Eva Young wrote:
Neal St Anthony's ... piece on the Colin Powell Youth Center: >From
the article:
John Turnipseed, once a south Minneapolis street criminal and derelict
father, couldn't believe he was introducing one of America's
best-known statesmen and most-admired leaders. "I don't want my story
replicated," said Turnipseed, who now counsels teens and dads on the
virtues of education, work and generational accountability. "I grew up
in a family that created the Bloods street gang around here. We cost
the state a lot of money," he said. "Now we're fixing men here."
This is the most important part of St. Anthony's piece. John Turnipseed
is related to the Fergusons of which I wrote. John and Reggie and
Abdul, Cory Bird, and whoever and whoever put the Rolling 30s Bloods
Gang together in 3033 Portland Ave. So. I lived next door at 3029
Portland during that year. I picked bullets out of the garage. I dialed
911 a zillion times. My building was kept up nights with the noise,
ducking bullets, picking up trash, getting no sleep and being scared all
the damn time.
Whether Urban Ventures changed John's mind about his own behavior, or
Colin Powell Center or Madd Dads or Christ or Mohammed or God Itself
doesn't make a nickel's worth of difference. The sine qua non is that
John's behavior has changed for the better. John and I can now sit and
talk. He's acknowledged publicly on several occasions that he was a
rotter of the first order and that it was nothing to be proud of and
that he has changed that behavior. If the man had done it by standing on
his head and intoning "Ooohhhmmmmm" for six months and that had worked,
or become a Sufi Dervish then I'm all for it. I wanted a change in
John's behavior and that of every one of the 37 people (that's a real
count) who lived in that triplex and created the Bloods. I testified to
the city council about that house and the neighbors from hell.
By the time you moved into this neighborhood, Eva Young, much of the
mess had been moved away and, due to vigilance by neighbors, enormous
help from CCP/SAFE (Brian Herron and Off. Steve Revoir, inspections,
landlords, Mike Green (ret. MPD Sgt.) et.al., several people went to
prison. Those of us who lived through it do see a certain value in the
Powell Center if it can change the way families and their young people
respect themselves and others and don't even want to go down the
criminal clan path.
Hats off to the sharp investors in the Colin Powell Center. The return
on this investment will be incalculable in saved lives and benefits to
community and country.
This is the second most important point. These investors are not the
rabid Christian right and I, for one in this neighborhood, am grateful
to them if they are putting their money into making a real, solid,
reliable life for the kids around here a possibility. If I have to
sacrifice the possibility, not actuality, but possibility, that they
will grow up and be raging homophobes, I won't like it. But so long as
they aren't shooting people, stealing things, failing to support their
children, having jobs, then so be it.
Eva again:
Art Erickson, who is President of UV has a long history of anti-gay
activity in the neighborhood. City Pages covered some of this in 1996: ...
Wizard:
City Pages did not cover any anti-gay activity in the article you cite
(addy below). They got quotes from Joe Olsen, then Lilligren's life
partner, Lilligren, and David Piehl. They talked about UV pushiing out
Selwin Ortega and stopping MeGusta from being able to expand. The man
from MeGusta told me that it was Ortega who wouldn't let go of the lease
so that Me Gusta could expand.
However, the group who sat in on the meetings during which the Oz Plan
was created, also from the neighborhood, largely AfAm., had input. That
Piehl chose not to sit on that committee, then vilified its members and
results is typical. The committee included Clifford Lockett and his son,
Steve Washington, James Walker, and others. They did want a hotel on
Second Av. or very close by anyway. Once or twice I sat in on the
meetings. Piehl's allegations that UV hid the plan from him and others
is bogus.
They also quoted John Hustad who lives in near proximity to Park Av.
Methodist as having had a few go rounds with Art and who did not like
having Soulebration half a block away from his house. It was loud for a
week every year. Other people, who also lived around Park Av. Meth., but
who were members of the church, didn't have much problem with the
festival. Park Av. members and non-members are about a 50-50 split
around the church. It got to be a big festival very quickly and needed
to move or have parts of it taken indoors. I'm not sure, but I don't
think it's such a problem anymore. The church enlarged by twice it's
original size just a couple years ago.
http://citypages.com/databank/17/833/article3085.asp
While it is clear that Erickson and Bruins are adept fund-raisers,
critics maintain that their roles as supposed leaders in the community
is suspect. Although Erickson maintains he had a successful run at
Park Avenue Methodist, others claim that his leadership style is
contentious and precluded his working with other strong personalities.
"We were never able to develop any leadership under him," says a Park
Avenue parishioner. "Any strong leaders left as he demanded to hold
the reins."
It's true that Art's a one-man band. Art's Art. End of story. He's been
here 38 years, he's just built a new house. He's not leaving. That Park
Av. might want a change of style in their leadership is one fact of life
that has been left out of all the gossip. Art and Park Av. parted with
acrimony. This isn't a particularly unusual scenario. When the new
minister moved in, he wanted his own team. Apparently, from his
perspective, Art wouldn't fit. Such is life. Churches have political
stuff to hash out too.
A neighbor of the church, John Hustad, says that while he
was not a congregant, he nonetheless butted heads with Erickson on a
number of occasions. According to Hustad, the church held an annual
festival called "Soulebration," and the ensuing crowds and noise
wreaked havoc on the neighborhood. "City ordinances state that these
kinds of events can't run more than three nights, but this event would
run for seven. The noise was unbelievable, there was trash everywhere,
and parking was a nightmare," he says. What was most galling, he
contends, were the messages disseminated by festival speakers. "Some
of them were extremely inflammatory. They were against certain
minorities--specifically gays. I resented having religious messages
beamed down my throat night after night," he says.
Yes, they were, some of them, and no doubt they still are. From my
perspective, not that many religious groups of whatever stripe have a
very positive track record with GLBT people. During the era of which you
speak, and maybe today, the old line Methodist Church, of which Park Av.
is but one practitioner, with all its collective face muscles frowned
down from on high at all GLBT people. I'm not excusing their behavior,
but there is nothing we can do about the cant put out by various
religions, its the members who have to change that.
The Urban Ventures website is here:
http://www.urbanventures.org/
I read their site. Their goals are excellent if we're talking about
children from criminal families and immigrant families and kids who need
another mentor. I'm not into faith based, but I do have to admit that I
grew up in a faith-based neighborhood much bigger than Phillips that was
tight as a tick and much of how it influenced me was not a bad thing.
That various religions are wrong about how much more important they are
to god and how they therefore get to judge everyone who doesn't live up
to the standards of their religion is, of course, so much malarky, no
matter which of those cults, ancient or modern, we might cite.
Colin Powell Center website is here:
http://www.colinpowellcenter.org/index2.html
This site says, right up front, that it does not discriminate on the
basis of sexual preference. Until you have evidence that they do
discriminate, it's a fear, not a certainty.
I'm not happy, of course, that anyone is jumping on the Bachman
bandwagon. Beating people over the head with one's superiority complex,
as that amendment does, is disgraceful. Making outrageous and totally
insupportable statements, as Bachman has been noted doing, is pathetic.
I'd bet the woman goes to her grave insisting that her view IS reality
and anyone else's view is a sin and a shame. That she doesn't know her
fanny from her elbow and looks the fool with the stuff she spouts is
nothing we can change. Convince her constituents not to vote for her.
I need some real proof. The question I ask is this: can you, Eva Young,
find one person in Central or Phillips who can come on this list and say
honestly that Art Erickson was ever any less than civil to them? (Mind
you, they have to have been behaving civilly themselves at the time.)
One of the gossip items which supposedly proved that Art was homophobic
and noisy about it was that Art had frowned on a next door neighbor who
was sitting in her yard sobbing while he had a garden party going on
across the hedge. She interpreted this as his homophobia. I don't.
Personally, I don't know whether Art is homophobic or not. He certainly
has not treated me to any version of that sort of stuff and I've known
him for over 15 years. He honks me off, but then, so do a lot of other
people on occasions.
WizardMarks, Central
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