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While running for office every person who won
election in the City promised to protect NRP and continue "empowerment" of the
neighborhoods. Well guess what folks, people believed you and voted for
you on that basis. Also guess what, people remember those promises and are
mad about the direction the City is going.
This was very,VERY clear at tonight's NRP policy
board elections. People used their moral outrage as a litmus test of who
got elected or not. Those people who were the most outraged, or most willing to
vent it, usually got elected. If the City election were next month many of
our elected officials and possibly one of the most popular mayors in history
(for 180 days) might lose their jobs.
Carol Pass, myself and others from the Re-Direction
Neighborhoods talked about what could have gone wrong. We
reminisced about meetings where RT asked for
our help and advice, and asked us to keep reminding him of why we elected him.
That it was our job he said, to keep him serving the people and making
Minneapolis as great a City as it could be. Well RT, I like you, and I take my
"JOB" serious. So here goes.
RT, you need to stop listening to that pack of
development people you have and get back to listening to neighborhood people.
Listen to the people and trust what they say. Absolutely do not let your
Non-Profit Developer buddies try to translate what the people are saying to you.
These are the people who are great at planning for the catastrophe that happened
last year, when ever you ask them. They do not have a clue to what is happening
right now or even an awareness of the problems today are going to cause next
year. For them there is no next year, there is only the fund raising for
this year. Their answers are almost always to give them the money and take power
away from those pesky neighborhoods full of people less smart and not nearly as
sophisticated as them. They advise taking NRP and letting "downtown" and
"Citywide" planning decide where and how to spend it. Of course they being
NON-Profit, they are the only ones who can faithfully tell you where that is.
Like the old Carney said, "You been sold something. I just ain't sure what it
is."
RT, you are being isolated from the very people who
can advise you about the people, namely the people. RT and the
Council, please pause for a minute and think about who helped you to
get there, and also who trusted you to make good on promises of
"Neighborhood" empowerment and inclusion. Also you should think about
something as simple as housing . How sound, and in touch with reality, can
your advisers be if they allowed affordable housing to be so compromised that
the very neighborhoods that once lobbied for it, stand prepared to unite to
fight City Hall about it. How could you possibly be convinced that "Affordable
Housing" and "Supportive Housing" were the same? How could you possibly be
hoodwinked into continuing the pattern of discrimination against poor people and
poor neighborhoods? Have any of you thought about where the terms
"Concentrated" and "Impacted" came from and their meaning when applied to
neighborhoods?
There are now new organizing meetings of the very
same people who once met with optimism to support these candidates. Only now the
meetings are about how to oppose the misguided steps that might be
taken. The meetings are now about how to mutually protect the
Neighborhood's control of NRP from attempts to take the control of the money
"downtown". How to keep Non-profits from using their political power to
force or stuff things into our neighborhoods that private business would
never be allowed to do? "Arbitrary" and "Capricious" application of City
ordinances comes to mind?
NRP empowered the neighborhoods, and like it or not
an empowered people are like the Jinn and the bottle. Once let out, it is
almost impossible to get back in. The last Mayor and some City Council
members found that out in the last election. Believe it or not, but the election
of RT and the present council was also part of that empowerment. The people
realized that they could throw very powerful politicians out of office if
those politicians tried to take their power (and NRP), away. Having tested
that power successfully, some are not satisfied to allow the people they elected
to remove the yoke to then now reapply it to their necks. So pun absolutely
intended, the yoke is on the politicians if they think so.
Watching today's Council meeting on the tube I was
struck by the sincere efforts of some council people to keep their promises to
value input from the residents of Minneapolis. Good going . Isn't it
rewarding to have the support of your fellow residents who elected you? Ah, but
don't worry. A lot of us have good memories and take our "jobs" serious,
so we are going to keep "Helping" you do a better job.
Watching today's NRP election I was struck by a
wave of optimism, these people are empowered and are willing to fight to keep
empowered. Cities nationwide are envious of the "Critical Planning" that
came from the Minneapolis NRP, and the involvement of the people in that
process. Empowered neighborhoods are the goose that laid that golden egg.
But don't worry, when you screw up and try to cook that tough old bird you are
going to hear and see some powerful squawking and fighting. Might be mighty
stringy meat, and hard for your non-profit advisors to digest.
Jim Graham,
Ventura Village
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