Racism and retaliation at the Minneapolis Park Board

By Al Flowers
Guest Commentator

First, the Minneapolis Park Board offends by suggesting that a dog run be installed at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park in South Minneapolis. The board then added further insult to injury when they took the issue to public hearings.

After African American seniors organized and fought, morality finally won out. There will be no dog run at King Park. Strike one.

Imagine Professor Mahmoud El-Kati telling the history of dogs and civil rights, or the senior who walked to the meeting in the frigid cold, or Mother Liz Samuels singing “We Shall Overcome.” Some could not see the racism (or at least blindness) and immorality in the very proposition to put a dog run at King Park, so the Elders went to remind them.

Seems that the Park Board didn’t like it. Under Superintendent Jayne Miller and Commissioner (Chair) John Erwin, Blacks and other people of color can forget it. Remember the dog run at King Park, and then add this: Of all of the people who report directly to the superintendent, only one is Black. He is also the only one of all her direct reporters working without a contract.
Corky Wiseman has been working at the Park Board for more than 20 years. He started as a volunteer to get access to the Park Board and to learn how it worked. Corky worked his way up to the job just below the superintendent, with good reviews every year and promotions from his many superintendent bosses. (You can imagine how many bosses a person has over 20 years.)
Now Corky Wiseman is the only one without a contract. Strike two.

Economic segregation continues to plague Blacks today, and too many of our communities reflect the realities of our economic starvation — failing schools, low rates of employment, few healthy businesses, you get it. So it is never a surprise when one of the strategies people employ (when using racism as a weapon) is taking away your livelihood.

Sadly, no surprise to us, this is what is literally happening at the Park Board. Within six months, diversity in the Park Board system has plunged from a (miserable) 16 percent to just three percent. You are probably asking yourself, “Did I read it right?” Six months.

Anyone who believes this to be a) an accident, b) the majority of the people decided to mess up on their jobs at the same time, so it’s their fault, or c) this is not evidence of the intentional practice of racism, I say you might want to see a doctor for that. Strike three.

If this were a game of baseball, the batter would be out. I say in this game, batter up! We must begin to look into these practices, and we must learn not to accept them as a reality of living inside a racist society, a society both too sick to admit its disease and too blind to see it.

We can’t take our eyes off of it for a minute, or dogs will be running wild at King Park. What, then, of the blood of Crispus Attucks, King, Malcolm and Medgar, or for that matter, Oscar Grant? What of the price they have already paid?

We must follow the lead of our Elders. We need to organize, to put the experts from our communities into the rooms where the decisions are being made that directly impact our freedoms. You would think that after all we have contributed to building America, we would have the right to work!

I believe the story of the poor but happy man, at least on this earth, is a myth. It’s hard to be happy when you’re broke. When you’re broke, it usually means you’re hungry, thirsty, and in need of better employment. That’s not a lot to be happy about. Economic segregation continues to be an effective strategy against Blacks and other people of color, and the practices of the Minneapolis Park Board provide yet further evidence that the practice is alive right here at home.

Superintendent Mary Miller and Commissioner John Erwin, we see what is happening and we do not intend to allow it to continue. Mother Liz Samuels passed away just a few months after the King Park victory, fighting to almost her last breath. Professor Mahmoud was a soldier, with great dignity, retelling stories of injustice and death — not stories he heard, but stories he has lived.

I will not allow their sacrifice to be for nothing.

You can find a list of the current Park Commissioners on the Internet at www.minneapolisparks.org.

Twin Cities activist Al Flowers lives in Minneapolis.