Some considered his remarks to the City Council ‘threatening’
Tensions boiled over at a recent Minneapolis City Council meeting revealing the deep frustrations that have been building in the community over what many feel is an unresponsive government.
Council Member Robin Wonsley accused a local pastor of making threatening remarks after a heated disruption during a committee meeting earlier this month. The incident is a stark reminder of the consequences when a community’s calls for change go unanswered.
The controversy sparked following a proposal to transfer $1.25M in violence prevention funding to Hennepin County following the resignation of former Neighborhood Safety Director Luana Nelson-Brown, which was announced on January 25.
The transfer proposal was approved by the Minneapolis City Council Budget Committee, with members, including President Elliott Payne, expressing a lack of confidence in the city’s management of violence prevention programs and believing the county should take over administering these efforts for the remainder of the year.
City Council members argue that mismanagement in the Neighborhood Safety Department has led to inadequate services for at-risk individuals. They’ve said the goal of the proposal is to improve the effectiveness of violence prevention and ensure high-risk individuals receive necessary services.
Rev. Jerry McAfee, a longtime activist and founder of the “21 Days of Peace” violence prevention group, disrupted the budget committee hearing held on February 10. The meeting was focused on violence prevention funding, but the council’s discussions around potentially moving policing alternatives under the umbrella of Hennepin County sparked a reaction from McAfee He says he has been pushing for more direct action to curb violence in the community and distrusts the intentions behind this decision.
“I was just serving food to the community yesterday in [North Minneapolis] where young women and men are strung out on fentanyl,” shared McAfee during a follow up with MSR on February 26. “The city is so disconnected from what’s really going on in this [North Minneapolis] community.”
McAfee, who says he has spent decades in the fight for safer neighborhoods, accused the council members of ignoring his calls for collaboration. “I’ve been fighting for 30-some years to keep everyone safe, and they’re ignoring me?” McAfee said. “When the people in the streets feel like nothing is changing, this is what happens.”
As McAfee shouted his concerns on Feb. 10, the conversation turned ugly. His accusations of corruption and failure to act were met with escalating responses from council members. At one point, Council Member Wonsley casually ate an apple as the argument unfolded. McAfee’s frustrations led to inflammatory comments, including antagonistic remarks toward Council Member Jason Chavez and accusations of corruption directed at Wonsley.
During a follow-up with MSR, McAfee says he feels Nelson-Brown has built a solid database to measure and manage violence prevention efforts, an action he says should have been implemented long ago. McAfee says this raises the question of how hundreds of thousands of funds were formerly used. He worries of continued corruption in transferring such a large amount of funds from a community who has yet to see sustainable benefit from those resources, sharing with MSR that he wonders why the Council is “going backwards.”
Nelson-Brown, who led the Neighborhood Safety Department for a year and a half and has been held responsible for the council’s lost faith, has been very vocal publicly about seeing the city department as a “broken system ripe for corruption” due to lack of transparency, tracking, and deliverance with funded contracts. She says she tried to address the issue but lacked council support.
“My priority was very much focused on fiscal accountability because the biggest deficits were in that area,” said Nelson-Brown. “The council’s priorities were focused on services. I eventually decided to resign, as I felt despite it being a solvable issue, it could not be solved as a secondary priority.”
Nelson-Brown said she is now working as the head of advocacy and victim support for the city’s new Office of Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls, where she says she looks forward to humanizing Black women.
Ultimately, if the full council approves the budget committee’s proposal to transfer the lump sum of funding from the city to the county, they also transfer control over how those funds are spent and spread the resources over a wider range of communities. If there are misaligned priorities between the city and county, unserved communities like McAfee’s grounds, North Minneapolis, where crime is increasingly high—are risked with higher rates of unmet needs.
Wonsley has stated that security measures are in place for future council meetings. But the real question is how city leadership will confront the desperation for meaningful, lasting change.
Will this transfer proposed by the budget committee genuinely address the needs of the people — particularly those in the most vulnerable communities? Or will the cycle of frustration, disruption, and, eventually, conflict continue?
McAfee says this is what happens when promises of change remain unfulfilled: The community becomes disillusioned, voices rise in anger, and trust in leadership fades.
Jasmine McBride welcomes reader responses at jmcbride@spokesman-recorder.com.