Twin Cities Black institutions must be preserved

By Al Flowers
Guest Commentator

I didn’t need a tornado to tell me. Black people need Black institutions.

African Americans, the descendants of slaves, are unique in the world, teaches Professor El-Kati. We are one of a kind, with a shared experience unlike any other in the world, brought to the shores of what is now the “United States” only to build the wealth of a nation for nothing — no wages, but enslavement, lynching and rape until death.

Ah, but still we rise. Black institutions have always been necessary, although the lies that have been told for more than four centuries tell us that we are unable to solve our own problems, that we need someone else’s medication, someone else’s solution.

I ask myself, how can the oppressed and betrayed gain freedom if the only solutions they have come from the oppressor?

In our Twin Cities, our organizations have been struggling and in some cases dying, because the ideology of supremacy says so. The ideology tells us that we are past race now that we have a Black president, so we don’t need our own organizations. I say the ideology is a liar.
We have lost The City, Inc. — right from under our noses, it’s gone and our children displaced in the middle of a school year. In the blink of an eye, no more City, Inc.

The African American Adoption Agency has been under siege by government funders and now holds on by a thread. Still we are silent. I am urging us to pay attention, right now, before we lose any others.

Some believe that we should tear down our institutions because some of them lack effective leadership, or some of us have personal issues with the people in the organization. I say we should never yield what our ancestors have paid for in blood.

We should demand the right leadership. We should demand transparency and accountability, and if it isn’t there, we should not destroy the organization; we should rebuild it!

Do any of us really believe that if we allow our organizations to be closed, a state with as many disparities as ours will help us to build them back up? I think it was Malcolm X who told us that if they give it to you, they can take it away.

We don’t have many institutions left: the Minneapolis Urban League, the Minneapolis and St. Paul chapters of the NAACP, Phyllis Wheatley, the Oasis of Love, Turning Point, and African American Family Services. The St. Paul Urban League holds on by a thread. Not too many left.
Today, I want you to be thinking about African American Family Services (AAFS). What happened? The leader we have known for almost a decade is gone with no celebration of work, recognized for her service in a newspaper that few local Blacks even read.

Rumors abound about the likely merger between AAFS and a large White organization. Really? I see the same partnership that brought The City, Inc. to its knees now threatening our AAFS, a husband-and-wife combination with a deadly serious, long history of sewing less-than-good seeds in the Black community.

Destroyers, not builders, use secrets, lack transparency, and generally try to stay under the radar. So I ask, where is African American Family Services?

We need them now more than ever. The tornado that threatened our community only served to compound the mental challenges we already face from the vast enemy we fight together: racism. So I won’t let AAFS go the way of The City, Inc.

I want what we had — transparent leadership that was involved. A leader committed to the betterment of the Black community, to our healing, not the leadership of two people who left us more damaged and our institutions destroyed.

How long will we let them lead? How long will we assume that they will protect this critical institution? If it goes the way of The City, Inc., what will we have? What will we do? How do we think we will get it back?

Here’s what I say: I have spent my life as a community activist with the interests of us all over the benefit of one. I say to the leadership of AAFS, we are watching you. We know the process you used to destroy The City, Inc. and we will not let you take African American Family Services from us.

We should all be watching. More than watching, we should be demanding to know what is really going on. The employees should be watching. The community should be watching.
The Black community is awake, and we are no longer tolerating all the darkness and secrets of the Black “leadership” of the last 40 years. Our leaders are emerging speaking truth, delivering results and holding people accountable. We should demand no less of our Black agencies, because the only other solution available to us comes from the ideology that wounded us in the first place.

No, I won’t let them take AAFS. The question is, will you?

Al Flowers is a Twin Cities community activist.