Don Samuels is portraying the loss of homes to foreclosure by 5th Ward residents as one way to get rid of problem people. Samuels is quoted in a February 3, 2009 MinnPost feature article saying North Minneapolis, “the foreclosure crisis has improved the safety situation.”In the face of the foreclosures, the article says, “many problem property owners and their seedy renters are gone.”
New partnerships with community councils, revitalization efforts from developers and the opportunity to reform problem areas are also being touted as positive outcomes of the foreclosure crisis by Jeff Skrenes, housing director of Hawthorne Area Community Council, (HACC), according to the report by writers Karlee Weinmann and Andy Mannix.
But such sentiments represent “racism and classism at its worst,” said the Rev. Randolph Staten, co-chair of the Coalition of Black Churches and African American Leadership Summit. “It is outrageous and serious,” he said in a February 12, 2009 commentary to Insight News.“They see the pain of foreclosure as a blessing,” Staten charged.
Staten said he is communicating with Mayor R.T. Rybak, the Minneapolis City Council President, and other Council members asking them to publicly denounce Samuels’ statements.
Staten said the comments call to mind inflammatory statements of Republican Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker who said, in reference to the catastrophe of misery and pain visited on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
The Louisiana lawmaker backtracked following the national furor which questioned whether the 2005 comments suggested an appetite for ethnic cleansing…displacement of Blacks and the impoverished in New Orleans.
Samuels may have to backtrack as well to clean-up this and other published comments that denigrate and disparage the community and culture that put him in office. Samuels called people who are boisterous at public meetings “terrorists” and part of a “shaming trend that besmirches our public discourse and dishonors generations of efforts to build bridges.”
Samuels said a “seductive conclusion deduced from the dynamics of the Civil Rights Era politics,” meant “the reason the white power structure and White America conceded to Black demands of reasonable people like King, was the scary specter of the urban chaos which did play out, even in our city. Thus, over the years, many in the community have seen it useful to nurture a Boogeyman element in order to strengthen the persuasiveness of an argument, proposal or demand.”
“The technique of the Boogeyman has become standardized across the nation,” Samuels wrote in commentary posted at the Willard-Homewood neighborhood email list service.
Samuels said “White people are scared of few things more than being publicly called a racist.” And he said, “African Americans are afraid of few things more that being publicly identified as a sellout or Uncle Tom.”
Samuels said “the undomesticated Bogeyman” transforms his victims into benefactors when they concede to his demands.
Samuels comments came on the heels of the confrontation at the January 17 press conference in Jordan community called by Jordan Area Community Council board members who announced they were taking control of the organization from the elected directors and executive board and said they were firing Jerry Moore, the organization’s executive director. The press conference organizers called the Minneapolis Police to forcibly remove Al Flowers from the meeting.
Lawsuits challenging the legality of such actions were filed against Samuels and the directors by the current board executives include Chair E. B. Brown and Vice-chair, attorney Ben Myers.
Samuels also rankled Northside residents with similar disparaging gaffs early in his term of office when he said a solution to poor student performance would be to burn down North Community High School. That comment followed his ill-conceived and ill-received analysis of the advantages “house” negroes have over “field” negroes, references to the relationships between enslaved Africans during formal, legal slavery in the Americas.
Kenya McKnight, who recently announced she is running to be the 5th Ward alderman, said she is running for the office because the ward deserves a council member who respects this community.
“It is time to have someone in office who is in touch with the community and in touch with the history of the community,” she said in an interview with Insight News last week. “We have a lack of housing. A lot of people lost their homes through foreclosure. We lost many of our families already. A large portion of them were renters,” she said, challenging Samuels’ reference to families who lost their homes as “problem people.”
Dan Johnson, a businessman who has waged one campaign for elective office is also giving serious consideration to a run for the 5th Ward City Council seat. Johnson sought the DFL endorsement for House of Representatives District 58B in the last General Election and withdrew to unify delegate support for Bobby Champion, who succeeded in defeating incumbent Willie Dominguez for the legislative seat.
Johnson said the next 5th Ward Council Member has to be ready to meet with homeowners and renters, with workers and people who are looking for work, and with the youth to work on “readiness” issues. “Let’s find what’s holding people back and help them remove the barriers to living successfully and productively in our community,” he said. “The council member has to make sure African American businesses and agencies get their fair share of resources coming to our city. It’s not that difficult.”
McKnight and Johnson may be joined in seeking to replace Samuels by other Northside residents who have multi-generational family presence in North Minneapolis. Hakim Propes, a hip-hop generation entrepreneur who owns a barber business and a lawn and snow removal business, and Kevin Lacy, whose family pioneered in the heating business with Lacy & Sons, and All-American Heating & Plumbing, both say they may test the political waters because they believe North Minneapolis is ready for a change.
James Everette, a community organizer who created the Sub-Zero Collective to mobilize young people and young voters said he may be a candidate as well.
Traditional politicians may be counting on low participation by Black people in upcoming DFL precinct caucuses and endorsing conventions that lead to selection of the DFL candidate for the city council seat. Lack of interest and involvement by voters generally works to the advantage of the incumbent. But coming off the euphoria and successes of the Barack Obama presidential campaign, Northside’s Black voters may just still have “change you can count on” in their minds and turn out in unprecedented numbers to get the kind of representation they want at City Hall.
