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The Experience of Ron Edwards

A Renaissance Black Man in a White Man's World

A Beacon for Freedom in the City

2015 Blog Entries
July

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MEXICAN CARTELS ARE TAKING CONTROL OF DRUG TRAFFICKING IN TWIN CITY NEIGHBORHOODS, STREETS. 
Cartels to Minnesota from Chicao.

Violence accompanies this new menace.
Four books to consider in developing solution plans.

Thursday, July 16, 2015
Drafted 12:40 p.m.
Posted Friday, July 31, 10:58 a.m.

Sheriff Stanek, last summer, tried to alert black and white communities of the new heroin epidemic.  He held 3 workshops.  But despite this devastating news and increase of deaths by overdose, no leadership has responded.

Mexican Cartels are gaining control of heroin, marijuana, crack, and methamphetamin trafficking in the Twin Cities.

Word is Mexicans sre allowing enough off the top to keep local leadership involved and quiet.
In Mexico, newspapers stay quiet so as not to lose reporters to cartel violence.
Is this silence now going on in cities like Chicago and Minneapolis, despite Sheriff Stanek's workshops and other efforts?

Life matters. To make it matter best we have to make family, education and jobs matter most.  Where is the leadership from any quarter on family, eduation and jobs?

How much race pimping is going on by black and white leaders working together? 

Have we reached a tipping point?  The Great Society has became the Great Non-Profit Greed Society (do-gooders in power corrupting the system top down for their own financial and career gains), be changed by blacks, whites, hispanics, and Native Americans working together, from bottom up, to foster develoing a Society of Prosperity, Peace and Independent Liberty for all ?

Four books to consider:
1.  Race Pimping: The Multi-Trillion Dollar Business of Liberalismby Kevin Black, a brother with a weekly St. Louis weekly radio show.
From Amazon blurb:  Race pimping has cost America TRILLIONS of dollars, as the money is ... fantastic. Politicians line their pockets and those of family and friends, while delivering little to nothing to their constituents or the community at large.
From p. 33 of my book: $856.5 million for planing and building replacement units. Number actually built: 52
2.  Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed, by Jason L. Riley.
From Amazon blurb:  Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries?  Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding black Americans back.  …  In theory these efforts are intended to help the poor—and poor minorities in particular. In practice they become massive barriers to moving forward.
Data now shows the same for poor whites.
3.  Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, by John H. McWhorter.
      From Amazon blurb:  Berkeley linguistics professor John McWhorter, born at the dawn of the post-Civil Rights era, spent years trying to make sense of this question. Now he dares to say the unsayable: racism's ugliest legacy is the disease of defeatism that has infected black America. Losing the Race explores the three main components of this cultural virus: the cults of victimology, separatism, and antiintellectualism that are making blacks their own worst enemies in the struggle for success.

4. The Minneaolis Story Through My Eyes, by Ron Edwards as told to Peter Jessen. It is an introductory "how to and what to do" manual for action steps to take, all summarized in Chapter 17: The Positive Future Possibilities for Minneapolis.

See also our Solution Paper 44, Guidelines for Including Justice in Planning Meetings to Calculate a Better Future for Minneapolis in terms of education, jobs, housing and public safety, which also includes Interlude 16: Calculating a Better Future For All, with excerpts from Chapter 17.

The book is also the base of 44 Solution Papers, with three more in the works.

PREVIEW: Looking back to When Blacks made it work in Minneapolis:  excerpt from next week’s column of August 4, 2015:   As Insight News wrote, February 19, 2015,  [our Minneapolis Urban League] formed “a highly effective advocacy and civic change movement,” being “civil rights freedom fighters [who] formed the core leadership group of the legendary Minneapolis Urban League Board of Directors” that “in the mid-1970s, gave rise to the MUL national reputation as audacious, relentless, progressive and effective.”

 When will we get a group like that in Minneapolis for the 21st century?


February 19 Column Prophecy is being fulfilled. More summer violence. Home invasion. Brutal slaying.

Thursday, July 16, 2015
Drafted 12:40 p.m.
Posted 11:57 p.m.

We have said for years that plans are needed that are then carried out, if "long hot summers" are to be avoided.

Our most recent warning: February 19, 2015 column (reprinted below): Preparation for a ‘safe’ summer. Black ‘leaders’ work on a plan to reduce crime. Will the community be left out again?

The Mayor will give a speech in the City Hall Rotunda at 3:30 pm this afternoon. What else will she do? We hope she announces support for gettng plans develped and executed to curb violence on our streets and to curb home invasions.

Three questions:

1. When will Minneapolis get a plan?
2. Will it be white top down or colaboratively
developed in concert with all leadership groups from all community sectors, public, private, and government?
3. What about white and blacks working together? We address this in the column submitted for next week, to be published here and in the Minneapolis Spokesman Recorder, July 23,2015.

Latest figures, Added 7-16-15, 11:15 p.m.
North Minneapolis artist, activist killed during suspected home invasion,

Star Tribune and KSTP, 7-16-15:
--- 26 homicides, 2015 to date
--- 111 nonfatal shootings, 2015 to date
--- 26 shootings, in 2 weeks ending July 13
--- 8 shootings in one hour, July 4, 2015
--- 2 more shootings, July 16
--- 2/3 of shootings on North Side

RE-PRINTING of February, 19, 2015 column: Preparation for a ‘safe’ summer. Black ‘leaders’ work on a plan to reduce crime. Will the community be left out again?

Pull quote: The DOJ wants to know how the African American organizations spent the millions of dollars poured into their organizations.

“Leadership’s” annual empty rite for summer begins: “planning” for community summer safety, with the opposite of “community” in play, claiming the solution demands more money for planning and planners, leaving little for community people and streets, betraying Martin Luther King, Jr.’s concept of involved community.

Why is leadership concerned now when earlier they would not sit down with Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) Chief Janeé Harteau to discuss her goals? Almost two years ago, Chief Harteau asked the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to examine the MPD’s oversight, discipline and preventing of misconduct, resulting in two reports. Dr. Ellen Scrivner, Ph.D., ABPP, was on the core team of both:

· 2014: The DOJ Diagnostic Center presented assessment findings to MPD and the broader Minneapolis community in October 2014.
· 2015: The current report, Diagnostic Analysis of Minneapolis Police Department, was released January 28, 2015.

“Leadership,” fearing diagnostic analysis, asked Governor Mark Dayton five months ago for significant funding for themselves, claiming that more funding would guarantee success in the war on violence. Some of the ecumenical leadership also wanted the MPD placed in Federal Receivership. Why? Is there something “leadership” isn’t doing for community that they don’t want exposed?

They need to pay attention to the recommendations in the January 28, 2015, diagnostic analysis report. Chief Harteau has embraced all of its recommendations. Why can’t they? Its steering committee has five subcommittees reporting to it:

· Communications
· Conduct and oversight
· Community relations
· Early Intervention System (EIS)
· Coaching

The MPD has received praise for its positive response to the recommendations. So why does “leadership” remain so negative and cynical?

“Leadership” too often misses that “community” means engaging those living in the community. Instead, “leadership” asks for more funding for themselves to do planning but little for the community.

The DOJ Office of Justice Programs has reviewed volumes of data, information, recommendations, and conclusions. The MPD will be doing everything asked for.

One of the areas of concern is analysis of where the millions of dollars went that were awarded, granted or paid to African American organizations and individuals to plan for the safety of the African American community. The DOJ wants to know how the African American organizations spent the millions of dollars poured into their organizations.

When Chief Harteau asked for assistance, she indicated she expected African Americans would be in the forefront of critiquing and evaluating how the millions of dollars were spent. Now they will get their chance.

There is displeasure in some African American organizations. They don’t want to be audited, reviewed and critiqued. They reflect what African American Professor John McWhorter calls in the subtitle of his book Losing the Race, “Self-Sabotage in Black America. For 15 years, some of these organizations and individuals have claimed their leadership would make the community safe. Ask yourselves this: Have they?

The yearly empty summer rite discussing how to keep the African American community safe is reflected in “leadership’s” claim that they can reduce violence in the spring of 2015. All involved regarding the summer planning would do well to review the five years of reports by the Police Community Relations Council (PCRC).
[Editor's note: Ron served on the Council] Newcomers to the public safety scene in the Twin Cities are especially urged to familiarize themselves with the PCRC work so they can bring themselves up to speed with factual information consistent with the factual events in the Twin Cities and throughout the State of Minnesota.

The subcommittees are already at work on phase one, which will end making recommendations for phase two. We look forward to successful implementation of recommended actions.

Stay tuned.


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

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

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