The University of Minnesota football team held its annual Youth Day Out for more than 200 energized participants at TCF Bank Stadium last Thursday afternoon. Despite the warm weather the youth, ages 9-14, got the opportunity to interact with Gophers players and participate in football drills. The drills were followed by a meet-and-greet session in […]
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State’s Black middle class faces Extinction
By Charles Hallman Staff Writer Minnesota’s middle class has measurably diminished since the current Great Recession began. And the state’s Black middle class, according to authors of a new report just released, has all but disappeared. “The State of Minnesota’s Middle Class” was released June 15 by the local policy research organization Growth & Justice […]
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Sabathani Community Center faces big decisions in the year ahead
By Charles Hallman Staff Writer For 45 years, Sabathani Community Center has been a hub of resources and services. Once a junior high school on the corner of 38th Street and 3rd Avenue South, the center could become a new Hennepin County human services hub beginning early next year. “Clients on the South Side of […]
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Is another local Black institution at risk?
By Vickie Evans-Nash Contributing Writer Since 1975, African American Family Services (AAFS), which began with a focus on providing chemical health services, has expanded into providing culturally specific mental and behavioral health services, family services, and violence prevention in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas to people of African descent. Over the last few years […]
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Cuban Revolution failed to address race discrimination
By Dwight Hobbes Contributing Writer “Challenges of Race for the Cuban Revolution: The Perspectives of Two Afro-Cubans,” convened June 25 in South Minneapolis at Pillsbury House, offered a revealing look at the social fabric of America’s long-controversial neighbor to the south. Ninety miles off Florida’s coast, Cuba has been a subject national interest since Fidel […]
Posted inArts + Culture, News
This week’s spotlights June 30-July 6
• Illusion Theater 528 Hennepin Ave., Mpls., 612-339-4944 or www.illusiontheater.org July 14-17: No Place Called Home Kim Schultz portrays over a dozen resilient people who survived Saddam Hussein’s reign and the U.S. military intervention in Iraqu, and now have no place to call home. Amikaeyla Gaston performs the music for the show. Tickets are $15. […]
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Student film project shows light-rail’s effects on community
By Charles Hallman Staff Writer Gordon Parks High School, a year-round school in the St. Paul School District, serves students who prefer individual and small-group instruction. Principal Michael Thompson says 65 percent of its students are Black, 20 percent are Asian, “and [there are] a few White kids, Hispanic kids and Native American kids. Kids […]
Posted inOpinion
To resist, we must first know ourselves!
“A people without knowledge of their history and culture is like a tree without roots.” — Marcus Garvey In my eyes, the great Garvey was right on! Professor Mahmoud El-Kati teaches this, the Erasure Principle. Our Black history, traditions and language, our culture….our peoplehood, has been…erased. Even the history books in the finest educational institutions […]
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Tiger Woods gets a wake-up call
Well, well, well. Would ya looky here. Golf fans done went and got theyself a genuine, for real cutie-pie White boy to fawn over and don’t need wannbe Tiger Woods no more. Tiger Woods — Mr. Don’t Call Me Black because I’m 1/32nd this, 8/16th that, and two kajillionths the other thing — is no […]
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The Bible, slavery, freedom and same-sex relationships: part two
On my radio show or in my opinion column, a few people always want to bring up the old argument of the Bible promoting slavery to refute my argument using Bible verses against homosexual relationships. The Bible pushed freedom from slavery and providing methods towards survival. Nothing similar for same-sex relationships. Remember Moses? God did […]
Posted inHealth + Wellness
When adult problems overwhelm you, keep your mind on the children
As I was working on this month’s column, a tornado ripped through North Minneapolis. I saw drama unfold as our community came together helping those in need. I saw children who were displaced, probably confused and frightened. My mind immediately went to children in grandfamilies and foster homes, whose lives had already changed and changed […]
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Is Adam Dunn done?
Patience is a virtue, and Major League Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint. Having said that: The Twins, after losing five straight and being swept by the Milwaukee Brewers, are back in last place in the American League Central. Unless edged out by Twins All-Star Joe Mauer (who skipped the first two months of […]
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Boys’ basketball camp also trained game officials
If basketball players are often asked to work on their game during the off-season, why not basketball officials? Thirty officials worked Tubby Smith’s three-day boys’ basketball team camp at the University of Minnesota last week, including veterans and those newer to the profession. Nearly half the group was African American, many of them there to […]
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Barber Football Camp: a true example of giving back to the community
By Charles Hallman Staff Writer With their professional lives currently on hold due to their employers locking them out, brothers and NFL players Marion Barber III and Dominique Barber instead occupied their time recently not on the picket line but outside in the hot sun working with local kids. Around 160 elementary school-age kids and […]
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From Wirth’s Par 3 to Nordic Ski?
Gentrification: “to convert [an aging area in a city] into a more affluent middle-class neighborhood, as by remodeling dwellings, resulting in increased property values and in displacement of the poor.” — Webster’s Dictionary “[Ideas] both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is […]
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Netroots conference aims to build progressive movement
By Charles Hallman Staff Writer A former White House advisor says a new “hope and change” national movement is now needed, especially if President Barack Obama is reelected in 2012. “I’ve been all over this country this past year…and people are ready to stand up again to invest in this country,” Green for All founder […]
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Benefits raise funds for tornado victims
By Dwight Hobbes Contributing Writer One of the worst memories of Hurricane Katrina was the fiasco of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) days-late-and-dollars short response compounding the disaster. When a devastating tornado struck North Minneapolis May 22, concerned Twin Citians had no intention of sitting on their hands while the same inaction and ineptitude […]
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Race discrimination linked to anxiety
By Lateef D. Oseni Contributing Writer More than 30 years after the purported end of the Civil Rights Movement, some Black students at the University of Minnesota still experience a kind of “racial battle fatigue” from attending the predominantly White institution. “I’m discriminated against every day,” says Kenya Womack, a first-year student at the university. […]
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This week’s spotlights! June 23-29
Cedar Cultural Center 416 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls., 612-338-2674 or www.thecedar.org Fri., June 24, 8 pm: Group Doueh, with Food Pyramid Tickets are $18 in advance and $20 the day of show. Epic Event Center 110 N. 5th St., Mpls., 612-332-3742 or www.epicmpls.com Thurs., Jun. 30, 10 pm: Young Jeezy Tickets are $30 in advance; […]