2006 Columns

Best of 2006

December 27, 2006 Column #27: The Fifty Cent Solution: Our Review of 2006 in Minneapolis

"Through My Eyes, the Minneapolis Story Continues..."
A weekly column by Ron Edwards featured in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder

First of all, we thank you, our reading audience for reading and sharing this column.   If it were not for you there would be no purpose in providing the information, updates, and analysis of events in Minneapolis.  

2006 was a 50 - 50 year.   The election of Keith Ellison, of the 5 th Congressional District, to the U.S. Congress from Minnesota, the first person of color to be ever elected to the U.S. Congress from Minnesota, is a   major highlight.   He is also the first Muslim in all of the U.S. to be elected to the U.S. Congress.   He puts Minnesota back on the map and re-instates our Minnesota image as a progressive state.

But unfortunately, there were far too many negative highlights.  

One example is the loss of a $34 million contract, pulled by the City of Minneapolis, betraying and, thereby, creating additional economic hardship within the Black and Somali communities.

Another example is the denial of economic opportunity to African Americans by excluding them from the building of two sports arenas inside the City of Minneapolis.   

Yet another example, very disturbing in 2006, is the startling increase in the use of deadly force by the Minneapolis Police Department against people of color, especially those unarmed.   One of the most tragic was the death of Dominic Felter.  

Equally disturbing was the demise of African American command leadership inside the Minneapolis Police Department.   Within one day, the Rybak administration, through its surrogate chief, eliminated 30 years of arduous and dedicated efforts by the Black community and the Black Police Officers' Association to achieve some level of diversity, parity, and surface opportunity.  

To the naked eye, "surface" means some effort at togetherness and opportunity, as you, the general public, will never be let deep inside of the organization to see the difficulties and reversals officers of color are exposed to.  

Many celebrated Ralph Remington's election to represent the 10th ward of Minneapolis, seeing this African American City Councilman as a symbol of progress and racial harmony.   But when Mr. Remington, during the course of a confirmation hearing for a new chief of police, asked some strong and aggressive questions, he found himself threatened and reminded that here, son, you follow the party line, no matter how painful it may be to your conscience nor how much it goes against the interest of your community and the people of your ward.  

Many ambitious agendas are at play in Minneapolis, Black and white.   Black leadership wants to offer Black people, particularly Black children, to the joint experimental laboratory being built by the University of Minnesota and Hennepin County that will probe the Black mind in order to move us in the "right" direction.   Proposals are being made by the county for out of home placement, in order to manipulate Black children through a complex maze of corridors involving public branches of the city's white public jobs programs in the social services community, the research community, the education community, the public safety law enforcement community, and the ecumenical community.   We have received no answers to questions we have raised about a project that appears to really be about profit and community control.  

And so 2006 was a fifty - fifty year.   On the surface, some things looked good and progressive, but deep within the corridors of decadence, nullification and reversal, powerful forces were and are at work undoing The Dream.   It will be interesting in early 2007, as we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., in January, and Black History in February, to watch to see who will smile at us in one kind of encounter and, in another, attempt to push us over the cliff of nullifiation and reversal with their hand of betrayal.  

All that we can do as Black Americans is stay vigilant and protect the future of our race by continuing to ask questions, develop plans, and support solutions so important to the survival of the race.  

All of the columns of 2006 (as well as 2003-2005), are archived, along with our "Tracking the Gaps" web log, on our Minneapolis Story web site.   We have summed them up by topic and column or blog number on the blog entry accompanying this column of December 27, 2006, on our web page, www.TheMinneapolisStory.com.

For over 40 years we have worked to close the gaps between Blacks and whites in education, jobs,   housing and public safety, particularly fighting for equal access and equal opportunities in education and jobs in the inner city.  

We will continue to pull the covers back in our Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder columns on the great experiment here in Minneapolis, an outpost that has mastered the harmful political and economic machinery for keeping people of color "in their place" through inferior education (Col 3), denial of jobs in violation of compliance laws (Columns 12, 14, 15, 18, 22 and 2005 columns 8, 14, 22, 25), and the inferior public safety program that wars on our young Black men (Columns 1, 13, 14, 17, 20).

May you continue to be protected and blessed as we move toward 2007 and beyond.

Posted December 27, 2006, 3:10 p.m.

Ron hosts “Black Focus” on Channel 17, MTN-TV, Sundays, 5-6 pm. Formerly head of the Minneapolis Civil Rights Commission and the Urban League, he continues his “watchdog” role for Minneapolis. Order his book, hear his voice, read his solution papers, and read his between columns “web log” at www.TheMinneapolisStory.com.

Permission is granted to reproduce The Minneapolis Story columns, blog entires and solution papers. Please cite the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder and www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for the columns. Please cite www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for blog entries and solution papers.

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