Own land; own community

By Al McFarlane Editor

Excerpts from Conversations with Al McFarlane interview with Jeffrey Robinson, Senior Program Director, Build Wealth MN

My generation is the first generation off the cotton plantation for my family.

My mother and my father were sharecroppers.

My grandparents were sharecroppers.

We got off the plantation because one day my mother and her siblings were on their way to school. In Mississippi, this was a rare occasion for them because they could only go to school during cotton picking season if the weather was bad. So at this time, it was raining and my mother and her siblings, her 11 brothers and sisters… five sisters and six brothers to be exact…got on the bus to go to school. Just as the bus was pulling off, it stopped raining.

The owner of the plantation raced across the field to stop that bus at the edge of the plantation before it got off the property. He pulled my mom and her siblings off the bus and told them to go back out into the field to pick cotton because it had just stopped raining.

So, they’re picking cotton in the mud, picking wet cotton.

When she got home, my grandmother, asked, “How was school today?” “We didn’t go to school,” they said, “What you mean?” The plantation owner “took us off the bus and sent us back to the field.”

That very day she took us to Shelby, Mississippi, in Bolivar County, told the people there “I need a place for my family and I need it right now. Right now.” We eventually moved to Chicago in 1974, a getting ahead. At the end of the year, never making a profit. You and your whole family out there picking cotton, picking cotton, picking cotton and at the end of

$7 million in workforce development grants provide training for young people

Governor Tim Walz and the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) last week announced more than $7 million in grants have been awarded to 47 organizations to provide young people workforce development and training opportunities.

“The job training we provide for our young people today will pay off for our entire state tomorrow,” said Governor Walz.

“This training will grow our workforce and help thousands of kids fill the goodpaying jobs we have available and need to fill right now. With these grants, 47 organizations will be able to provide that leg up, helping us reach our goal of allowing every child, in every neighborhood and community across our state, to thrive.”

“By investing in workforce development and training opportunities across the state, we’re sending the message to young people: we believe in you and we want you to succeed,” said Lieutenant Governor Flanagan. “When we remove barriers to employment and provide training opportunities for disadvantaged youth, we invest in the future of our state and set our young people on a path to success.

I’m grateful for the work of these organizations and proud to be supporting this important work.”

DEED’s Office of Youth Development awarded the Youth at Work grants to organizations providing services to economically disadvantaged or at-risk youth ages 14 to 24. These programs will support youth of color, youth with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged youth by connecting them with good-paying jobs in highgrowth industries.

“The Youth at Work program services young people of Minnesota who face barriers to employment and educational success,” said DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek. “One of our goals at DEED is part of the Great Migration, from the South to the North.

It’s surreal. We are one generation from the plantation, sharecropping and never the year, you still owe them. So our work today at Build Wealth MN isn’t really work for us. This is ministry.