Ed Felien wrote: My concern is that Somali participants at the meeting felt disenfranchised
Tom sez: But Ed, you've ignored Robinson Cook's (African American member of the Ventura Village board) message, which was this: "I can say with confidence that at least 85%-90% of the Somali's attending were given voting cards. Furthermore, there was a professional Somali interpreter standing in front to relay EVERY word, move, motion and joke that was said at the meeting. On top of all this, we took a 15 minute break at 8:30 so the Somali members could do an evening prayer." So, if Somalians felt disenfranchised, it was because of the disinformation fed to them by Basam Sabri prior to the meeting; that has consistently been Basam's preferred mode of operation. Jim Graham hit the nail on the head. The other piece of Basam's strategy is to "employ" the services of naive but well meaning liberals who desperately want to believe he is doing something wonderful for disenfranchised new immigrants, despite the ugly truth. Basam has an interesting strategy - take over neighborhood groups illegally to provide a rubber stamp for his projects which then makes his projects seem acceptable (on the suface) to political leaders and civil servants and opens the door to public money and preferential treatment. Basically, he uses people's naiveity to create un-earned good will for himself and his projects. As far as I know, Basam is the only local developer that employs these strategies and that puts him in a very different category than any other developer regardless of size or ability. If that's all there were to it, it would be bad enough. Unfortunately Basam leaves a wake of bodies and destruction in his path that leaves struggling neighborhoods limping for years to come. I too, hope that eventually the city attorney, county attorney, state attorney general, and US attorney will catch up with him. Tom Welling CARAG _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web! TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
