by David Beckford | Jan 14, 2020 | Uncategorized, Voices from Recast
Interview of Ora Hokes
Interviewer: 00:02 May I have your first and last name with spelling, please?
Ora Hokes: 00:05 My name is Ora, O-R-A, Hokes, H-O-K-E-S.
Interviewer: 00:10 All righty. In reference to this map here in front of you, do you currently or have you ever lived in any of these areas?
Ora Hokes: 00:17 I have, and I currently do.
Interviewer: 00:24 Oh, I’m sorry. What are the areas, and how long have you lived… How long were you there?
Ora Hokes: 00:31 Well, currently I am… Let’s see. Currently, I am at 13th and Russell.
Interviewer: 00:44 I used to live on 13th and Upton.
Ora Hokes: 00:46 Okay. I’ve been there, I think 35 years. Okay.
Interviewer: 00:53 Wow. That’s a long time.
Ora Hokes: 00:54 Then, I lived at 901 Penn for probably about three years. I lived at 1426 Oliver, maybe about six or seven years, something. Time goes.
Interviewer: 01:20 Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 01:20 Something like that. But, in that general area. And, let’s see. I lived in the Plymouth Townhouses. That’s at Plymouth and Humboldt. The neighbor across the hallway from me had a fire, and so I had to find a place to live, and I moved on Northway Drive in Brooklyn Center. But, I was determined. I worked in north Minneapolis, and so it was right on the bus line.
Interviewer: 02:00 Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 02:01 But I was determined to find a place, and I contacted Nerq and they were dealing with housing. And so, that’s how I found the place at 901 Penn. I couldn’t wait to get back on the north side.
Interviewer: 02:21 That’s where you belong, absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 02:21 Yes. Yes.
Interviewer: 02:25 All right. Next question is, thinking back from when you first came to this area to today, what changes have you seen, positive and negative?
Ora Hokes: 02:32 The most changes that I’ve seen has been the removal of what you would call ma and pa shops. Okay? Right at the corner of Penn and Plymouth, we had a clinic, Dr. Thomas Johnson’s office. That was Francis Barber Shop that was there. And with the removal of the clinic, well, we do now have Northpoint. But Dr. Johnson had a personal relationship, I think, with every resident that went to him.
Interviewer: 03:17 Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 03:18 I always tell people, “You would pack a lunch. Because you might have an appointment, but you’d be there all day.” You got to find out everything that was going on in the community. And so, as they say, what a barber shop is for the update, that’s what Dr. Johnson’s office was. We had, where UROC is now, the shopping center. We lost that. I am a former staff of The Way Opportunities Unlimited, where the police precinct is-
Interviewer: 03:53 Now.
Ora Hokes: 03:53 … you know, now. And we had Young Brothers Barber, and we had Plymouth Avenue Bank. So, there has been… all up and down Plymouth Avenue, as well as Olson Highway, of course. You know, Sumner, Olson, quote, “projects,” is gone.
Interviewer: 04:14 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ora Hokes: 04:14 And we have on Broadway, a lot of different shops. You know, totally different. But what I’ve noticed most of all is that we have a lot of young people who seem to be wandering the street during the day, as opposed to in school. They look like school aged children.
Interviewer: 04:37 Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 04:38 And I see a lot of moms pushing strollers, and I see them smoking with their children. I am an anti commercial tobacco advocate. Didn’t used to see that. And I see some young males now pushing strollers with their babies. And so, the transition and the change seems to be that we’re not a family as much as we used to be. We don’t know each other in our community. And there is not that, “Hey, how you doing?” You know, when you meet each other.
Interviewer: 05:21 Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 05:22 And to stop and greet, and ask how things are doing.
Interviewer: 05:26 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ora Hokes: 05:26 Right now I’m using public transportation, and a lot of people talk negative about our young men, but this is what I’ve observed. You know they have on public transit, where the seats are supposed to be reserved for the seniors and handicapped?
Interviewer: 05:44 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ora Hokes: 05:45 I will see the young men get up if there’s a person on there.
Interviewer: 05:50 I was always taught that, as well. Being a young individual, I was raised by a single mother. She always taught me, regardless of where you’re sitting, what you’re going on, if an elder comes on, or if someone that’s handicapped comes on, you move.
Ora Hokes: 06:02 Yes.
Interviewer: 06:02 There’s no questions asked. And I’ve seen… I rode public transportation all my life, until I got my license last year.
Ora Hokes: 06:11 Oh, congratulations.
Interviewer: 06:12 Thank you. Thank you. So I definitely have experienced that, and I’ve experienced people who don’t get up. And that, in my generation, in my opinion, in my household, that’s disrespectful. So, I definitely understand that, as well.
Ora Hokes: 06:22 Yeah. And one of the things that I have not seen to move off of the avenue is the liquor store.
Interviewer: 06:29 Yup. Still there.
Ora Hokes: 06:30 Permanent. Full force. Full swing. You know that’s going on. So, you know. Our unity and our spirit. We’ve lost a lot of our nonprofits, and those kinds of things. But one of the things that I do know, and when I go to meetings and they ask where I’m at, I say, “Northside. Northside pride.” And folks are like, “Okay. I can say Southside.” You know? But, always letting people know that our activism is very strong. What has grown out of the elected officials that we’ve had, of the first? They came out of North Minneapolis, you know. And so, people don’t hear that story or tell that story, about all of the good things and the progress that’s going on.
Interviewer: 07:33 Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 07:33 One of the things that I have not seen change is the upkeep of North High School’s ground. They will not put flowers there. Not even a dandelion that’s growing there. When you look at other high schools and other schools, they do have some kind of greenery. We don’t have that.
Interviewer: 07:54 Right.
Ora Hokes: 07:54 And so, there’s a neglect still that remains for our high school, that’s permanently in our neighborhood.
Interviewer: 08:02 Absolutely. All right. Moving on to the next question. What do you feel caused the changes you’ve seen in this area over the years?
Ora Hokes: 08:10 I think they’re due to the system. Elected officials. You know, we elect someone based upon their promise, and then when they get in office, they neglect us. I identify 55411 as 411. That’s emergency.
Interviewer: 08:32 Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 08:33 The city of Minneapolis has tons of resource, the development and urban renewal, but they do not direct that much resource to north Minneapolis. I learned that the majority of landlords live outside of the state of Minnesota. So you can understand, when people drive by and they say, “Well, why don’t that person keep that house up?” Well, they’re renters.
Interviewer: 09:01 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ora Hokes: 09:03 We don’t have as much home ownership as we used to have. And so, when you have someone who is underemployed or unemployed, and trying to keep that rent, to keep a roof over their head for their children, and to take care of their medical cares first of all…
Interviewer: 09:27 Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 09:28 Eh, your budget is a little slack.
Interviewer: 09:31 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ora Hokes: 09:32 And so, until the city of Minneapolis directs the money, the taxes that we pay to our neighborhoods, we’re going to see that blight in there. It’s people who do not live in near north, or come through, and I’ll see they may throw something out of their car window instead of… So, it’s not us who’s destroying. Sometimes folks come through, you know and I watch to see, “Okay. Does that person look like they living here,” no matter what ethnicity they are. But there are some things that can be done, to help and to strengthen us. When this facility, the University of Minnesota UROC, was coming in, the university is a research institute. It can help our businesses, our childcare providers, our homeowners. All of those kinds of things, and engage them in learning of how to do whatever is needed.
Interviewer: 10:42 Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 10:42 So, we don’t get the resources, and so it’s limited resources.
Interviewer: 10:48 Absolutely. All right. Moving on to the next question. We are gathering these stories to increase understanding between the city of Minneapolis and the community, on the impact of historic discriminatory government policies. These government policies include housing and employment discrimination in the early 20th century, and the war on drugs is another example. What impacts have these policies or others had on the community in general? What impact have they had on you and your family personally?
Ora Hokes: 11:18 Well, the impact on my family… And I can just give an incident.
Interviewer: 11:24 Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Ora Hokes: 11:25 I have a son, and he and his friends were going to a house party that they had invited to. So, it’s fashionable that you arrive late, of course. He wasn’t driving. His friend parked round the corner, where parking was.
Interviewer: 11:41 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ora Hokes: 11:42 They’re walking to the place. As they’re heading there, people are running away from the place. So, by the time the police arrived, they get whoever they can. They’re asking them questions. They can’t answer the question. They haven’t even been into the party yet, so they don’t know what’s happening.
Interviewer: 12:00 Right. Right.
Ora Hokes: 12:01 Okay. So they take them downtown, question them. The police officers that question them began to tag them, and when they would see them on the street, they would pull them over.
Interviewer: 12:15 Wow.
Ora Hokes: 12:16 So, my son left and went to Atlanta, and stayed for about 15 years.
Interviewer: 12:24 Wow.
Ora Hokes: 12:26 That was the impact. The loss of my son. Because he was harassed just because, you know, “Well, since you didn’t give us the information we want, I’m going to make your life miserable.”
Interviewer: 12:37 Right.
Ora Hokes: 12:38 You know? And that’s unfair, and I know that happen to a lot of young men. But, I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember when the Minneapolis had the drug task force? It had to be abandoned, because they were doing more harm than the drugs were. We know that, as they say, we don’t have any pharmaceutical company. We don’t have any poppy fields. We don’t have any weapons manufacturing. So, the bringing in of weapons, drugs, and other illegal activity into our community has harmed. Now, one of the things that the state of Minnesota and Minneapolis forget, when they talk about African-Americans and drugs and crime… They forget St.Paul, and that it was crime city. That Elliott Ness from the FBI had to come. So, it was already built in with the criminality. You know, the James gang coming from the west up here. So they forget that, but then they want to attribute all crime and violence to us. Okay?
Interviewer: 13:54 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ora Hokes: 13:56 So, if you send me to prison, and I’ve got a record, and when I get out, you tell my parents, who live in subsidized public housing, that they cannot have anyone felon living with them or they’ll lose, and I don’t have a job, because I have a record, I can’t get a job, I can’t get a place to stay… So, what
alternatives do I have?
Interviewer: 14:24 Right.
Ora Hokes: 14:25 So, the system has built it in to re-criminalize people for that.
Interviewer: 14:33 Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely.
Ora Hokes: 14:33 When you’ve done your time, that’s supposed to be it. We don’t have that advantage. And so we become stigmatized, and the cycle is repeated over again.
Interviewer: 14:49 Absolutely. Wow. That’s powerful.
Ora Hokes: 14:49 Yeah.
Interviewer: 14:52 Next question is, what gives you hope for the future of this community?
Ora Hokes: 14:57 Well, I live on hope. My faith is built on hope. I know who my creator is. I serve a risen savior, and I know that everything that’s happened, happens for a reason. The thing is, Ora, what are you going to do to make things better? So, each of us have to take an individual inventory. Each of us were given with certain gifts and talents to make a difference. Excuse me.
Interviewer: 15:35 All right. Unfortunately, that’s the last question I had, and we are out of time. Thank you so much for being able to speak with me.
by David Beckford | Jan 14, 2020 | Uncategorized, Voices from Recast
Interview of Michael Chaney
Michael Chaney: My name is Michael Chaney, C H A N E Y.
Interviewer: So, do you live in North Minneapolis?
Michael Chaney: I don’t live in North Minneapolis, I work and own property in North Minneapolis. But I’ve been an activist in North Minneapolis for about the last 40 years.
Interviewer: Oh wow, so basically you mentioned we’re doing this project on the City of Minneapolis wants to know, wants to connect, wants to get an understanding between the City of Minneapolis and the North Side. So thinking back, so you’ve been here for 40 years, so you’re very involved here, yeah-
Michael Chaney: Right-
Interviewer: Yeah, so what changes have you seen, positive or negative changes have you seen in North Minneapolis?
Michael Chaney: Well, I haven’t really seen much, the struggle today is the struggle then, struggle for identity, a struggle for artistic expression, a struggle for economic empowerment and so, that’s why I can say, I’ve been an activist in the 80s. I was the founder of the North-Side Juneteenth celebration.
Michael Chaney: In the 90s I started a project called the Video Brigade at North High and created training programing. In 2010, I created a project called Project Sweetie Pie.
Michael Chaney: North Minneapolis is going green, give us a call, and learn what we mean. We’re one sly urban blight, now sits luscious garden sites, gardens without borders, classrooms without walls, architects of our own destinies. Access to food, justice for all. So, I’m a activist, I’m an organizer, I’m a freedom fighter for the African American community.
Interviewer 2: I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to interrupt the interview, but I had to, it’s just that, you say you’re a freedom fighter, look at my tattoo-
Michael Chaney: Alright brother.
Interviewer 2: Yeah, yeah.
Michael Chaney: I like it.
Interviewer 2: I can’t wait to connect after this.
Interviewer: So the changes that we’ve mentioned, what do you feel caused the changes over the years in the community?
Michael Chaney: Well, like I’ve said, I don’t know if there’s been much change, you know the struggle today, the struggle continues, struggle that African Americans have had ever since they’ve landed on the shores of America, by forced coercion, and so a struggle for resources, a struggle for jobs, a struggle for access to capital. Minnesota leads the nation, and many disparities, it’s one of the lowest states in the country, around disparities, around education, disparities around health, disparities about home ownership.
Michael Chaney: And though there’s this façade of progressive social altruism, the reality, if you look at the facts, look at the numbers, you’ll find that it’s quite the contrary that African Americans in Minneapolis, and in Minnesota are not faring well, and it’s by design.
Interviewer: Can you tell me more about government policies, such as housing and transportation in North Minneapolis, and employment?
Michael Chaney: Well again if you were to go back, of course historically there was the home of the riots in North Minneapolis that was before my time here and even in Minnesota, but going back to leadership of guys like Spike Moss and folks that started the way, Vusi Zulu and folks that were again, organizers who saw the disparities then and lack of access, not only here, but across the country with either the Civil Rights Movement, and the assassination of Martin Luther King. Minneapolis was no different and folks were outraged, and lead toward rebellion to fight against those who have historically been oppressed against.
Michael Chaney: And so, it’s the same today, all these many years later, we have had some, there’s been maybe some opportunities here, programming, but by and large I would say that the circumstances, the situation from housing, may right now, there’s a real fear of displacement, of folks coming in and moving out the indigenous people from this community, African-Americans, communities of color.
Michael Chaney: There are those who really now want to gentrify and move forward to take over this valuable land as we sit overlooking Downtown Minneapolis. We can look at instance like the Homeland decree, and all kinds of examples of federal lawsuits that, going back into the 60s where there was red-lining and looking at housing covenants that in certain communities in Minneapolis only white folks only need apply.
Michael Chaney: So much of that same kind of processes, practices and policies, that are destructive and that are not helpful, do not give voice to the African-American experience.
Interviewer: Since I’ve seen you going back in time, can you tell me a bit about the war on drugs in the 1990s, what do you know about that?
Michael Chaney: Well, again, most of the work that I do, I see myself as a cultural nationalist so much of the work as the founder June 10th celebration in the 80s. Much of my work has really been to really celebrate the guests, the talents of the black experience, so I’ve been more focused on doing proactive rather than responding to things like police brutality, things like that I have been less, the fight against drugs.
Michael Chaney: Much of those realities are contrived and here to oppress black people, and so I’ve tried to celebrate our gifts, our talents and tried to build education and educational programming, youth programming. The food program here in Oak Park was something that I started here-
Interviewer: Oh wow-
Michael Chaney: In 2010, and so I have birthed ideas that can try to help support marginalized communities, people who are poor and oppressed. I have tried to do programming, come up with ideas to educate people and help lift them up and out of poverty.
Interviewer: Wow, what gives you hope about this community?
Michael Chaney: I love black people, so… that’s it.
Interviewer: Amazing. Do you have any thoughts in the closing interview?
Michael Chaney: Yeah, I would urge us all as positive, progressive African-Americans, that to realize that we control our own destiny and that just like the Maroons in the islands and freedom fighters all over the world, we must keep on, we must put up the fight to resistance and we must work to help to advance our race of people.
Interviewer: Well that’s it for the interview, thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for coming here.
Michael Chaney: And thank you.
Interviewer 2: Thank you so much sir.
Michael Chaney
by David Beckford | Jan 14, 2020 | Uncategorized, Voices from Recast
Interview of Marcia Johnson
Interviewer: 00:21 Yeah, just to see if you’ve lived in that area.
Marcia Johnson: 00:26 That’s why I was trying to find it, 9199 Broadway. Where’s that at?
Marcia Johnson: 00:51 Right here, this district 55411 over here.
Interviewer: 00:55 How long have you lived in this area?
Marcia Johnson: 00:59 Off and on it’s a been a steady 3 years, but I’ve come up here at least 15 to 20 years. Yeah because I’m originally from Wilmington, Delaware. Yeah, my area code’s 55411.
Interviewer: 01:23 Back to the second question. You said about 15 years, right?
Marcia Johnson: 01:29 Yeah, but I’ve been steady where it counts where I get a paycheck and all that stuff now, past 5/6 years, but back and forth. You know, when you stay at someone’s house more than 5 to 30 days you become a resident, cause you got mail coming there so that’s been over 10/15 years.
Interviewer: 01:49 Before we dig too deep, can we just have you state your first and last name, and spell it for us.
Marcia Johnson: 01:53 My first name’s Marcia. My maiden last name is Harden, cause I got married up here of course. I’m doing a lot better. I got married 2013, which is now I use my married name Johnson.
Interviewer: 02:16 Congratulations on the marriage.
Marcia Johnson: 02:17 Thank you. I married my childhood sweetheart. My first and my last. We’ve been together since we was kids.
Interviewer: 02:27 Thinking back to when you first moved in this area to date, what changes have you seen?
Marcia Johnson: 02:31 Oh my gosh. It’s been a lot of changes. I’m not ashamed to say when I first moved here I used to get high. I used to smoke, I used to sniff dope. I used to smoke crack. Crack really never been a twist of mine, but I can remember, going down on Lake street and place. They would set up in Wendy’s restaurant and actually smoke the pipe, while people ordering. Now it used to be Sears over there in the parking lot, like the living dead. People walking around, and I just remember a whole lot of stuff. A lot of stuff is cloudy from being high all the time.
Marcia Johnson: 03:12 A lot changes been made, and then the changes really was made when I changed myself. See that’s the thing, when people as a individual change they self, then that’s when the changes are being made in your neighborhood. Because you don’t see nothing change until you change yourself, the individual self, you have to change. You can live in the same household for 30-50 years and see a person keep sticking stuff in they pocket and you know they’re a thief, where if he stops sticking it in his pocket, then he’s no longer a thief no more. You understand, you have to change. I started seeing changes, I’m gonna say, past, let me see when I stopped, about 8-9 years ago, since I stopped using. I no longer seen people getting high, walking the streets and stuff, because I wasn’t a part of that life anymore, but every now and then you still see, you know the look, you ain’t stupid. I still see some, I can identify some of the ones still out there and to me this is the, where I’m from you have a better chance of making it up here and doing something with your life. This is a very good state.
Interviewer: 04:37 I know you mentioned changes in what you saw on Lake street and Wendy’s. What about over here? What’s your experience with those types of what you’ve seen?
Marcia Johnson: 04:49 This is really crazy. I can remember when I first got up here my husband which I married was my childhood sweetheart. We’re from the same state. He came up here because his job brought him up here, and I was always in denial, “No I’m not using or doing it.” I came up here, I was always back and forth because the drugs wouldn’t let me sit still. When I finally decided to sit still, when I started backing away from it, I wanted to get out late one night. We had stayed over in northeast at the time. I don’t know nothing about Minnesota, but for some reason I knew that I could come on Broadway over here and buy drugs. That’s crazy, from hearing people talking, being on the bus, watching people. I’m a watcher. I kept it in my middle mind there and next thing you know, I didn’t know nobody but I found myself going by McDonald’s over here and bought what I wanted.
Interviewer: 05:54 McDonald’s where?
Marcia Johnson: 05:55 On Broadway.
Interviewer: 05:55 On Broadway?
Marcia Johnson: 05:56 Yeah, right there where they got Little Caesar’s pizza and stuff. Yeah, buy whatever you want. I was just shocked that it was so easy. But it’s changing now because they’re not hanging out. Let’s say it’s change in the past couple years. You get more customers outside of McDonald’s than you have inside of McDonald’s. You did! And it was sad because most of it was workers, people that go to work in the morning. State workers, you’d think they were going in to buy a coffee and stuff, but those were the ones that were using and selling, believe it or not. You could pick out the ones that didn’t fit being in there because either they was too young or way way too old. You’d say okay they’re doing drug or they’re selling drugs. Broadway has changed a lot. We would go for rides and stuff, you would see the girls walking up and down the street at night, and even for me, we would take the co-workers and drop them off and you’d be hollering up and down like, “Oh my god!” So it changed a lot.
Interviewer: 07:11 Next question. What do you feel caused the changes over the years?
Marcia Johnson: 07:14 Say that again?
Interviewer: 07:15 What do you feel caused the changes over the years?
Marcia Johnson: 07:20 From good to bad? What do I think caused the changes? It’s the individual that causes the changes. If you’re tired, if you get enough people that’s tired, when they wake up from whatever it is they’re doing, and they’re tired, then that’s when your changes are being made. Because you know right from wrong, it’s just sometimes it’s harder when you still have other people in that same group still pulling, it’s like pulling teeth. If you not ready to stop doing your shenanigans, or whatever it is that’s keeping you from being part of society, it’s going to be hard to have a change in your neighborhood. That’s for anything. It’s like hitting a brick wall.
Marcia Johnson: 08:14 Cause you’re gonna have people rebuild, or all kinds of stuff, where if you get enough, that’s why they’ll say they got this thing where they say white people can live together and do better than black people in their neighborhoods or whatever, it’s because they all know how to cut out the shenanigans and want the same thing in their neighborhood. You got a handful of people over here who want to be able to go outside and have their children play in the park and have a nice time. Then you got this side over here, they want their children play in the park have a nice time, but they still want to get high and hang out in the street, but you all know if you’re getting high what bring that problem, the prostitution and the drugs and everything else. You can’t mix that with children too, so that’s what bring the problem. But then when you get tired and you step over here and you get enough to come over here, then you got less and less of that will start spreading out, and then you start seeing changes in your neighborhood, because half those people that you see standing around I guess ain’t there. That’s how I see it.
Interviewer: 09:23 What changes have you seen in this community that raise your level of stress, or concerns about the future?
Marcia Johnson: 09:30 They getting younger. I know you can’t help from the way you was raised cause that was not your choice, but at a certain age you’re able to make a decision for yourself to know right from wrong and they’re getting younger with the violence and not finishing school. Everybody knows a good education is the only thing you have going for yourself. That’s the only job you have as a young adult anyway, is your education. It’s to maintain that to have anything in life. So it’s just getting worse, they’re getting younger.
Interviewer: 10:22 We’re gathering these stories to increase understanding between the city of Minneapolis and the community on the impact of discriminatory government policies and practices i the area like housing, economic development, and more. Examples include housing, and employment discrimination in the early 20th century. The War on Drugs in the 1990’s and others. What impact have these policies or others had on the community in general?
Marcia Johnson: 10:49 As far as low income housing and people living in them? Sometimes it’s the worst because most people they have a… it’s like being cliché, they think, my grandma used to say, “Just because you live in the projects don’t mean you have to act like you do.” I don’t know.
Interviewer: 11:11 Have you seen any type of discrimination in housings or economics that have impacted your life or your family’s life?
Marcia Johnson: 11:21 I think there is a lot of that here. But it’s not the people that funding or the foundation of it, it’s the people in among themself that’s doing it. It’s like okay, if you’re not Somalian you can’t live here. But it’s not the government that’s doing it, it’s the people themselves, you know what I’m saying? We’re separating ourself, you know what I mean? That’s the only way I can put it.
Interviewer: 11:55 What hopes do you have for the future of this community?
Marcia Johnson: 11:59 That it gets better. That young people have to realize that if you go to school, you get a better education, what’s on TV is called entertainment, you don’t make it part of your life. I don’t know. I just would rather for young people to just grow up and respect theirself. If they respect theyself, I’m quite sure that everything else would be respected around them, if they know how to respect theyself.
Interviewer: 12:39 What part does the city of Minneapolis needs to play in creating a more hopeful future?
Marcia Johnson: 12:44 I’m sorry?
Interviewer: 12:44 What part does the city of Minneapolis can play in to make the community better?
Marcia Johnson: 12:50 Better? I don’t know. What part can play in to make the community better? Actually, any part that terrible I guess. To me, none of it’s terrible, I mean really I don’t see none of it’s terrible. It’s just the people, the individual that’s there, you know.
Interviewer: 13:11 When you think about this area today, what impact do you still see from these historic government policies?
Marcia Johnson: 13:22 What do I think about the area now, today? I don’t know, sometimes it has it’s good days and it has it’s bad days. So it’s like I don’t know.
Interviewer: 13:37 How would you describe the relationship between the city of Minneapolis and the community over the years?
Marcia Johnson: 13:42 I think some people are being more heard now, from what I’ve
experienced being up here. My people being heard, being taken more serious now.
Interviewer: 14:07 What are your expectations of the city of Minneapolis related to this community?
Marcia Johnson: 14:15 I don’t know. Well actually, what they need to have more, well see that’s a hard thing to say because what people are asking for is actually here, like things for people to do, it’s just that people need to get up and go analyze the things here that’s offered here. “You gotta have more parks, you gotta have more programs,” all that stuff is actually here. Can’t lead a horse to water unless it’s thirsty.
Interviewer: 14:54 To what extent do you trust the city of Minneapolis to deliver those expectations?
Marcia Johnson: 14:56 Say that again? I’m sorry, can you rephrase that? I didn’t understand.
Interviewer: 14:57 How much do you trust the city of Minneapolis to live up to your expectations?
Marcia Johnson: 14:58 It’s alright with me. I feel like I did what I supposed to do with myself.
Interviewer: 15:04 So how much do you trust them?
Marcia Johnson: 15:06 The state of Minnesota?
Interviewer: 15:07 The city of Minneapolis.
Marcia Johnson: 15:27 It’s okay. If it was up to me, everything that’s offered here is up to me, so it’s alright with me. I just hope that anyone that was a user or just down on their luck or whatever or just analyze the things that’s here cause it’s here and you just gotta use it.
Interviewer: 15:53 Take advantage.
Marcia Johnson: 15:53 Yeah, take advantage and just go ahead and do what you’re supposed to do for yourself.
Interviewer: 15:58 So what part do you feel you can play in creating that more hopeful future?
Marcia Johnson: 16:04 Well, just as ordinary as they are. I hung out in streets like they did, I been through a lot of abusive situations growing up, and I’m no different from the next person but I utilize the things that are here offered to you.
Interviewer: 16:25 So you feel like you don’t have nothing special you can give out to the community to make it better? Like if you could have a chance to have a upper power in the community. What would you do?
Marcia Johnson: 16:42 I don’t know. Because what constantly just tell a person… I don’t know what could I do. Because basically I don’t know. Just let a person know, I’m just as ordinary as they are, just let em know that they can make it. Making it ain’t mean like you rich and famous and all of this, but you can be content, you know, ordinary content. Live within your means.
Interviewer: 17:25 Well that is the end of the interview. Thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
Marcia Johnson: 17:25 Okay.
Interviewer: 17:25 Thank you so much.
Marcia Johnson: 17:25 Alright. I feel weird.
by David Beckford | Jan 14, 2020 | Uncategorized, Voices from Recast
Interview of Makram El-Amin
Interviewer: 00:20 Yeah. So, can you tell us your first and last name, and spell it?
Makram El-Amin: 00:23 Yes, my name is Makram El-Amin, that’s M-A-K-R-A-M. El-Amin, E-L hyphen A-M-I-N.
Interviewer: 00:33 All right. So, can you look at this map and tell us where you live, around this area?
Makram El-Amin: 00:42 Okay. So, I’ve lived in a couple places.
Interviewer: 00:47 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 00:48 I currently live just north of Lowry. So, Lyndale, and a lot of what is in this area, North Market is a little far. So, I live probably right in this area right here, right now. Just off the expressway right here.
Interviewer: 01:08 Oh, I see that.
Makram El-Amin: 01:08 Yeah.
Interviewer: 01:09 Yeah.
Makram El-Amin: 01:10 Yeah. But I grew up right up on 8th Avenue, which is just below, on this map here, North High School. And I’ve lived right across in Harrison neighborhood. Right across over on the other side of Olson Highway.
Interviewer: 01:28 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 01:29 I’ve lived there as well. And bought my first home on 2711 Girard Avenue.
Interviewer: 01:36 I live on Girard Avenue.
Makram El-Amin: 01:37 Do you?
Interviewer: 01:38 Yeah.
Makram El-Amin: 01:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I’ve lived, and I’ve owned property in and around there.
Interviewer: 01:42 Yeah.
Makram El-Amin: 01:43 So, I’ve lived all over-
Interviewer: 01:45 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 01:45 … basically.
Interviewer: 01:45 So, how long have you been living in North Minneapolis?
Makram El-Amin: 01:50 Let me see. My family moved to`… we moved to basically the projects.
Interviewer: 01:58 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 01:59 And this is 1976 when we moved here. My dad came before we came, we were in Chicago still, so my dad came up probably three, four months, just to kind of find us a place, start his job, and all that. Then he brought us up here then, right. So, it was ’76-ish, right?
Interviewer: 02:16 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 02:17 You know, ’76, ’77, is when we actually came up here.
Interviewer: 02:24 Okay.
Makram El-Amin: 02:24 We’ve lived in North Minneapolis, we’ve grown up here. For a short stint of time there was a couple years we lived in Brooklyn Center.
Interviewer: 02:34 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 02:34 My family, not my parents, my family.
Interviewer: 02:36 Yeah.
Makram El-Amin: 02:36 My wife and my children. We’ve lived in Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park area for a short time.
Interviewer: 02:42 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 02:45 But then we missed it, so we came back. We came back, and we’ve been back for 10 years at least.
Interviewer: 02:55 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 02:55 You know what I mean?
Interviewer: 02:56 Nice.
Makram El-Amin: 02:56 Yeah.
Interviewer: 02:56 So, thinking about from one month here-
Makram El-Amin: 03:00 Yes.
Interviewer: 03:01 … what positive or negative changes have you seen so far?
Makram El-Amin: 03:06 You know, it’s interesting. When we moved here all of my family was in Chicago. So we were kind of like the defectors. We kind of broke the gang up-
Interviewer: 03:14 Mm-hmm (affirmative). (laughs).
Makram El-Amin: 03:14 … and came up here, right? I can remember distinctly being very sad.
Interviewer: 03:22 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 03:23 Thinking there’s nothing like Chicago. I mean, what are we doing?
Interviewer: 03:29 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Interviewer: 03:29 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 03:30 All that kind of stuff. First time riding on the airplane, to come up here, you know. But when I got here, we had this, I don’t know what it’s called, it’s like a bunker mentality. You know, where it was us against the world basically. We’re here, we’re in a new space. Our family was very, very close, tight knit.
Interviewer: 03:52 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 03:53 I can remember growing up having family meetings, and all that kind of stuff. Just making sure we’re touching down with each other and all that. And so my experience kind of grew out of that, right?
Interviewer: 04:06 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 04:07 And what I’ve found is a community. That’s what I found, I found a community. I found when I got over, mind you, I was a kid then, right? So, was I kind of getting over my initial loss of thinking I’m leaving my cousins, I’m leaving all that kind of stuff. I found I opened up and kind of embraced it for my own self. I found a community.
Interviewer: 04:35 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 04:36 I found people who were close.
Interviewer: 04:41 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 04:42 And tight knit, particularly there in [inaudible 00:04:44] area, it’s Heritage Park now.
Interviewer: 04:45 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 04:46 But it used to be the projects. And that’s where we grew up, going to Phyllis Wheatley, Bethune, went to all that kind of stuff. I can remember going there for the community center type stuff, you know what I mean?
Interviewer: 05:01 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 05:05 And I met friends there that I’m still friends with today, even all these years later, you know what I mean? I found community. We found that, coming from Chicago, and coming up to North Minneapolis, and people talking about negatively, and that sort of thing. It’s like, what you talking about? This is heaven up here, you know what I mean? In fact, I remember growing up, this sounds crazy, we used to say, you know, the saying in New York that says “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” right?
Interviewer: 05:45 Yeah, yeah.
Makram El-Amin: 05:46 We said about Minneapolis, we said “If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it nowhere.” Where we thought it was opportunities, it was plentiful, it was a lot from what many of us kind of experienced before. Not to say, we weren’t well-to-do or about any stress. We lived in public housing. So, we weren’t well-to-do anything, the pride of public housing we shared. We were kind of like live-in guests who had a house, and almost like a guest house connected, and our family stayed there until we approved for our public housing. Again, I found community. I found a lot of people I who I can really relate to. Minnesota began to grow on me, and grow on me to the fact that when I went back to Chicago, they said “Man, ya’ll talk different now. What’s wrong with ya’ll? What’s up, ya’ll talk proper.” Stuff like that, we hear that kind of stuff from our cousins, who just a few years earlier, you couldn’t tell us apart type stuff.
Interviewer: 06:57 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 06:58 So yeah. Those are some of my early memories, yeah.
Interviewer: 07:01 Yeah. So, the community that you found back then, do you see any changes compared to back then?
Makram El-Amin: 07:07 Certainly. Certainly. I think it’s becoming more densely populated, there’s a lot more people here now. The black community ha grown. You could basically find us all in one spot almost, but now … Just say you lived in Brooklyn Park back then. It was like, damn, what’s the zip code out there? How many buses did you take? It was like that.
Interviewer: 07:34 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 07:35 It was like that because back then there was no development. There was not even Brookdale and all of that. That stuff was still to come. Back then that stuff was wide open. It was like farms out there.
Interviewer: 07:52 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 07:53 It was still like that. So, I remember what happened with a friend, he said “I live in Brooklyn Park.” Brooklyn Park? Dang, I mean, it just seemed like you had to go on a road trip.
Interviewer: 08:02 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 08:03 When basically it’s just straight, basically. Brooklyn Park is the hood now.
Interviewer: 08:06 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 08:06 That’s the hood, so that’s the change. That’s the change. Where things seemed to be so distant have people living now, not just in North Minneapolis and South Minneapolis, but living in Richfield, and Roseville, and New Hope, and Crystal, and all that has become the hood. And there’s really no real differentiating that now, but back then, oh man, I was like you’re crossing lines basically.
Interviewer: 08:38 (laughs)
Makram El-Amin: 08:38 Obviously with that, the population, folks coming from everywhere. There’s a situation where we’re from Chicago, it used to be kind of thing where everybody used to talk about how everywhere else was better.
Interviewer: 08:56 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 08:57 But yet, we’re all here. It was kind of like that whole-
Interviewer: 09:00 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 09:00 … that whole contradiction.
Interviewer: 09:02 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 09:02 And ain’t anybody going nowhere. That kind of thing,
because life is better here.
Interviewer: 09:08 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 09:08 Say what you want. Say what you want. Even now I enjoy travel, my work is taking me all over the world. But man, I’ve got to come home, I got to touch down. I think that that is when I began to know when I began to miss it. We used to go back and stay in Chicago for summers. At least a good chunk of the summer, and I would miss home.
Interviewer: 09:37 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 09:40 I can remember kind of feeling sort of weight about that. Like, my loyalties was a little-
Interviewer: 09:44 Yeah (laughs).
Makram El-Amin: 09:46 One time, the Vikings and the Bears were playing football, and I’m cheering. I want the Vikings to win. And my cousin’s look here like, “Who are you?” And at that point I had basically crossed over. (laughs).
Interviewer: 10:00 You knew it was official.
Makram El-Amin: 10:05 Yeah, it was official. It was official, man. I was, even now my wife’s from Chicago-
Interviewer: 10:11 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 10:11 … from Chicago, I went back to Chicago after high school, went to college there for a couple years.
Interviewer: 10:16 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 10:16 That’s where we met, in college. But even now, she moved
up here with me, and then go back, we can stay three days, four days, but then it’s time to come home.
Interviewer: 10:30 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 10:31 It’s time to come back home now.
Interviewer: 10:32 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 10:35 I know you didn’t ask for all that, but I’m just, you know.
Interviewer: 10:37 (laughs) No, that’s fine. It’s fine. So, we’re gathering this story to increase understanding between the city of Minneapolis and the community.
Makram El-Amin: 10:46 Yes.
Interviewer: 10:46 Yeah. The impact of historic discriminatory government policies-
Makram El-Amin: 10:53 Sure.
Interviewer: 10:54 … and practices in areas like housing-
Makram El-Amin: 10:58 Yeah.
Interviewer: 10:58 … transportation, economic development, and things like that.
Makram El-Amin: 11:02 Yes.
Interviewer: 11:03 So, can you tell us what impact have you seen in others-
Makram El-Amin: 11:09 Yeah.
Interviewer: 11:09 … or even in your life in the community?
Makram El-Amin: 11:12 It’s interesting. We’ve seen the historical divestment within North Minneapolis. In fact, there’s a program on, I think Carrie Levin did this, it’s maybe a month and a half, two months ago, when they talked about North Minneapolis, you may have saw that. And they talk about the old maps that was in the city planner’s office, not just somebody’s map. It was in the city planner’s office, where they had our area as the quote the negro area, the ghetto, right?
Interviewer: 11:42 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 11:44 And the same thing, in the same part, where Rondo and all that over there, that area, same-same. Same-same.
Interviewer: 11:49 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 11:50 But there was a historical way to where the investment, and all that kind of stuff, economically and all that kind of mess coming about. It was all around that space. In fact, even the way we were designed, North Minneapolis was cut off.
Interviewer: 12:07 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 12:08 In many ways, it was cut off and disconnect, even from downtown, as close as we are.
Interviewer: 12:12 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 12:13 It was disconnected. That seemed like a different world.
Interviewer: 12:16 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 12:18 So, we saw that. Even along West Broadway. If you think about West Broadway and Lake Street being on par, as far as economic corridors and whatnot.
Interviewer: 12:31 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 12:32 You see the investment that happened over on Lake Street, and how Lake Street has just transformed. That still has not happened, definitely not happened, definitely not the scale-
Interviewer: 12:43 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 12:44 … as what other places had happen. So we’ve seen those kind of things all the time. We’ve seen programs come, and programs go. This program name, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig type thing. Where they kind of try to dress it up, whatever, but it’s still is trash. It’s garbage, right? And they would present various things as though it’s going to redo this kind of stuff. All that stuff comes and goes. No real substantive change has happened for years. For years. So, when you get folks speaking out politically, social activism, community organizing and what not, coming against these sorts of, I would say oppressions really.
Interviewer: 13:29 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 13:31 These things are not figments of people’s imagination. They’re not. These things have historical contents, historical reference from my appearance to others. Even my children, they’ll come to know, I think seeing things happen now is great. We love to see development, but you can see how they would do it. They’ll develop North Loop.
Interviewer: 13:55 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 13:56 And still not North Minneapolis. And that was all warehouse stuff, we’d just ride our bikes through that kind of stuff. It was like an adventure, because it was junk basically. It was all junkyards, and all that kind of stuff around too. Now, you can’t afford to live over there. Which is just another form, or another reiteration basically, of the same old stuff. You know what I mean? And it’s just so close, which makes it even that much more frustrating, you know?
Interviewer: 14:34 So, what changes have you seen in this community that raise your level of trust and concern? And what do you think the city of Minneapolis can play in relieving that stress in the community here?
Makram El-Amin: 14:43 Yeah. There’s the issue of crime and safety, it’s just a real issue. I figure that’s just intensified over time. Whether it’s homicides, those sorts of things, I mean, those things happen.
Interviewer: 15:02 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 15:04 The drugs, how drugs ravage the community. I can remember even in the ’80s. In the ’80s, I graduated from North High School in 1988.
Interviewer: 15:18 Oh wow.
Makram El-Amin: 15:18 This is just for time’s sake, right?
Interviewer: 15:21 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 15:21 Okay, so ’85, ’86, and ’87, right around that time, crack was booming. Crack hit the scene, it was booming, right? And it was plentiful, everybody had it. Even square dudes, like, look man, this ain’t your… They all in, you know what I mean? It was craziness, and that brought about another level of viciousness, and of violence that took place. Gang violence. Then we had the Crips, came from West Coast, they were here and all of that. Vice Lords, Disciples, all that kind of stuff was in it. Which even predates honestly, predates crack, right?
Interviewer: 16:09 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 16:10 Vice Lords, the Disciples, the Crips was a little after that. But even then, even the street life was a little more organized than what it is today. You know, today is kind of hit or miss Helter Skelter, in terms of it’s a little more cliquish. Now, it’s territorial, low end, high end, that kind of stuff. Whereas for us, we walked around, there was certain areas… Well, it’s territorial, you didn’t necessarily want to hang out at Willard too much because then there was those other guys up there. That’s going to be a situation. But nonetheless, it still had a little more order to it. I will put it there. It was a little more order to the chaos.
Interviewer: 16:56 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 16:56 If that makes any sense, right? So, that’s the difference that I see. I think that even the levels of policing. All the code fours, and we used to have helicopters and stuff flying all around the hood, that kind of stuff. Real aggressive tactics in terms of stopping, harassing, it’s the whole broken window concept. Where they was nuisance kinds of stuff. It was basically to kind of harass. People talk about the issues with policemen. And I’m a chaplain for the Minneapolis police right now, all right? So that’s something, knowing my history, I felt that at this point in my career, and what I have vested in this community, that I need to be in places and spaces that matter.
Makram El-Amin: 17:52 So, I wanted to get into that space, and help liaise between the community and the department a bit, because clearly historically that relationship has been broken, to say the least, right? But people remember, a lot of guys who grew up, we remember guys, cops, we didn’t know their name. Their name was Batman, and Robin, and Wild, and West, and people like that. To where they are just as much as part of North Minneapolis as we are, in terms from a historical perspective. And when I say that, their names or whatever, it wasn’t because they were good guys. It was because those the guys that, if you got caught up, you was going to pay a price-
Interviewer: 18:45 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 18:46 … with these guys. They made no qualms about that. It’s common language for those who are kind of out here though. It seems like everything else today. I mean, everything is caught on social media now, and all that. It’s like, you asked a question. Is it happening more now? Or can we see it now? I think there’s tension between those two things, because many of us argue that, man, this is just kind of how it’s been.
Interviewer: 19:12 Right.
Makram El-Amin: 19:12 We just didn’t have iPhone’s.
Interviewer: 19:14 So, what are your concerns for the future then?
Makram El-Amin: 19:16 I would say that at some point in time, like now, that we have to, particularly when it comes to issues about policy, issues around crime and safety, and things like that. I think that these things should be more handled by the people that it’s directly affecting. I love to see an African American police chief. I think we need to see more on his down line. I’ve talked with them, spoke with them, working on very serious problems with him, right? But he readily admits, it’s the culture there, too, right? So, I think that that, city hall or what not, it’s kind of seen some changes in this last election. that sort of thing, I think that that’s just the way, that’s where it’s going to go. And I think it needs to continue to go there. I think more of our kids, my sons included, right? And his friends going into civil service. You need to be police officers, you need to be fire…
Interviewer: 20:21 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 20:21 You need to get into those sorts of areas as well. That was never presented to us when we was in school as a viable option. That’s basically like, we settled. We settled, if you didn’t go to college and all that kind of stuff. But now, people got college degrees that can’t even get work. You
know what I’m saying? And now you’ve got trades, and things that people, that they frowned on, but they steered us away on that kind of stuff here. But now, so much is needed now. If we could only have just seen what the future would bring, many people would be in better positions.
Interviewer: 20:56 So, how do you feel the city of Minneapolis can help with…
Makram El-Amin: 21:01 First of all, I think this is a great step by beginning to help people tell stories, right? Because I think that in that you’re going to find, really, the gem. I don’t believe that it is any entity like this that is going to come in and solve no issue for us, right? I think, if anything, facilitating sorts of things that allow them to come from the community, I think, is really the best hope for the city of Minneapolis or anything like that. I think that there is a underutilization honestly of communities of faith, of ours as well. Whether it’s from the city, or the school board, for all that. I said it to the mayor, and I said it to the superintendent of schools. Look, you don’t ask enough of us either. We have hundreds of families we deal with every day. And really, we’re like first responders, to be honest with you. When someone is having a crisis, when somebody is having an issue in their home or something, whatever, we hear that stuff first.
Interviewer: 22:04 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 22:04 We hear that stuff first. And I think that partnering more strategically would be something that could help, as far as a role the city could play, because they have resources. And they can mobilize in that way if it’s done correctly.
Interviewer: 22:22 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 22:22 If it’s done correctly. That’s my hope. That would be my hope.
Interviewer: 22:29 And speaking of hope, what gives you hope about this community?
Makram El-Amin: 22:30 You know what? I think, first of all, I have faith. I’m a person of faith. So, I think that that comes inherently with that, right? But I also believe in people. I believe in people, and I live among people. And I walk these streets with these people, right? And I know that these are good people, and I know even when I encounter somebody who is struggling, whether it’s homeless, or something to do with an addiction, I can see through the rough stuff as well. I’ve been sensitized to do that by my parents and others who were invested in me. You know, we don’t have throw away people.
Interviewer: 23:16 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 23:18 So, it gives me hope when I can actually be a part of the change as well.
Interviewer: 23:23 Mm-hhmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 23:24 And I think that’s what we try to do as an institution here.That what I try to do personally, and instill in the folks who I can touch and influence in any way. So, I’m very hopeful. I’m very, very hopeful. And the more hopeful I become, the more vocal I become also with things that ain’t right. So, I don’t want people when they hear me on the one venue, try and say that he’s not hopeful. I’m very hopeful. That’s what I’m pushing. If I wasn’t hopeful, we’d probably lay down and just let it, you know. But that’s not who we are, and that’s not what we’re going to do.
Interviewer: 24:04 And as we finish up, do you have any last thoughts?
Makram El-Amin: 24:09 I will say that this community is an untapped gem. If we think about what it has produced in terms of the human resources it has produced, just the quality of human people that’s come out of this community, I think that speaks to the strength of the community, you know? Do we have to change some things for the health and well-being of the community? Sure we do. Certain, we do. But I think that, again, projects like this and others, can help us find our voice, when it’s going that way. And the more people that we talk to, man, the more you’re going to hear. Especially those folks who’ve lived here for some time, and they’ve been able to see things, like the before and after’s scenario. And I think that that would be really helpful. I wish my father, unfortunately he’s hospitalized right now, I wish you could talk to him, and what he saw when he, basically, and our mother decided to bring us up here from Chicago in the ’70s, and him being in his ’80s right now.
Interviewer: 25:27 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 25:28 He has a story to tell.
Interviewer: 25:29 Yeah.
Makram El-Amin: 25:30 He has a huge story to tell, right? I’ve been blessed to come from a lot of story. I have some good storytellers. Folks that could help us create narratives around things, and I think the community could benefit from folks like him, too.
Interviewer: 25:48 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Makram El-Amin: 25:49 So yeah.
Interviewer: 25:49 Yeah, well thank you so much for-
Makram El-Amin: 25:50 My pleasure.
Interviewer: 25:51 … your time.
Makram El-Amin: 25:51 My pleasure. Thank you all for doing this. This is amazing. Amazing, yeah.
by David Beckford | Jan 14, 2020 | Uncategorized, Voices from Recast
Speaker 1: 00:00 And can you state your first and last name for us with spelling?
Kevin Jenkins: 00:04 Kevin, K-E-V-I-N Jenkins, J-E-N-K-I-N-S.
Speaker 3: 00:15 Got you. Thank you. All right. First question, one second. If you’d refer to this map, do you currently live or have you ever lived in this general area?
Kevin Jenkins: 00:24 Let’s see. Have I ever lived in the 55411 area. I lived on Penn. I lived… no. Yes, I do. I live right on Penn and Broadway, and I’ve been a North-Sider basically all my life. I’m 62 years old. So I’ve been here. I ain’t leaving.
Kevin Jenkins: 00:46 So… I’m somewhere in here.
Interviewer: 00:49 But anyway, they don’t got Broadway on here.
Kevin Jenkins: 00:52 Penn and Broadway.
Interviewer: 01:04 Since you’ve been here, from when you came til today, what positive and negative changes have you seen in the community?
Kevin Jenkins: 01:12 Positive change, I mean, I mean positive changes, and I’m going to speak from the 70s.
Kevin Jenkins: 01:16 Because I was 62 years old and that’s my era of time that I grew up in. Positive areas that we had was, we was very unified. It didn’t matter what went on in the community, we all was onboard with it.
Kevin Jenkins: 01:34 We had the riots. We had to rebuild our communities. We had community centers. We had restaurants. We had clothing stores, bowling alleys. You name it, we had it. We had different festivals, like now we have Juneteenth. We had something called Freedom Days, that was on Plymouth Avenue that the Wade Community Center did. We also had a bank that was First Plymouth National Bank that basically also did a festival on Plymouth Avenue.
Kevin Jenkins: 02:10 So, there was a lot of different things that we had going on during that time period and, again, we all was in-sync. We had different community centers such as the Hospitality House, Jerry Gamble’s Boys and Girls Club, North Commons, Park, the Wade Community Center, Phyllis Wheatley, there was numerous… we just had lots of stuff that the kids could do and the parents didn’t have to worry about where their son or daughter was at because they were at a community center doing something and at these community centers, like, I grew up through the Hospitality House and one of the things that we did was we had a game room that you learned how to played pool, bumper-pool, ping-pong. We played table games; we had cooking classes (we really loved cooking classes, those cooking classes were good). We had a choir. We had Bible study. We were one of the first community centers that had a traveling basketball teams and baseball teams. Our baseball team went up to… not Lino Lakes. Ugh, I can’t remember the… it was a facility that, you know, people that were incarcerated, and they had a baseball team. We played against them, and everything like that. So, we had a lot; we were just unified back then.
Kevin Jenkins: 03:51 K-U-X-A-L was our radio station that started at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and it was over with at 6, so nobody was on the streets from 4 to 6 because that was the only time we could hear some soul music and then we got KUXAL so KUXAL was there. Then, we ended up getting KUXL and the KHMO, which is the radio station that we have now.
Kevin Jenkins: 04:25 So we have had, there was a lot of different things that were going on but we were very, very unified. People were born into the community; they stayed in the community. We didn’t have a lot of people coming from out-of-town that was coming into Minnesota at that particular point. So, the neighbors knew each other. If you did something down the street, Miss Jo was going to be in your butt and then bring you home and then your parents was going to do what they needed to do for you and to you.
Kevin Jenkins: 05:12 So the neighbors, we all knew each other and we all believe in being unified so this way that as we were growing up, everybody basically grew up together. We went to the same schools together, so this was how it was back in the 70s.
Kevin Jenkins: 05:38 When we move and march into the 80s, that’s where the changes started happening at. We started migrating to different schools that were not in our communities anymore. We started migrating out of the community to other places to live. We had now a fluctuation of people from Chicago that were coming in, D.C. that was coming in, and Kansas City was coming in, so we had a fluctuation of a lot of now, new people, but what was happening was that they didn’t stay. So, they’d be here maybe a year and then after that, they would move.
Kevin Jenkins: 06:33 So, all of a sudden the community that was like “this”, solid, “fingers-together”, started splintering and started tearing us apart… and that’s then when the drug scene started coming in. That’s when we started seeing more African American folks dropping out of school. That’s when we started seeing this change of no emotion, no feeling. Instead of fighting with the fists, we started fighting with the pistol and we start… we saw people laying out there and people, all of a sudden they was like “Oh, another person dead.”
Kevin Jenkins: 07:27 We never was like that back in the 70s-
Kevin Jenkins: 07:30 … because one of the things that our parents taught us was one… respect, believe in god. Another one they taught us was, stick together, regardless, stick together.
Kevin Jenkins: 07:47 And we feared. At that ha… I mean, our thing was, we didn’t have a cell phone; we didn’t even have a pager at this point. We knew when the street lights come on, you’d better be on your way, no… not on your way, you needed to be on the porch of your house.
Kevin Jenkins: 08:08 That was our clock, was the streetlights… and you didn’t have like you have now, the disrespect of a lot of the teens that don’t listen to their parents. They’re going to do whatever they want to do. They started thinking life ended at 21. I don’t quite get that part, but… that how many of them thought. And so then they didn’t fear. Fear left the North Side and when fear left the North Side, now we had nothing but chaos and now you had leaders fighting against each other. You had the police department that could do whatever that they wanted to do, but we wasn’t unified like we used to be.
Kevin Jenkins: 09:06 So those are some pieces, right there that we had. One of the things that we had and I’m pretty sure you remember this… is, there was a parade called the Aquatennial and we had one or two drill team groups that were in the Aquatennial and we liked to follow the drill team. Well, at a point in time the police said “you guys can’t follow them”. They had the dogs out there, the horses out there and the water hose out there… and one of the things that we came up with was… Okay you don’t want us down there? That’s fine.
Kevin Jenkins: 09:55 And, so we had something called the Summer Fun Festival, which was at the Phyllis Wheatley Community that the Wade Community sponsored and this was all the bands that were back at that time period, so, we didn’t want to go downtown because we had our own entertainment right in our own neighborhood. And, so that’s the whole thing of the unity that we had and that’s the change that happened when we, when other people started coming in to Minnesota and part of it was, and this is just my thought, so I don’t know if this is true or not…but part of it was our welfare system. We had a great welfare system here and people that were coming from other places they were like, I want to go to Minnesota because we could be on welfare and live really good until they put the new law in to say you could only be on welfare for five years.
Kevin Jenkins: 10:57 So, again, there was a lot of great things that we did back in the days and where it started crumbling was when we started dividing ourselves.
Interviewer: 11:11 So, we’re gathering some of these stories to gain some understanding about the relationship between the city of Minneapolis and the community so I hear you touching on some of the things like economic issues that you saw back then. So, as you’re thinking about policy and things like housing policy back in the 70s, when you were growing up or even in the 80s and employment and discrimination in regards to some of those things.
Interviewer: 11:49 I’m wondering what impact do you think those things had on the community… things like housing discrimination, unemployment rates or lack of employment opportunities for folks in our communities and even lack of transportation to get people back and forth between those?
Kevin Jenkins: 12:10 Okay. Well that’s a loaded question.
Kevin Jenkins: 12:13 I’ll try to get… and if I don’t answer part of it-
Kevin Jenkins:12:18 … we come back into it. Housing, well, let me start with housing.
Kevin Jenkins: 12:27 We… growing up here, we never really saw a housing issue, because our parents either they stayed in the projects, or you stayed in a duplex or apartment or a house and growing up, we didn’t really see that we were poor because we always a roof over our head, we always had clean clothes, we always had something to eat. We might only have one TV, but the whole thing was is that we didn’t really see that there were issues where you could live and where you can’t live at.
Kevin Jenkins: 13:15 So, that didn’t show up in the 70s because base… and part of it was that everybody stayed in their own neighborhood. You know, so the North Siders stayed on this side of Broadway and all the way down to the project area. That was basically us as African American folk.
Kevin Jenkins: 3:39 We stayed right there; we might have moved from one place to another place but it was in our hood, basically. So, we didn’t see that type of discrimination but I’ll come back to that because I was going to go with the jobs situation.
Kevin Jenkins: 13:59 We had a program called M.Y.C… M.Y.C. if you were 14 years old, you could get an M.Y.C. job. Everybody basically had a M.Y.C. job. I’m not quite sure what it stood for but it was like a summer youth job that you could work at a community center; you could work at a park; you could work at a barber shop. I
mean, it was like places and basically you showed up for work, they taught you what you needed to learn and then you did the job.
Kevin Jenkins: 14:36 And everybody looked forward to that two weeks because that way you got your check and then we was down at Kiefers, Browns, the V store. These were some of the places that we shopped at. Flag Brothers was another one we could love to order stuff out of the catalog there.
Kevin Jenkins: 14:59 So we had jobs back then. Jobs… Then when we got more into the mid-70s. That’s when we started seeing some of the discrimination.
Kevin Jenkins: 15:19 We were like, I graduated in 1974, so at this point I wanted to get a job and there were criteria that you had to have or it would school you knew that got you in the door. So, if you was not ambitious and a person that could sell their selves, you didn’t get a job.
Kevin Jenkins: 15:48 There was not, at this point, an encouragement to continue to keep your education going so we wasn’t really going to college as much during this time. We were going to vocational schools because at this time trades were still in. So, you could get… so I’m a tailor by trade, so I learned how to sew, I learned how to do measurements, I learned how to fit clothes onto people, this and other. And so, basically, that’s what we… that’s what I did. I went to trade school, but once we got into the 80s, that’s when the push became more- go to college, go to college. If you didn’t have the money, they had things called grants that you didn’t have to pay back.
Kevin Jenkins: 16:45 So a lot of what we were pushed into is to like, okay, we need to further our education and in order to do that, we need to get some grants. There were some people that were very fortunate to get scholarships either from academics or, as far as from the arena of what they did, as far as… they played either basketball, baseball, ran track, whatever.
Kevin Jenkins: 17:12 So, we started going that way, there, but where the doors started shutting at was… okay but how are you going to pay this bill?
17:26 And, now the parents were stuck with… we got to make a little extra money so Kamal can continue his education. Well they couldn’t do it, so Kamal had to stop his education, or Susie, or whoever… and lack of money started becoming an issue and then we ran into the area of the split families.
17:59 We ran into the area that here, the mother is raising three or four kids and the father is nowhere to be seen, except when it was time for the birthday party or for the event. “Oh here was there?”
18:17 But… the family unit started crumbling, again, because everybody wanted to do their own thing and they lost sight of what the unit of the family was supposed to be about. So, again, the whole thing was there was a lot of stuff that we wasn’t addressing in the community but we were putting the blame on
somebody else, and like Michael Jackson said it really well: “The Man in the Mirror”.
18:56 Don’t look around you to blame somebody. Look at what’s in the mirror because what’s in the mirror has caused either something good or something bad. Stop blaming. Come back to self.
Interviewer: 19:12 Right. Change yourself before you change the world.
Kevin Jenkins: 19:15 Okay, I don’t know if I answered all that but-
19:17 Okay, okay, alright. [crosstalk 00:19:19].
Interviewer: 19:27 What part do you feel you can play in creating that more hopeful future?
Kevin Jenkins: 19:36 What part do I feel I have-
19:38 … Okay. Being a community person, being a Godly man, what I learned was, it’s not about what you say, it’s what you do.
19:55 What you do is going to speak more volume versus this. So what I had to learn was, I can’t be at every march or rally. I can’t be at every protest, but what I can be is, I can be an example of somebody that grew up on the North Side. I don’t know about the near thing but the North Side, that’s what we knew we was… that was able to be successful by making good choices, never feeling like you were ever better, always feeling like I can help somebody.
20:48 So, I really think that has been the theme and I spoke with other older people than me and that was one of the things that they said, that, you know, they don’t have that kind of energy out there doing stuff, but what they can do is to show you that if you stick with it, this is what’s ahead of you and it’s looking good, but if you quit, then, basically you stop right here.
21:24 And then they share with you what things that they went through. So, I’m going to bring you to a movie, a series, “Roots”. Basically the elders made sure that the kids understood where their peoples came from and the struggles that their peoples had to go through, and by being able to do that, those kids now
become adults. They learn from what the mistakes that their parents made or the victories that their parents made and then they share it with their kids.
22:09 Well, the sharing process was when we were here. Many of the young people don’t want to hear stuff. They think, oh, that was back in YOUR time. Believe you me, what you’re experiencing now is what we experienced then. It’s just another name, another shade, but still, if you don’t stick together, we’ll crumble.
Interviewer: 22:39 Can I… I was… I actually want to ask one last question.
Kevin Jenkins: 22:43 If you have another question, you can ask me, okay. I… you can go on. [crosstalk 00:22:48].
Interviewer: 22:48 I’m wondering, in your opinion, so you see a need for community to come together, to see transformation, and I’m wondering what you would envision the city of Minneapolis and their role with the community to build stronger community.
Kevin Jenkins: 23:08 I think part of their role should be… How can they give back to the community?
23:19 You’ve taken from the community a lot. How can I come… How can we give back?
23:27 We had a program called “Something to be Thankful For”. I don’t know if you remember that one or not.
23:34 Came out of the Oak Park Neighborhood Center and what we did was we invited every youth leader… it didn’t matter if they came out of the Way, Hospitality House, Jerry Gambles, the City Incorporated, we invited everybody to come together and what we wanted to do was do a joint function for the young people.
24:03 We received money from the city to be able to do that and by being able to do that, what it did was, it tore down these divisional walls that this community is better… this community center is better than this community center. “Oh you guys ain’t got it together.” We work together, but there was money
available for that. So, I think that what possibly could happen is that the community centers, the community organizations come up with a strategy, a plan to figure out some type of a program that you can get funding for. Bobby Joe said it really, really good when we lost our target, he said basically, if we’re not at the table when decisions are being made, then we’re on the table, which basically meant was, we wasn’t invited so we didn’t know and so basically they took our target away from us.
25:19 Now yes, we have Cov. But that used to be our target there. Because we wasn’t involved in the planning and the structure of how the North Side was going to be redeveloped.
Interviewer: 25:32 Yeah, we had no say in that.
Kevin Jenkins: 25:36 Right, so that’s some of the things that I think that the city can do is to be able to look at different programs that are coming out of the North Side and to be able to say, okay, what we want to do is we want to fund this particular program. What is the monies that are available and hold the city accountable, because the city dropped the ball at the Superbowl.
Kevin Jenkins: 26:06 There was supposed to be multiple jobs for small businesses, Mom and Pop shops, this that and the other, and all of a sudden they came to the table and there was all these criteria, and they didn’t meet it. But you said you was going to put so much money into making sure that the Superbowl had people of color that were represented, but then you made these stipulations.
26:34 That’s why we have to be at the tables. That’s why we have to support our mayor, our different governors, our congresspeople. We need to support them because they’re the ones that, when it comes time for the voice, they’re the ones.
26:51 I’ll give you another example. When the shooting happened with the young man on Plymouth Avenue and the group Black Lives Matter blocked off Plymouth, and all they wanted was tape, the mistake that they made… they didn’t listen to Keith Ellison; they didn’t listen to the mayor, they didn’t listen to the
ministers that were out there, that you’re going about it the wrong way in order to get the tape.
27:25 And… when they got the tape was when everybody got the tape, when the decision came down. You got… young people have got to listen to the elders that basically have been on those fighting grounds so that way that the young people don’t make the same mistakes that we made.
27:48 Those are some key pieces, right there and so I could share that with you there. [crosstalk 00:27:54].
Interviewer 27:54 I’m gonna go into a question that I had [crosstalk 00:27:57] got the time, we did already went over.
Kevin Jenkins: 27:59 Okay, alright. I’m sorry. I like to talk. So, go ahead.
Interviewer: 28:02 I was going to say, like, you talk about we need to support the, like, the black mayors and stuff like that and the city can do all of this fund money for these programs.
Kevin Jenkins: 28:14 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Interviewer: 28:14 But what can we do to get our own people involved, because yeah we can have the workshops and the programs-
Interviewer: 28:21 …but what’s going to make them show up? Because I feel like as a youth, we’re real disengaged right now.
Kevin Jenkins: 28:34 I think… the way that what you’re all doing right now, having conversation, because, again, how you all conversate… we’re right across the table from each other and we’re texting. We need to talk to one another. This is what we did and that’s why we could cry and you would know that this person is hurting right now. That’s why the sister upstairs said we need to go through more of an exercise, okay, that’s talking, not this texting. Because, when we knock- out the communication of texting, then, basically the young people aren’t going to understand how to talk to one another.
Kevin Jenkins 29:39 This is one of the reasons why trying to solve problems is… but we haven’t come to the table to talk about, how do we manage our anger? How do we go about developing these right tool that we can use? Maybe I haven’t been to college yet, but what can I do? I want to be able to go and get educated. What can I do…and these are things that like, I think with what you guys are doing right now is, we need to go back to what things worked for us and part of it was that we came together as a community. We talked to one another. We loved on one another. We prayed together. If you need some sugar, hey, I’ve got some sugar.
30:36 You know? And that’s way, way back, but the whole thing was that we wasn’t afraid of one another to conversate or touch. That’s what I think that what you guys are doing is that start right there. It’s starting to have these kinds of conversations so that way that you can look at… these are our situations that
we’re seeing that we would lack to tackle. Whatever that is, you’ve had some time, you’ve had time to organize.
31:15 Develop some type of plan. You just don’t walk into it. You just gotta make sure that you develop some type of plan because the biggest thing is, is that without a plan, it crumbles. It crumbles.
31:31 Supporting the North High Basketball team, supporting Henry High School Basketball team or whatever sports that they are, being there, supporting those young people that are doing some positive, great things. Yes, in this day and time there’s more young people going to college, more African American
folks that’s going to college than back in my time, but the whole thing was… is that those individuals got support and they believe in the people that were backing them and then they made things happen for them.
Kevin Jenkins: 32:12 One last story. I’m sorry, I’m okay… okay… a brother by the name of Trent Bowman… I don’t know, I know you know Trent, of you’ve heard of Trent before? Okay, he went to North High School. He got… he went to college and there was like about four or five, six people that, they all went to college for real estate. What they did when they graduated… they didn’t go to E. Dinah, they didn’t go to Richfield, they didn’t even go to Brooklyn Park or Brooklyn Center, they brought it back to the North Side.
Kevin Jenkins 32:49 They said “we need to help our community”. So, what we want to do is, we’re going to set up meetings, we’re going to talk to you, we’re going to check to see what your credit record looks like, your bank account… we’re going to find affordable housing that you own, not rent, own, and that was something that our parents didn’t teach us, was ownership. We’ve learned rentership or lay-away.
33:18 You know? And I’m being real, I’m being real. So what Trent and them guys did, they brought it back to the community and they helped brothers like myself that’s much older than them to be able to own a home.
33:36 So, that’s what we need, is people to bring back whatever that they earned or they got their degrees and stuff of this nature, to bring that back to the community. Don’t move away, come back to the community.
33:54 And that’s what… that’s my story.
Interviewer: 33:58 Well thank you so much-
33:59 Thank you, we really appreciate it.
Kevin Jenkins: 34:00 Okay.
by David Beckford | Jan 14, 2020 | Uncategorized, Voices from Recast
Interview of Kenneth Rance
Interviewer: 00:11 Alright, so first we’ll just ask you what’s your first and last name with the spelling?
Kenneth Rance: 00:16 My name is Kenneth Rance and that’s K-E-N-N-E-T-H R-A-N-C-E.
Interviewer: 00:24 Alright, so this will be a fifteen minute interview.
Kenneth Rance: 00:27 Sure.
Interviewer: 00:33 On the map, do you see where you live and where you work?
Kenneth Rance: 00:38 Yep. So I live in Lin Park, so on this map, it would be closest to 14th street and Lyndale
Interviewer: 00:50 So thinking back to that area today, what changes have you seen? Positive and negative.
Kenneth Rance: 00:58 Well, I’ve seen more gentrification of whites in my neighborhood. I have seen the property values go up. I see how the north loop is growing and rising exponentially and I believe that some of the carry over is spilling across Plymouth Avenue and down toward the Washington business corridor. What I think is most tragic is that there is a lot of drug activity from the corners of Lyndale and West Broadway from West Broadway to let’s say Penn Avenue. And I think that it is a travesty that the fourth district of the Minneapolis Police Department is not doing enough, in my opinion, to curtail some of that negative drug activity.
Kenneth Rance: 02:11 When you take a look at the Fourth Precinct crime statistics which I receive from who is our community liaison, you will see that from 18th and Lyndale to West Broadway in that area on the Near North is just a hotspot with Cub Supermarket. I applaud Cub for being in the community, unfortunately in a lot of urban communities you have food deserts and more lack of opportunity for them to buy fresh produce, things of that nature. So I think that they should be applauded for continuing to remain on the north side, but it goes without saying that it does have its challenges.
Kenneth Rance: 03:01 But my qualifier is this, born and raised on the north side, I love the north side. There is no other place I’d rather want to live. I have the resources to be able live in other communities, but I have made a very conscious choice and decision to live where I do.
Kenneth Rance: 03:27 Those are some of the changes that I have seen on West Broadway.
Interviewer: 03:32 Alright. Why do you think those changes are happening?
Kenneth Rance: 03:35 Well, I think that with gentrification some of it is strategic to let some of the property values go down and then have whites move into the community. And there has also been some economic development taking place on the north side.
Kenneth Rance: 03:59 When you take a look at the number of millennials that live in the Near North and they’re going to put a elementary school in Downtown East. What that says to me is that those families are not going to have children and those children have to have places to go. And so I think that, when you take a look at the real estate market here in Minneapolis and you take a look at the lack of affordable housing, okay, a two-bedroom apartment on average here is about $1200, right?
Kenneth Rance: 04:32 So North Minneapolis is one of the last few, I think, bastions of the city of Minneapolis where people can really afford home ownership. South Minneapolis is saturated, right? You’ve got the Phillips and some other areas, but really you’ve got the lakes and so on and those are very expensive. Also too, when you take a look at some of the pernicious ways a lot of these banks have refused to loan to people of color for them to be able to even afford homes, that is very strategic in locking them out. That’s why Minnesota is 50th out of 50th for black home ownership for people of color. That’s horrible. And we have the resources and the ability to do that and so now you have more of an influx of people moving in to Near North, Willard-Hay, Jordan, Cleveland.
Kenneth Rance: 05:32 You have all this development through the Greenway project, from the that’s gonna come right through north Minneapolis. It’s also bridging the gap between the Van White Bridge and the Kenwood area over there by The Blake School, right? You take a look at what they’re doing with the-
Interviewer: 05:50 I was looking for the lady at the front desk.
Kenneth Rance: 05:58 So you’ve got all that going and what I think it’s gonna do is it’s gonna disenfranchise more people of color through increased property taxes and higher rents and values and it’s gonna be harder for them to live within the city.
Interviewer: 06:19 Yep. So this is a long question, so I’m gonna sum it up. So policies such as housing, transportation, I know you mentioned product development and the war on drugs and other things that was happening in the 1990s. How do you think those policies impacted the community or even
yourself?
Kenneth Rance: 06:43 Well, look, so when we talk about Ronald Reagan’s the War on Drugs and if you read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander it does a very great job of kind of laying out what’s taking place. So when there are racial biases in this war on drugs and locking people up is not the solution. It’s been proven that drug [inaudible 00:07:10] is on par in black communities as it is in white communities.
Kenneth Rance: 07:14 If you take a look at the ACLU study of Picking Up the Pieces in 2012, you find that north Minneapolis District Four are policed at a much higher level than they are in other aspects of the city. So you lock up a father or a mother and that has an impact on their ability to earn and take care of their children and you then have them displaced and so you have more transient and you have more homelessness. Those stresses can lead to substance abuse problems.
Kenneth Rance: 07:50 And then the amount of bias that takes place in the Minneapolis public school system where they have concentrated schools and community schools for people of color and so they’ve had all the concentrated poverty in schools on the north side whereas, when we take a look at the schools on the south side of the city, they’re more inclined to put those students out or make it more challenging for them to be able to have access to the school. So they take out busing for high school, so now students then have to go to schools that are closer to them just due to the fact they don’t have the transportation. For middle school students and elementary school students, well if the parents have resources, like my family has been blessed to do, then we can afford to drive our children outside of the local schools they have more opportunity.
Kenneth Rance: 08:45 You also have to take a look at where the resource is going to. Where are the better teachers? Where are the teachers that are more seasoned and experienced? I believe that if the Minneapolis school system did a better job at dispersing whether it’s- not Title 9- Title 1 students, free and reduced lunch, and the entire school system had to proportionately kind of deal with those students with those specific needs or what not, I think we would have more equity, we’d have more balance, and we’d have better educational opportunities for all of our students.
Kenneth Rance: 09:36 And when it comes to economical development, the development is coming, but will we be a part of that? And public transportation has a lot to do with that, as well, when you take a look at the Bottineau Line.
Kenneth Rance: 09:53 When I grew up, there are people of color living in places in Minnesota that was just unheard of. Chaska and Burnsville and Apple Valley and Champlin and now that Section 8 volunteers aren’t in fashion anymore in the city of Minneapolis and they’re literally displacing of and just putting us anywhere.
Kenneth Rance: 10:23 And so as long as there’s a functional bus line to be able to take them from there back into the city to be able to work for low wage jobs is, for some people, it’s sufficient. The problem is is that right now, living in the city of Minneapolis, one out of every four people is a person of color, but as we grow towards a minority majority, the population of whites in Minnesota is declining. The future growth will come from minorities and immigrants. Well, if it is not deceptive to immigrants and if there are not opportunities for people of color, how will the state of Minnesota maintain its quality of life? And I think that there are some people in leadership that are aware of those analytics and those metrics, but it’s disturbing that not enough is being done fast enough. Because you cannot have all these people here without healthcare, education, and employment opportunities and expect to have a functioning civil society.
Kenneth Rance: 12:00 Did that answer your question?
Interviewer: 12:03 Yes.
Kenneth Rance: 12:03 I know it was a lot.
Interviewer: 12:04 It was a lot, but it’s good. That was good. Okay, what changes have you seen in the community that you have concerns about? Anything.
Kenneth Rance: 12:16 The gentrification is one thing. You have a lot of seniors that are living on fixed incomes that cannot continue to maintain their homes and now they’re selling them. And then you have people from other communities coming into the neighborhoods and they’re trying to change the culture of that community and I think that that can be very dangerous, I think that can be very rude, that can be very disrespectful, I think that that can cause a lot of conflict. I mean, take a look at the case with the gentrification that’s taking place in the Shaw-LeDroit Park area in Washington D.C. and Howard University and the residents want to walk the dogs on campus and they wanted to stop the Go-go music that’s been playing there for the last twenty years. Those things are not good and when you take a look at law enforcement and how heavily policed we are and taxes here.
Kenneth Rance: 13:26 I think what they’re doing with Northpoint I think is just awesome and with 150,000 people a year they see. I mean, it’s just enormous the amount of great work that Stella’s doing over there and the 70 million dollar project and the are all things that need to be supported and with these Promise Zones and Opportunity Zones and these Green Zones and I strongly encourage leadership in the city to be able to provide opportunities for people to have affordable housing and then the corporations need to do their fair share as well in being able to make home loans affordable to people of color and not pricing them out. And also being able to provide more public private partnerships and more access to jobs with livable wages. And a greater respect for our environment here and so what concerns me is that there’s empirical data that shows that if Minnesota doesn’t get it together, they’re going to have some serious problems on down the line with the number of Baby Boomers that are retiring. And it’s very expensive for retirees to live here, but people of color have to have their opportunities as well.
Kenneth Rance: 15:26 One last point, the state of Minnesota, I believe, had over a billion dollars worth of contracts last year. What percentage of them went to black businesses? It was less than a tenth of one percent. Yet, businesses in the state of Minnesota are skyrocketing. How is that equitable? It’s wrong and there’s certain mandates and laws on the books that say otherwise, that certain monies are entitled to those disenfranchised communities of color, but they have not the leadership, the governor to others have not been held accountable.
Interviewer: 16:25 I’m gonna ask you one last thing.
Kenneth Rance: 16:26 Sure.
Interviewer: 16:29 Do you have any last words? How would you wrap it up?
Kenneth Rance: 16:41 How would I wrap it up? I just think that there are certain powers that do not see the value of black people here in this state. And I think that it is time that they be recognized and be given a fair shot and opportunity to, as Snoop Dogg would say, “Live their best life.” You know what I’m saying? And, unfortunately, there are powers at be that are day in and day out trying to impede our progress, that are trying to snuff out our community, that are trying to displace us, and it’s wrong. And with all of this Minnesota nice that we talk about, it’s really Minnesota ice. And the numbers and the populations are growing and they’re changing where it has been shown, I was reading a study from Deloitte, that companies who embrace diversity in thought and in leadership do better.
Kenneth Rance: 18:39 Just the bottom line, they do better. And Minnesota will do better when they have equitable opportunity around the table to be able to take a part of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and all of the values and virtues that we pride ourselves on as a nation. And if they don’t, we’re in big trouble.
Interviewer: 19:14 Alright, well thank you, we enjoyed your time.
Kenneth Rance: 19:16 Thank you.
