow capacity in the forms of job creation, program engagement and entrepenural ventures for the residents of Ward 5.”
“I want to work with every community organization to make a giant leap into a functioning, operational north Minneapolis with lower crime, more businesses and definatley more opportunity for everyone.”
No return call from the McKnight campaign at the time of this release. It is also rumored that former NAACP youth cooridator James Everette has filed to run for Mayor of Minneapolis.
To contact the campaign of “Chism for Cures” send an email to cures@lenniechism.com
Introducing Dr. Deborah Honeycutt Congressional Candidate in Georgia’s 13th Congressional District
Dr. Deborah Honeycutt is running for the United States Congress in Georgia’s 13th Congressional District. In her words, she says, “I’m running for U.S. Congress in 2008. I believe that our United States government is facing a moral crisis. As a country we are in danger of forsaking the moral cornerstone upon which our nation was founded. No longer do many of our leaders make decisions based on constitutional imperatives, time-honored values, or Christian principles.
Foundational phrases like “One Nation under God” and “In God We Trust,” which symbolize the genesis of our nation, are daily being assaulted by individuals and organizations with seemingly socialist agendas. Activist judges are virtually making laws from their benches, thereby usurping the powers of our U.S. Congress. Members of Congress are challenging the constitutional powers of the executive branch. The executive branch through utilizing executive orders is making judicial decrees. Where established order is not upheld, there is chaos. The current political chaos does not serve the citizens of our country well”.
Dr. Honeycutt understands business…
Dr. Deborah Honeycutt understands small business because she owns one. She knows the concerns of every small business owner and the challenges faced everyday by those who are on the front line providing jobs and growing our economy. She also believes our member of congress should fight FOR small business and not against them. On the topic of “Fairtax” Dr. Honeycutt says, “We need a strong educational system and up-to-date job training to support job growth. When a business needs employees there should be a pool of well educated and motivated people available to fill the job. That is why Dr. Honeycutt will work to ensure that programs are in place to support a strong educational system and up-to-date job training”.
Dr. Honeycutt is in support of Israel. It is an important priority that Israel is protected by the United States of America. They have always supported us; we must continue to support them.
Please join the Independent Business News Network in welcoming the future of a new direction for the people and by the people and support Dr. Deborah Honeycutt. To contribute to Dr. Honeycutt’s campaign and to find out more information about this great Congressional Candidate, visit her website at http://www.honeycuttforcongress.com or call (404) 791-0207.
African American United States Congressional Candidates hold Forum on Minneapolis Television Network (Channel 17) on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 broadcasted Live from 3:30pm-4:30pm
Tune in on Tuesday to Minneapolis Television Network (Channel 17) from 3:30pm to 4:30pm for the African American Congressional Candidate Forum, brought to you by the Independent Business News Network. This forum will feature the Republican African American Congressional Candidates running for office in 2008.
The forum will feature Allen West from Florida’s CD 22nd www.allenwestforcongress.com; Barb Davis White from Minnesota’s 5th CD www.barbdaviswhiteforcongress.com; Eddie Adams JR from Florida’s CD 11th www.adamsforcongress.org; Dr. Deborah Honeycutt Georgia’s CD 13th www.honeycuttforcongress.com; and Antoine Members Illinois CD 1st www.antoinemembers.com.
The forum was developed to educate and inform communities of color about the political process as it pertains to the GOP and the functioning operations surrounding the Republican Party. This event sponsored by the Independent Business News Network and will also have a “Meet the Candidate” celebration and fundraiser on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 from 6pm-2am at Trocaderos Nightclub and Restaurant located at 107 3rd Ave North – Minneapolis, MN 55401 (612) 465-0440. This event is open to the public and everyone is encouraged to attend.
About the candidates: (By clicking on the candidates name you can visit their website)
Allen West’s campaign for Florida’s 22nd Congressional District! This site will give you the opportunity to learn more about Allen and his vision for the future of America. Please take a moment to learn more about Allen West and then take action to help Allen’s campaign!
We face many challenges as a nation. From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to illegal immigration, to energy independence, to out of control federal spending, now more than ever we need leaders in Congress who represent our South Florida values.
Barb Davis White – Love is making a commitment and having the willingness to accept the sacrifices and inconveniences necessary to keep that commitment. This is true whether we are talking about another person, nation or society. Our forbearers came embracing a new spirit of responsibility. They built a representative form of government in which we are duty bound to participate. We now have a responsibility to follow their lead and build a more perfect union based on their example – not a celebration of diversity, but rather the assimilation of diverse ideas, and with it the people they represent.
Hello, I am Eddie Adams, Jr., a candidate for the 11th Congressional District of Florida seat in the U.S. Congress. Whether you are a lifelong Republican; a new member of our party; a Democrat, consider yourself an Independent or you are simply curious- what matters most is that, this is about you and you are always welcome here!
Dr. Deborah Honeycutt. I am running for U.S. Congress in 2008. I believe that our United States government is facing a moral crisis. As a country we are in danger of forsaking the moral cornerstone upon which our nation was founded. No longer do many of our leaders make decisions based on constitutional imperatives, time-honored values, or Christian principles.
Antoine Members. I am a lifelong resident of Chicago, born and raised on the Westside and now residing on the Southside. A family man, I am married to my beautiful wife, Tònia, and have two wonderful children, Destiny and Journey. Academically, I am a graduate of CVS High School and have attended East-West University.
For more information email IBNN at info@ibnn.org.
What Happened to the Republican Party – Who is the Republican Party and Who in History was a Republican?
On July 30, 2008 the United States Congress officially apologized to Blacks for Slavery…What got twisted between Abe and today? When you tell the minority community that they should support the Republican agenda, wait let me re-phrase that…the Conservative Republican agenda, the responses you get are from f*** off, to – you’re crazy! One of the main reasons that the African American, Hispanic-Latino, Asian, Hmong and Somali communities don’t embrace the party is because the party has not reached out to embrace them. After a recent meeting with point people of Minnesota’s GOP it came clear that the current leadership does not give a damn about attracting people of color to the party nor do they really care. I walked around the office looking for one person of color. There was none. My goal at this meeting was to ask them to use the local minority media, armed with facts about the Republican Party; why it was created and what the original mission was. Of course the “original” mission has changed due the “green” single minded players that make day-to-day decisions at the Minnesota GOP that care more about job security and their high since of “Stratification”. Just for the record, Black Spending Power in the United States Tops $630 Billion per year. This fact is not only ignored by the GOP but also by local and national advertising agencies, business and oh, don’t let me forget, the MSP2008.com and RNC Hosting Committee in Minneapolis. (Oops did I say that?).
Needless to say, when the meeting was over, I would have been better off shooting myself in the foot.
So, I’ve provided some information about the who’s, what’s why’s and where’s about the Republican Party that for the most part, no one talks about. It true that somewhere in history the party changed and we all know that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”, but in an attempt to “mend” the damage already done, I think you’ll enjoy the following information.
It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S’s: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism.
One of the strangest developments of the last 100 years has been the shift of the Black community to the party that fought hardest to keep slaves and segregation. The politically correct left has managed to maintain a system of racial separation in America and get the love and support of the people it’s subjugating. Society has NEVER been racial but cultural. There have been savage White cultures as there have been civilized Black cultures through history. The left has created a victim mentality and a culture of dependant poverty in America’s Black communities. From Johnson’s War on Poverty that created a culture of dependence to Affirmative Action, Blacks today have it as bad, though in a different sense, as 50 years ago.
It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860’s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
One thing is true; the Republican Party needs to get back to the Party of Abraham Lincoln with a true Conservative voice and thoughts so everyone hears loudly…”We the People!”
Your comments are welcomed at info@ibnn.org.
Rebuild Hugo – One Home, One Community! Sunday, August 24, 2008
The Orginal Relationship that Worked – Blacks and Republicans
This post is from THE ORNERY OBSERVER, AUGUST 14, 2008 titled: Black Republicans Face Rejection by Their Own Community – Why do black Americans forsake “The Party of Lincoln?” By Paul Gottfried. THE ORNERY OBSERVER is copyright (c) 2008 by Paul Gottfried and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, http://www.fgfbooks.com. All rights reserved. A version of this column appeared in Lancaster (PA) Newspapers in July 2008. Paul Gottfried, Ph.D., is the Raffensperger professor of Humanities at Elizabethown College in Pennsylvania. For Dr. Gottfried’s photo and biographical sketch, and to read some of his other columns on-line, see: http://www.fgfbooks.com/Gottfried-Paul/Gottfried-bio.html.
To subscribe, renew, or donate, go to: http://www.fgfBooks.com/FGFe-package.html.
We begin…. Black Republicans Face Rejection by Their Own Community – Why do black Americans forsake “The Party of Lincoln?” By Paul Gottfried.
In view of Barack Obama’s rise to national prominence, it might be worthy of note that some black politicians have failed to attract black votes. Lynn Swann — one such candidate — ran for governor in my home state of Pennsylvania. Lynn Swann is an articulate Republican and committed Evangelical Christian. I happily cast my vote for him against Ed Rendell. Like another black candidate, Michael Steele, who ran for governor of Maryland, Swann served with distinction as lieutenant governor. He lost the black vote because of his Republican affiliations. But unlike Steele, Swann did not have his character blackened by the NAACP, whose Maryland leadership had mocked Steele as an “Oreo.”
Allow me to raise this unsettling question: Why have black Republicans been singled out for noisy ridicule in the black community? And it is not only blacks who are engaging in this ridicule. White journalists and white intellectuals, who have rallied to Obama as a moral redeemer, treat black Republicans as hostile to other blacks.
Historical Ties to GOP
I am raising this query not as an unflagging GOP supporter (which I have long ceased to be) but as an inquisitive historian. American blacks were overwhelmingly Republican from the Civil War, in which the Republicans were the party of Negro Emancipation, down to the New Deal. In the 1950s, they voted twice with large pluralities for the Republican Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s Democratic opponent in 1952, Adlai Stevenson, ran with an avowed segregationist as his running mate, John Sparkman of Alabama.
Even as late as 1964, the Civil Rights Act passed because 90 percent of the Republicans in Congress, as opposed to about 50 percent of the Democrats, voted for it. The affirmative action programs that the Democrats now proudly support were introduced under the Republican Richard Nixon in 1969 as part of the Philadelphia Plan for urban redevelopment. Under this plan, federal contractors had to meet certain goals in hiring black employees.
Nor has the fact that the current Republican administration selected blacks for high cabinet posts meant anything to most black voters. Rice, Powell, and other Republicans who have worked for this administration are judged in polls taken among blacks to be disloyal members of their race. But why is the half-white Obama, who grew up in a non-black society, considered blacker than Clarence Thomas, who grew up in a segregated black society in Georgia?
Short Shrift from Democrats
Nor does it seem to me that Democrats have given blacks more than have Republicans. It was the supposedly pro-black Clinton administration that abolished welfare programs that went disproportionately to lower-class blacks. Clinton was able to do this because blacks would support him unconditionally. By cutting payments to a group that voted in relatively small numbers (the underclass), Clinton could therefore create the impression of being a fiscal conservative to balance his image as a social liberal.
I’ve no idea how such weird judgments are formed, except that Obama is positioned in the far Left of the Democratic Party, while Thomas is a right-of-center Republican.
But those positions have little to do with specifically black interests. Does Obama’s willingness to grant driving licenses to illegal aliens or his support for late-term abortions express identifiably black concerns? Or does Thomas’ opposition to gay marriage or to federal laws preempting state laws concerning the right to bear arms near school buildings show that he is against his fellow-blacks? Although by no means a fan of the Bush foreign policy, I cannot see how Condoleezza Rice’s position on the Iraqi War indicates hostility toward black people. Was Clinton’s bombing of Serbs in 1999 a more black-friendly act?
Kemp Outreach Failure
In the 1980s New York Congressman, Jack Kemp, who later became Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Ronald Reagan, tried to build a career as a Republican who knew how to reach out to blacks. Never did a politician try so hard to live up to a reputation. As a federal official Kemp favored set-asides for racial minorities. His addresses before Republican gatherings often featured long quotations from Martin Luther King and rhetorical questions intended to appeal to white guilt about “Where were Republicans when others were riding the freedom buses?”
But there were two problems with this strategy. First, Democrats like Jimmy Carter never rode Freedom Buses, but instead began their careers as segregationist politicians. Nonetheless, unlike Republicans who had talked out against segregation, such Democrats did very well in picking up black votes. (And so did that onetime famous segregationist George Wallace by the end of his career in Alabama politics.) Second, Kemp’s desperate reaching out to blacks did not benefit his party. Although in 1996 he managed to obtain the vice-presidential slot, the GOP received only 10 percent of the black vote that year. And Kemp got heckled when he spoke before black crowds.
What this failed outreach suggests is that the GOP’s attempts to appeal to black voters have generally not met with success. At the same time, the revulsion of blacks for Republicans, and particularly for black Republicans, seems unrelated to the history of either group. I for one am still searching for an explanation as to why this hostility is as deep and abiding as it seems to be.
IBNNNEW- North Minneapolis: NAACP President “Uncovers” two of the North side seven and an estimated $4 million dollars Donald Allen
- Apology to the North Minneapolis Community. We don’t have leaders, we have self-appointed spokespersons Donald Allen
- 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
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