The only problem with the meeting Liz talks about, if there was one, was
that they did not bother telling the people around the Park. Did not bother
notifying the official neighborhood organizations.
This IS NOT the meeting that community activists have recently demanded, I
can assure everyone. Such a meeting without proper notification is a sick
joke on behalf of the Park Board and shows how out of touch they might be.
I have to laugh about the idea of the Indian Community in Minneapolis having
the power to make political demands in 1970. At least ones taken seriously
by the then powers that were. I can not imagine a more discriminated
against group of people than Indian people at that time. I believe that was
during that time that AIM was being organized and attempting to stop the
Minneapolis police department from regularly beating Indian People on
Franklin Avenue. Funny, at the time you did have a liquor store that
"gifts" (some might call them bribes) were given to politicians in order to
get located on that Park. The Neighborhood only a few years earlier had
supported displacing two City blocks of housing to get the northern Half of
that Peavey Park. One of the displaced houses was moved to, and now sits,
across the alley from my own house.
It took another twenty years to get the Minneapolis City Council to
appropriate the funds to get the liquor store off of Peavey Park. In fact
the Council did it two different years. One years appropriation got raided
for tot lots in more affluent neighborhood parks. I believe Steve Crammer
started that political mugging. Finally in 1987 the City Council officially
appropriated the funds for closing that liquor store. I believe I still
have a copy of that City Council action.
The sad thing is that even though voting on the action, and the
appropriation, the City eventually, and illegally, used NRP dollars to buy
and close that liquor store. Illegal because the City was not allowed to
use NRP dollars to replace funding that it was already allocating. But then
Mayor Rybak did the same with Police needs for political cover. Instead of
adequately financing public safety Rybak forced neighborhoods to allow him
to raid the NRP dollars, or have even more unsafe neighborhoods.
The Park has cost my neighborhood two blocks of housing, twenty years of
problems, and well over a million dollars. It would seem that the FIRST
people to be notified of its closing would be us. Instead we learned months
later from fired employees that the Park was being closed.
-----------------------------------
On another post by Barb Lickness.
So the Sabri family organization is supporting RT Rybak? As Gomer use to
say--- Surprise, Surprise, Surprise! Apparently the Basim Sabri
organization believes in paying some of their debts even if Basim is away on
vacation at the Gray Bar Hotel. And RT's folks talk about "Ethics" and
"Clean Politics"? Apparently "Clean Politics" means getting clean away with
it. Of course maybe it is just definition. Sabri does not do business WITH
the City. He doesn't have to, he buys the politicians!
Jim Graham,
Ventura Village
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