For many years the City of Minneapolis played an active role in systematically driving blacks out of the better jobs, the better neighborhoods, and the better neighborhood schools, and keeping them out. But the City has done next to nothing to combat the pattern of race-based discrimination that continues to concentrate black people and poverty in certain neighborhoods.
The Hollman settlement isn't a remedy for concentrated poverty, it's a scam that provides the necessary legal cover for a billion dollar land grab by private developers with support from the City and HUD. The plaintiffs, Legal Aid and the NAACP also play a supportive role by keeping quiet and allowing bad things to happen to the people who they claimed to represent. The NAACP received a six figure cash reward, supposedly to help defray costs involved with monitoring the implementation of the agreement, but that money was really hush money. Leola Seals was the only NAACP branch president (1997 to May 1999) who raised hell about the city tearing down public housing units and not replacing them, and for sitting on a pile of section 8 vouchers. Back in 1999 Northside Neighbors for Justice attempted to preserve and repopulate about 150 dwelling units in the Glenwood project through protests and direct action (blocking bulldozers). The City had already torn down about 800 dwelling units in and next door to the Sumner-Olsen-Glenwood-Lyndale projects that straddle Olsen Highway on the near North side, but fewer than 50 of the replacement units were under construction or ready to occupy at the time. NNJ raised the demand to rehab and repopulate the buildings that were still standing in the Glenwood project until the city replaced the dwelling units it had already tore down. Ricky Campbell, who replaced Seals as the Minneapolis NAACP branch president, and his supporters on the Branch executive committee (the executive committee majority) endorsed NNJ's demand on the city to rehab and repopulate existing Glenwood housing units, but did not accuse the city of violating the Hollman Consent Decree by failing to replace the housing units. Instead, the NAACP went into court with the argument that the Court should order the city to stop the eviction-demolition process at Glenwood due to changing economic circumstances. Judge Rosenbloom denied the NAACP's motion, saying that he would have considered approving the NAACP motion if the NAACP had alleged that the city had violated the Consent Decree and that approval of its motion would give the city a strong incentive to fulfill its obligations to the class represented by the NAACP with respect to the replacement housing. And last month (August 2003) at a meeting immediately preceding the monthly branch membership meeting, the current Minneapolis NAACP branch president, Albert Gallmon read a letter from the branch's local Hollman attorney, Tom White requesting authorization from the branch to go to court to do what the city attorney tells them to do about violations of the Hollman Consent Decree committed by the city, specifically the city's failure to build the 38 public housing units and 18 other units for poor people at the Heritage Park development (formerly the Sumner-Olsen-Glenwood-Lyndale projects) as well as public housing units at other sites within the city limits. The NAACP can and should go to court with a motion for sanctions against the city for violating the Hollman Consent Decree that will create a strong incentive for the city to quickly build all of the housing units it agreed to build. See "The Fight Against Urban Cleansing and Gentrification in Minneapolis" http://educationright.tripod.com/id41.htm -Doug Mann Soon to publish a pamphlet entitled "Flight from Equality: School reform in the US since 1983" In a message dated 9/5/2003 8:08:28 AM Central Daylight Time, Jim Graham writes: > 2. The Hollman Decree: > Someone at the "City" needs to start remembering the purpose of the Hollman > Decree. The Decree was to end a pattern of discrimination against poor > people of color. The City of Minneapolis had engaged in a pattern of > behavior that was detrimental to minority people by concentrating poverty > and public housing in areas that were primarily poor and Black. Some people > seem to conveniently forget this and complain about the cost. The cost of > Hollman was the cost of the City of Minneapolis discriminating against poor > people of color. Tearing Hollman down and paying for new housing was > mitigation for years of discrimination against communities and individuals > of color. REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. ________________________________ 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
