Local & State

A partnership of local organizations led by Voices for Racial Justice is developing a first-ever “community led” racial equity report card for Minneapolis city government, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, and Minneapolis Public Schools.

More than 500 people gathered at the Brooklyn United Methodist Church in Brooklyn Center on Sunday, December 19 to bid farewell to the late Henry McCabe.

“The year 2007, I went through a divorce, foreclosure and bankruptcy,” said Roc Anderson. Fast-forward nine years and Anderson is now the owner of Frontier Transportation.

In November of 2015, just before the Thanksgiving holiday, Dr. Louis Porter II began working as the new executive director of the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage (CMAH), formerly known as the Council on Black Minnesotans.

You can literally count on one hand — with a finger or two left over — the number of actors of color who characteristically grace the Theatre in the Round Players stage in any given season.

More than 92 percent of contracts go to White women
To receive federal money, each state’s transportation departments must set a statewide three-year goal for small businesses owned by Blacks, other people of color, and women on federal-funded transportation projects.

Sigma Phi Epsilon at the University of Minnesota may not have a house dad, but it has had the next best thing, Chef Aloma Gibson.

There is nothing as effective as ingenuity, which is why a surefire way to success is, as the old saw goes, to build a better mousetrap. It’s the kind of thing that makes you say, “Why didn’t someone think of this before?”

The Minneapolis Urban League Board of Directors has announced that interim President and CEO Steven Belton has been selected as the permanent CEO of the nearly 90-year-old organization.

Eight weeks after late Minnesota Revenue auditor Henry McCabe’s body was found in Rush Lake waters, his family and African community leaders still wait for answers about the circumstances and cause of his death.

Did local media tell the whole story of the Jamar Clark shooting and its aftermath? An all-Black forum featuring representatives of both the community and local media discussed the coverage last week at the Minneapolis Urban League’s Northside headquarters, only a block west of the 18-day encampment outside the Fourth Precinct police station.

Twin Cities Black Journalists (TCBJ), the NABJ’s local chapter, sponsored the December 17 forum, which included the MSR, Insight News, the Star Tribune, Black Lives Matter (BLM) Minneapolis Organizer Adja Gildersleve, Shiloh Temple Pastor Bishop Richard Howell, and Minneapolis NAACP President Nekima Levy-Pounds. Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) News Senior Reporter Brandt Williams moderated.

On Saturday, December 12, Seward Co-op’s Friendship Store in Minneapolis hosted a community Kwanzaa Celebration with African drumming and dancing, stories and food and more.

An estimated 800-1,000 people showed up for a protest organized by Black Lives Matter Minneapolis (BLM) December 19.

A rather uncharitable, age-old joke goes, “What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea?” The punchline: “A good start.” Fortunately, you can’t prove that by Dr. Artika Tyner, attorney at law and author of The Lawyer as Leader: How to Plant People and Grow Justice (ABA Book Publishing). Tyner, in fact, is wholly committed to applying her profession to benefit society at large, the disenfranchised in specific.

Atypical as it may be of someone in her line of work, Dr. Tyner points out in an email interview, “History has shown us that lawyers have been at the forefront of social change movements.

Originally slated to start in July of 2016, newly named Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) superintendent Sergio Paez could assume his duties much sooner, pending negotiations. The school board last week voted 6-3 to hire Páez to succeed Bernadeia Johnson, who resigned in January.