Insight ::: 10.17.2022

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Black Farmers

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior

America’s “Black Attorney General,” Civil rights attorney Ben Crump on Wednesday, October 12, announced a class action suit against the United States government on behalf of the National Black Farmers Association.

The lawsuit comes amid findings that Black farmers lost about $326 billion of land in America because of discrimination during the 20th century.

During the announcement of the suit on the National Mall in Washington, Crump and the farmers claimed the federal government breached its contract with socially disadvantaged farmers under the American Rescue Plan Act.

Farmers contend that the law included provisions to pay off USDA loans held by 15,000 African Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, Asian Americans, Pacific

class action suit against U.S. government

Islanders, and Hispanics and Latinos in the farming industry.

In August, Congress repealed section 1005 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which provided funding and authorization for the federal government to pay up to 120 percent of direct and guaranteed loan outstanding balances as of January 1, 2021, for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, breaking the government’s promise and leaving farmers in foreclosure.

Black farmers said they relied on the federal government to keep its promise to fund $5 billion to the farmers when it passed the American Rescue Plan Act.

“Black and other farmers of color did exactly what the government asked them to do. They maintained or expanded their operations to strengthen America’s food supply during the COVID-19 crisis,” Crump asserted.

“They believed the U.S. government’s promises. They took Congress and the Administration at their word, expecting that the government

would pay off their debt, as the USDA promised in writing.

“Instead, it was 40 acres and a mule all over again, 150 years later –broken promises that doomed generations of Black farmers to become sharecroppers and robbed Black families of billions in intergenerational wealth.”

With Crump at the helm, Black farmers across the country said they’re prepared to fight for the money promised.

“I’m very disappointed in this legislative action,” said John Wesley Boyd, Jr., founder and president of the National Black Farmer’s Association, a nonprofit representing African American farmers and their families.

“I’m prepared to fight for debt relief for Black, Native American, and other farmers of color all the way to the Supreme Court. I’m not going to stop fighting this.”

A 2019 report highlighted how many federal agencies have systemically discriminated against Black farmers, including the USDA.

“Through

discriminatory loan denials and deliberate delays in financial aid, the USDA systematically blocked Black farmers from accessing critical federal funds,” the report authors noted.

“If you are Black and you’re born south of the MasonDixon Line, and you tried to farm, you’ve been discriminated against,” Lloyd Wright, the director of the USDA Office of Civil Rights under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and a Black Virginia farmer, said in the report.

The report noted that the debts Black farmers “consequently accrued cost them millions of acres, which white buyers then snapped up.”

In 1920, Black farmers peaked at nearly 1 million, constituting 14 percent of all farmers.

But between 1910 and 1997, they lost 90 percent of their property. By contrast, white farmers lost only 2 percent in the same period.

As of 2017, there were just 35,470 Blackowned farms, representing 1.7 percent of all farms.

Black farmers lost some 16 million acres,

Conservatively estimated to be worth between $250 billion and $350 billion in current dollars.

Lawrence Lucas, President Emeritus of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees and representative of the Justice for Black Farmers Group, said USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack had done nothing to help Black farmers.

“The amount of wealth loss could be in the trillions of dollars,” Lucas remarked.

“We’ve had administration after administration, president after president, and Congress after Congress does nothing. Secretary Vilsack was a disaster even when he worked under President Obama, who wasn’t good to us.”

In a letter to the agriculture secretary, Lucas expressed his disappointment.

“We have watched with disbelief and discouragement as a sequence of events played out in a self-fulfilling prophesy: a Vilsack agriculture transition team member declared that what we wanted, debt relief for Black farmers, was unconstitutional,” Lucas wrote.

“We contend that

there was an unnecessary length of time spent on Senator Warnock’s two bills, voted into the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, and the decision by a Florida judge to issue a temporary restraining order against you, which stopped relief for Black farmers.”

“We contend that you slow-walked the processing of these claims with a process that went beyond 100 days. With the stroke of your pen, we are fully aware that you could have removed the debt these farmers have suffered because of USDA’s long history of discrimination, not a process but debt relief.

“Instead, we have white privilege that continues to be a part of the USDA landscape at the pain and suffering of Black farmers and others,” Lucas continued.

“[Former President Donald] Trump paid out $16 billion in allotments to white farmers quickly, and Black farmers received only a small fraction of those funds. Why for them and not us?” he concluded.

Ben Crump, right, on Wednesday, October

announced a class action suit against the United States government on behalf of the National Black Farmers Association.

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Peace at Broadway & Lyndale

By Brenda Lyle-Gray Columnist

Trahern Pollard’s organization, We Push for Peace, is now in its third week as the new management of Merwin Liquors.

The organization was hired by Merwin Liquor both as security and as staff, just as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced the business was being investigated

as part of addressing continued gun violence and drug dealing along Broadway in North Minneapolis.

Winners Gas Station is also being looked at as a business that may be permitting crimes to occur.

Shootings have happened outside both stores in recent weeks. Neighbors are demanding the businesses be shut down due to ongoing problems.

“I’m not personally

just the answer, let’s be clear,” Pollard said in a Fox 9 television report. “It’s going to take all of us working together collectively to have an impact.”

“To say that people are skeptical of possible change that will stay at the intersection of Lyndale and West Broadway is an understatement,” said Jeremiah Ellison, Council Member for the 5th Ward. “And that’s taking nothing away from the new

Bringing the weight of the state to the West Broadway/Lyndale intersection

By Brenda Lyle-Gray

Over the past several years as a columnist for ‘Insight News’, I have had the privilege of writing quite a few articles on impressive city, county, and state

political figures, one becoming quite familiar after the George Floyd televised execution and the aftermath of pain and anger explosions having spilled out on a Minneapolis city street. Attorney General Keith Ellison, often referred to as ‘the people’s lawyer’ and his astute team of legal scholars, played a key role in landing a conviction of the murderer and saving the city from even more destructive upheaval. Ellison always has something

important, informative, and thought provoking to say, and his guest appearance on the Hawthorne Huddle’s October meeting was no exception.

On the

Thursday of every month, except July, Hawthorne neighborhood residents, law enforcement, social

City needs mental health professions to address rise in fentanyl, drug addictions

By Brenda Lyle-Gray Columnist

Inspector Charlie Adams in the same Hawthorne Huddle meeting described a sad and dangerous scenario of fentanyl addicts on West Broadway.

“There were two bus stops on Broadway and Lyndale and what people driving through saw were bus shelters jampacked with people smoking the

drug out in broad daylight. They don’t care,” he said. “But with the assistance of Metro Transit and 4th Precincts Community Liaison Bill Magnuson, we were able to get those two shelters temporarily removed, which was honestly required an act of God. So, they went on over to the other side where Cub Foods is and continued.”

“When we move people from one location, they’re going to pop up someplace else.

strategic is to be

By Al McFarlane Editor

Stairstep Foundation partnered with Insight News and McFarlane Media (MMI) to present a virtual Town Hall Forum last month, one in a series planned to elevate African and African American awareness of and engagement in deliberations about improvements for the Highway 252/I94 Corridor, a project that impacts Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center and North Minneapolis –largely Black communities.

The Town Hall bound our communities’ attention on congruent considerations both immediate and specific to the safety and access concerns of residents and people who travel the corridor in their daily routines of work and living, and on policy issues peeling back histories of intentional, institutional marginalization that uprooted and dispersed budding power centers where Black commerce and Black culture could thrive.

At the core of this

civic engagement initiative is the leadership group consisting of Jovonta Patton, who is the pastor of The Wave, Leslie Hayes and Cyreta Oduniyi, elders at Liberty Church, Gaither Robinson, pastor of Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, Pastor Rozenia Fuller of Good News Baptist Church, Superintendent McKinley Moore, pastor of Jehovah Jireh Church of God in Christ,

Hortense “Nene” Jones who’s a lay leader at New Salem Baptist Church. Dr. Francis Tabla, Ebenezer Community Church, and Bishop Richard Howell of Shiloh Temple. Their churches, their ministries are on the corridor. We understood that in partnership with them, we could bring more awareness of issues to our people, create tools that would allow

We are aware that now they are selling drugs out of their cars. Instead of sitting in front of Merwin and 626, they have a path of concentration including a house over on 21st we believe to be a place of smokers’ gatherings. Bill Magnuson is dealing with that problem as we speak. This new drug is an out-of-control monster, and we have to stay on top of it.”

Liquors and Winner Gas Station put on formal notice by Attorney General Ellison

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced recently that his office, with the assistance of the Hennepin County Attorney and the Minneapolis City Attorney, has completed its investigation of Merwin Liquors and Winner Gas Station in North Minneapolis and has determined that illegal public nuisances are ongoing at the properties.

Ellison, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, and Minneapolis City Attorney Kristyn Anderson have provided Merwin and Winner with official notices that unlawful public nuisance activity is occurring on their properties in violation of Minnesota law, and that a complaint for relief will be filed in district court in 30 days if they do not abate the nuisance conduct or reach an agreement for abatement with the Attorney General’s Office, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, and the Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office.

Both locations have been the sites of recent violence and their properties are host to widespread drug activity. The notices document 14 instances at Merwin Liquors and 22 instances at Winner Gas Station of shots fired, people injured, weapons possession, and drug dealing and

possession in 2022 alone. These include at least three large-scale shootings in September 2022. The properties continue to be a source of alarming activity, despite the businesses being put on notice last month of this nuisance investigation.

“Creating safe communities means using all the civil and criminal tools of the law to keep people safe from violence, and it means creating stable housing, good schools, healthy environments, and a fair economy where everyone can get ahead. And it takes all of us working together to make that happen,” Ellison said. “I’m thankful for the partnership with Hennepin County, the City of Minneapolis, and all the community members who’ve stepped up to help us correct dangerous conditions at these establishments. I look forward

In her own words: Justice Jackson speaks volumes from bench

By Jessica Gresko Associated Press

engagement, and build more community capacity, said .

Stairstep Foundation’s Alfred Babington-Johnson, who joined me as co-host for the Town Hall and broadcast.

The Town Hall was broadcast live on 90.3 KFAI’s The Conversations with Al McFarlane and streamed live across MMI social media

Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and its newest justice, said before the term began that she was “ready to work.” She made that clear during arguments in the opening cases.

The tally: 4,568 words spoken over nearly six hours this past week, about 50% more than any of the eight other justices, according to Adam Feldman, the creator of the Empirical SCOTUS blog.

The justices as a whole are generally a talkative bunch, questioning lawyers in rapid succession. For now,

Jackson’s approach seems less like Justice Clarence Thomas, who once went 10 years without asking a question, and more like Justice Neil Gorsuch, who in his first year was one of the more active questioners.

On Tuesday, in a case that could weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act, which sought to bar racial discrimination in voting, Jackson was particularly vocal.

At one point, she spoke uninterrupted for more than three and a half minutes to lay out her understanding of the history of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing formerly enslaved people equal rights. Jackson’s

photo/loppnet.com Merwin Liquors in North Minneapolis.

photo/J. Scott Applewhite Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stands as she and members of the Supreme Court pose for a new group portrait following her addition, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Friday, Oct. 7, 2022.

jovonta.com

Jovonta Patton

Inspector Charlie Adams

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison

Jeremiah Ellison, Council Member for the 5th Ward

vaccine time and seniors need revved-up shots

Neergaard

Doctors have a message for vaccine-weary Americans: Don’t skip your flu shot this fall -- and seniors, ask for a special extra-strength kind.

After flu hit historically low levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be poised for a comeback. The main clue: A nasty flu season just ended in Australia.

While there’s no way to predict if the U.S. will be as hard-hit, “last year we were going into flu season not knowing if flu was around or not.

This year we know flu is back,” said influenza specialist Richard Webby of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Annual flu shots are recommended starting with 6-month-old babies. Flu is most dangerous for people 65 and older, young children, pregnant women and people with certain health problems including heart and lung diseases.

Here’s what to know:

SENIORS

As people get older, their immune system doesn’t respond as strongly to standard flu vaccination. This year, people 65 or older are urged to get a special kind for extra protection.

There are three choices. Fluzone High-Dose and Flublok each contain higher doses of the main antiflu ingredient. The other option is Fluad Adjuvanted, which has a regular dosage but contains a special ingredient that helps boost people’s immune response.

Seniors can ask what kind their doctor carries. But most flu vaccinations are given in pharmacies and some drugstore websites, such as CVS, automatically direct people to locations offering senior doses if their birth date shows they qualify.

Webby advised making sure older relatives and friends know about the senior shots, in case they’re not told when they seek vaccination.

“They should at least ask, ‘Do you have the shots that are better for me?’” Webby said. “The bottom line is they do work better” for this age group.

If a location is out

is also the Council Member’s father.

of senior-targeted doses, it’s better to get a standard flu shot than to skip vaccination, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

All flu vaccines in the U.S. -- including types for people younger than 65 -- are “quadrivalent,” meaning they guard against four different flu strains. Younger people have choices, too, including shots for those with egg allergies and a nasal spray version called FluMist.

WHY FLU EXPERTS ARE ON ALERT

Australia just experienced its worst flu season in five years and what happens in Southern Hemisphere winters often foreshadows what Northern countries can expect, said Dr. Andrew Pekosz of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

And people have largely abandoned masking and distancing precautions that earlier in the pandemic also helped prevent the spread of other respiratory bugs like the flu.

“This poses a risk especially to young children who may not have had much

if any previous exposure to influenza viruses prior to this season,” Pekosz added.

“This year we will have a true influenza season like we saw before the pandemic,” said Dr. Jason Newland, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Washington University in St. Louis.

He said children’s hospitals already are seeing an unusual early spike in other respiratory infections including RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, and worries flu likewise will strike earlier than usual — like it did in Australia.

The CDC advises a flu vaccine by the end of October but says they can be given any time during flu season. It takes about two weeks for protection to set in.

The U.S. expects 173 million to 183 million doses this year. And yes, you can get a flu shot and an updated COVID-19 booster at the same time — one in each arm to lessen soreness.

FLU SHOTS OF THE FUTURE

The companies that make the two most widely used COVID-19 vaccines now are testing flu shots made

with the same technology.

One reason: When influenza mutates, the recipes of socalled mRNA vaccines could be updated more quickly than today’s flu shots, most of which are made by growing influenza virus in chicken eggs. Pfizer and its partner

BioNTech are recruiting 25,000 healthy U.S. adults to receive either its experimental influenza shot or a regular kind, to see how effective the new approach proves this flu season.

Rival Moderna tested its version in about 6,000 people in Australia, Argentina and other countries during the Southern Hemisphere’s flu season and is awaiting results.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

management on the corner. I really like ‘We Push for Peace’ as an organization, and again, I do hope there’s a permanent solution here one way or another.

But two weeks of changes in the grand scope of how long this intersection has been a problem, the community’s not going to be convinced right away. Time and diligence will prove whether we have made progress. The city’s going to have to be diligent as the Attorney General’s office continues with their case.”

Ellison was addressing the Thursday, October 6 virtual Hawthorne Huddle meeting of Hawthorne Neighborhood Council (HNC). His remarks followed an update on State actions against Merwin Liquor from Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison, who

In describing what the Attorney General’s office had authority to do to support public safety concerns of North Minneapolis residents, Keith Ellison detailed Minnesota regulatory compliance requirements that the businesses must meet or face sanctions including fines and license revocation.

The Huddle discussion elevated community concern for illegal and dangerous activity in the Merwin Liquor’s store and parking lot, and, at Winner Gas Station across Lyndale on the northeast corner of the intersection. Fourth Precinct community liaison, Bill Magnuson said community and Precinct concerns include the Walgreen’s parking lot on the south east corner. He said open illicit drug sales and use have been observed in the Metro Transit Bus Shelter on the south west corner. The flooding of

North Minneapolis with high potency synthetic fentanyl, a deadly opioid, is one of the factors causing elevated alarm in the community, Magnuson said.

The community wants a permanent solution. But, there are legal barriers, he said.

“These businesses have property and state rights. And maybe they should have rights that can protect them. The government shouldn’t be free just to snap their fingers and change the whole landscape of a corridor.

We’ve all been living with this intersection and a few more or quite some time,” Ellison said.

“Different plans for the West Broadway intersection take us back 10 to 15 years. But now

I’m encouraged that Inspector Adams has afforded us some continuity and brought us a real vision for what MPD’s role will be in tackling some of these issues. This collaboration has certainly been of benefit to me as a lawmaker in this Ward.” Ellison said there

has been a long history of community and city officials trying to work with Merwin’s Liquor Store, the loitering eyesore and crime hotspot on the northwest corner of the West Broadway/Lyndale intersection.

“We’ve had a choice of coming to them with regulations and fines, or we could come with negotiations and incentives. But then the state stepped in, and a civil action is going forward. The city is still in conversations with the business, Minneapolis Police Department’s 4th Precinct Inspector Charlie Adams, and with the city’s business licensing and other legal departments.”

He said the area’s only hope for sustainability at that intersection is to continue with the regulatory approach until community leaders and city and state officials can land on a permanent solution, something that ultimately creates safety on that corner forever.

We Push for Peace with founder and CEO

TraHern Pollard and his team have made a lot of progress working with ownership and customers, he said.

Sanctuary Church, which built a multi-million dollar edifice and headquarters adjacent to the Merwin’s store, owns and controls the balance of the block.

Sanctuary had expressed an interest in purchasing that corner and made a good faith effort. Ellison said it was unfortunate the church deal didn’t happen, but the neighbors still have a vision for the area.

He said folks in the neighborhood have observed that boulevards facing parking lots are a place where bad things occur.

“Bringing the business activity up to the street level to make it more walkable and with security in place could be a possible solution,” he said.

“Some residents prefer new businesses all together for the area, but that’s easier said than done. It’s a

process,” Ellison said. Ellison said he will convene more meetings as the Attorney General’s investigation pushes forward. The business licensing department will continue to wade through their findings, and document how the new management is doing to create safety on that corner.

“I think we do need to have a vision for that corner,” Ellison said. “But anytime you’re talking about privately owned land, you’ve got to have a willing seller. That’s a necessary component we’ve never had. And if we were able to interest a willing seller, they want to get out of there with a windfall that banks might not approve, and appraisers might not agree with. These realities are the barriers we have had to face.

But I do agree we need a bigger vision for that intersection, and I believe the city needs to be a major partner in making that investment.”

major issues affecting North Minneapolis. In 1997, there was high crime and people were struggling. Twentyfive years later, the Attorney General, a Northside resident,

opens the Huddle gathering with a special presentation discussion on the challenges of segments of impoverished people, crime, and safety in North Minneapolis, particularly around the corner of West Broadway and Lyndale.

“Let me just begin by saying everybody has the right to be safe. Our community, North Minneapolis, has that

same right to be as safe as anyone in a strong community with a network of neighbors who look out for each other. Strong schools, housing, quality health, food security, and of course police and prosecution give us a chance for transformation in our neighborhoods. But we also know that so many times, much deserved rights have been threatened and challenged,” said Ellison.

“So, it’s important to be in community and in partnership as General Mills has been in support of the Hawthorne Huddle. That’s the key. Working together and making sure people give information when they have it, that those with subpoenas comply, and that residents become educated about community and city affairs by learning how to navigate the tip lines. Local businesses are doing a great job. So are landlords but

not all. We need to step up and help any way we can.” Ellison the opportunity to cite important facts that residents and the business community should know. He said the Attorney General’s office does not have the legal authority to just walk in and prosecute crime in the city or Hennepin County. The office must be invited in to proceed, or be appointed by the Governor. Legal jurisdiction does not exist. Crime is prosecuted and investigated locally in the state. But, he said, civil tools have been used at the Attorney General’s discretion.

Ellison’s office prosecuted 267 cases simultaneously when Steven Meldahl was proven to be a slum landlord in North Minneapolis. Ellison views the action his office is taking at Winner’s Gas Station and Merwin Liquor in the same light.

“The office of the Attorney General does not allocate money. We don’t write laws. We don’t write ordinances. But we do have a role to play. We have set up a wage theft unit in the Attorney General’s Office and we’ve literally returned hundreds of thousands of dollars back to workers who were stolen from, and we represent the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, which also enforces wage theft. Together, the two entities have gotten back nearly $2 million for workers who were cheated.”

We cannot pass an ordinance to raise a minimum wage like Jeremiah and his colleagues have done, but if somebody disobeys that ordinance, I can and I will and I have taken them to court,” A nuisance action filed together by the Attorney General, Hennepin County, and the city ofMinneapolis, stipulates that the business owners in infringement of the law have a right to be notified that they are the subject of the nuisance action. There’s a-30day abatement period, a timeperiod where the business has a right to fix, mitigate, clean up, or take care of the complainant’s charge, after the notice is filed.

“So, what the combined governing entities are asking is for these businesses to comply with the loitering ordinace. Customers should legally buy and then go!” Ellison said.

“They must hire their own security. The City of Minneapolis should not have to pay their security on their premises. We have an obligation as residents of Minneapolis to offer our policing services on the streets and in the common areas, but when it comes to their premises, they must clean it up. With garbage everywhere, it looks like a great place to commit a crime. What’s that about the broken window

theory? If it looks like people don’t care, then the people who are willing to execute illegal and inappropriate acts of criminality feel comfortable carrying out their devious plan,” he said.

The Attorney General also recommended additional lighting and improving the bus stop by having policing go through there on the hour. “If it looks like drugs are being sold, the illegal activity will be caught on a secure camera. And if they decide to move their location, we will decide to continue our relentless campaign to enforce the law by the book and encourage them comply,” he said.

Last week, the Attorney General’s office filed a lawsuit against retailer Fleet Farm. There was irrefutable proof through serial number tracing that they have sold 37 guns that have turned up in crimes on several occasions, he said. With one of the guns, 14 people were shot in St. Paul resulting in one fatality. The Attorney General said that conversations about public safety cannot lead to positive outcomes if no one discusses the responsibilities of gun ownership. And if someone has the right to sell them, their business must take serious measures to make sure the guns don’t get into the wrong hands. Fleet Farm didn’t follow the rules, so we took action against them,” he said.

What he made perfectly clear was that no retailer was above the law, and that the authorities were watching. “But it’s community members who must ask, ‘Who’s doing the shooting, who’s got a beef with who, and where are the drugs being sold’? Until that information is shared based on trust, we can never really have stronger and safer communities”, Ellison said.

photo/FG Trade

As people get older, their immune system doesn’t respond as strongly

standard

vaccination. This

people

older are

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When asked about bringing back the Drug Task Force, Adams explained that the department was down 300 officers, and until they could get the numbers up with qualified personnel, there were going to be a lot of critical issues needing to be addressed that could not happen, not just yet.

But it doesn’t mean they aren’t trying, especially getting back to community engagement, he said.

Adams said the is difference between Micky’s Liquors, on Plymouth Avenue, and Merwin Liquors is that Micky’s has off-duty police officers working there and a staff person who employed to keep the area clean. MPD has had several meetings with Winners, prompting the hiring of security at night.

We Push for Peace has made a big difference, he

said. “Along with ATF and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department, we all partnered in what we call Operation Endeavor.”

“It’s a public safety initiative based on visibility of uniformed officers. It has been doing great work taking on some of the bad guys. I can see a significant reduction with some of the addicts out there because of our efforts of intercepting these packages of fentanyl pills.

So, we’re going to continue to do that with the help of the DEA, ATF, and our CERT teams

Ellison

From

to working constructively with these businesses as they abate these conditions so neighbors can thrive and feel safe wherever they go, as everyone in every neighborhood has a right to.” Ellison’s nuisance investigation against Merwin and Winners, first announced on September 15, is part of a

and weapons unit. We’re putting a pretty big hit on the fentanyl fields,” Adams said.

Residents will see more squad cars and officers coming in on their days off just being present in those parking lots including AutoZone and Walgreens.

Adams said he was a young officer back in the crack days and when addicts were walking around like zombies.

Sadly, he said, the Minneapolis Police Department has no narcotics enforcement units.

“We have to use our weapons

comprehensive approach to public safety that includes using civil and criminal law. Last week, on October 5, Ellison sued Fleet Farm for negligently selling guns to straw purchasers, aiding and abetting these criminals, creating a public nuisance, and contributing to gun trafficking in Minnesota by allowing guns to get into the wrong hands. One such gun was used in a shootout in Saint Paul just one year ago that resulted in one death and 14 people wounded.

In October 2019,

undertaken by Minnesota Department of Transportation, simultaneously, the work at hand was modeling, expanding equity and engagement in the business of public governance.

teams as best we can,” he said. “And we keep getting these pills off the street by charging some of the sellers. Hopefully, we can keep doing what we’ve been doing. It took a while to get lowering statistics in the crack epidemic. What we really need are the professionals who deal with addictions to at least offer services. Most of the specialists will say it’s too dangerous!”

Adams says he will not arrest an addict. “With the problems they already have, jail is not an option. Until the city and the addiction professionals

Ellison sued notorious Minneapolis slumlord Stephen Meldahl for deceiving tenants about his “eviction for profit” scheme and illegally barring them from contacting city building inspectors about their living conditions. In November 2021, a court agreed after trial that Meldahl knowingly and in bad faith violated the rights of 267 families who rented from him, citing conditions of “Biblical plague proportions” that tenants lived in. The court later awarded the Attorney

figure out a way to get funding for treatment to those struggling, there will continue to be folks walking around in higher numbers living in a dark and different world.”

“I want to use whatever human resources we have at our disposal to get these pills off the street. I want to make those arrests. I want to let more addicts know there is hope and services available. They don’t have to take the help, but at least know it’s there for them,” Adams said.

General’s Office more than $1 million in attorneys’ fees. Ellison is seeking input from community members and local stakeholders. He strongly encourages individuals with eyewitness accounts of unlawful behavior at the Merwin and Winners locations to come forward by contacting the Attorney General’s Office at (651) 296-3353 or by submitting a complaint online.

platforms. This Town Hall featured Pastor Rozenia Fuller, Pastor Javonta Patton, Pastor Gaither Robinson and Nene Jones.

Following are edited excerpts from robust conversations that examined the challenges of being proactive as a community, and of leveraging institutional strengths and assets to ensure our community’s interests are present and accounted for, represented by us, at the table of decision.

And while the topic at hand was specific to improvements being

Nene Jones: I am grateful to be at the table. I think the conversations over the past almost year now have been enlightening. It made me better understand planning of road construction and that it doesn’t just happen overnight. Planning is being ready beforehand for some purpose or another. I looked at that definition and realize somebody is planning and preparing for things for our community that we’re not aware of and seldom made aware of. It’s the same as with

our get out the vote campaign. We ask ourselves why should I get out to vote? Well, because people are making decisions for you that you need to be aware of. This process helps our people understand our power to articulate, advance and defend our own interests.

Alfred Babington Johnson: Jovonta Patton has phenomenal reach into the millennial generation and some unique ways of reaching demographic.

Jovonta Patton: I actually made a post today talking about millennials and how a lot of churches or organizations they consider them as “youth”. Millennials are 26 through 41. They’re full grown adults.

We have lives. We go to court. When we go to the bar, we’re in the dark. We go to the doctor. Some millennials are even grandparents. So I’m happy to be in on the conversation because 26 to 41 is a huge age group that uses and that is impacted by transportation systems and transportation policy. We are using the highways.

I think anybody over 16 should be a part of this conversation because this affects what they do every single day. So I’m very grateful to be a part of it. It’s kind of like this whole entire world that’s planning for me that I’m not involved in. And so to be involved and to make it multi-generational, can get some great things done.,

Everyone has a say, and I think this makes our world better for our children and all people.

Aaron Tag, MNDot Engineer:

Everyone’s talked about how it’s important to be involved now, and that too often you haven’t heard about things happening until shovels start turning dirt. So I think it’s great that we have people at the table at a time when we can talk. There’s a long time till decisions are going

Jackson

From 3

statement ran three transcript pages, the longest Feldman could remember ever seeing.

“I can’t think of a time where you’ve seen a junior justice take hold of the arguments” to the same extent, Feldman said using the court’s shorthand title for the newest justice.

A jurist with a liberal record, Jackson joined a court where conservatives hold a 6-3 advantage, so in many of the most most contentious cases her vote likely does not matter to the outcome. But her performance during arguments seemed to show she intends to make herself heard.

“I have a seat at the table now and I’m ready to work,” she said last week at an appearance at the Library of Congress following her ceremonial investiture at the high court.

In three of the four cases the court heard this past week, she was the most active speaker among the justices.

to be made. And we have still years before some decisions are made. So we have a lot of time and opportunity to shape this project so that it really benefits the community and it benefits everyone.

MNDot’s Equity and Health Assessment ( EHA), is an intentional process to look at how the project impacts people’s health in the neighborhood. Collecting information about the priorities for the community as far as equity and health go, requires that we look at how

elements and alternatives impact that. So a lot of times in the past, we really looked at projects from a transportation

Feldman said new justices usually sit back and take things in but “poke their heads up occasionally” to ask a question. “This was a different approach,” he said.

Monday was the court’s opening day and Jackson’s first on the Supreme Court bench. The justices were about five minutes into their questioning in what turned out to be a nearly two-hour argument in a dispute over the nation’s main anti-water pollution law when Jackson asked her first question; she was the fourth justice to do so.

By the end of arguments, she had probed the meaning of the word “adjacent,” asked whether a marsh in a 1985 case was “visually indistinguishable from the abutting creek” and prefaced another question by saying: “Let me try to bring some enlightenment to it by asking it this way.”

Jackson was confirmed in April but did not take her seat until the court began its summer recess in June, giving her months to study cases the court had granted.

Other justices spent some of that time finalizing opinions in

cases that included decisions overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights case and expanding gun rights.

Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in early April, days before Jackson was confirmed, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted “fortunately there will be some lead time” for the new justice to ease into her role. Barrett, in contrast, heard her first arguments a week after she was confirmed. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in on a Saturday and heard his first argument the following Tuesday.

Justices themselves have acknowledged it takes time to get used to sitting on the highest court in the land. Justice Elena Kagan once compared starting the job to “ drinking out of a fire hose “ with a learning curve that “is extremely steep, sometimes it seems vertical.” Some justices have said it takes five years to feel really comfortable in the role.

In her Library of Congress appearance, Jackson talked about the attention on her as the first Black woman to be a justice. People approach

want

Well, to me to be strategic is to be intentional about what it is we want, what it is we’d like to see accomplished, and when we’d like to accomplish that thing. So to be strategic is to be intentional. And we’re being intentional, in my opinion, even with this Town Hall in terms of getting the word out to our communities and to connect with MnDOT, to connect with the Black churches, and to connect with the Black media.

Part

her with “what I can only describe as a profound sense of pride and what feels to me like

renewed ownership,” she said. Their message to her is “in essence, ‘You go, girl,”’

Jackson said. “They’re saying ‘Invisible no more. We see you and we are with you.’”

Rozenia Fuller:

Pastor Rozenia Fuller

‘Till’ grippingly reorients an American tragedy

By Jake Coyle AP Film Writer

Almost by default, filmmakers typically take a wide lens to historical moments like the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till. In reaching for a defining chapter of America, it’s natural for a movie to aim for a sweeping portrait of a shifting society. But in “Till,” a wrenching, rigorous drama about Till’s brutal murder, director Chinonye Chukwu keeps the story gripped to Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-

Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler), reorienting a public crime as a private trauma, and Mamie’s subsequent metamorphosis into a civil rights activist as a profound act of grief-fueled resistance.

“Till,” which opens in select theaters Friday, isn’t your average historical drama and it’s all the more powerful for it. In the opening scene, Mamie is driving with Emmett (Jalyn Hall) in Chicago while the Moonglows’ “Sincerely” plays on the radio.

Emmett sings along breezily and happy while the camera pulls in on Mamie, whose face turns from joy to worry. She knows that for Emmett, as a

young Black man, to be carefree is dangerous. It’s also an early signal of how perspective will play a potent role in “Till,” and how pointed and penetrating Chukwu’s camera can be.

Chukwu, a NigerianAmerican filmmaker, broke through with 2019’s “Clemency,” a piercing drama about a prison warden weighing a death row case that gave Alfre Woodard one of her finest roles. “Till,” likewise, is a showcase for its lead actor.

Deadwyler gives a careermaking performance as Mamie, perfectly poised between grief and strength. The film,

which is dedicated to Mamie, ultimately belongs to her.

“Be small down there,” Mamie tells Emmett. This is just before he leaves on a train to visit family in Mississippi, a trip that palpably concerns his mother. Once he’s there, her unease is allconsuming; she won’t breathe easy until Emmett is “back on Chicago soil.” When the fateful phone call comes, it’s shocking but also devastating for its predictability. “Till,” an aching wail of a movie, is a story in many ways about the inevitable tragedy of American racism.

The film, penned by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp and Chukwu, spends some time with Emmett in Mississippi before he’s kidnapped, tortured and murdered. Exactly what transpired between Emmett and Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett) at her family’s grocery store has had differing, and surely falsely exaggerated, accounts. Chukwu plays the interaction simply and straightforwardly. When

days later, ominous knocking is heard outside the home of Emmett’s uncle, the abduction is artfully and terrifyingly staged.

What’s seen and what isn’t has always been part of the Emmett Till story, which first found national attention when Mamie allowed a magazine photographer to take pictures of her son’s mutilated body. Chukwu elects not to visually dramatize Till’s killing but, like those magazine photos, doesn’t shy away from the painful evidence of it.

When the NAACP and Medgar Evers (Tosin Cole) enter Mamie’s orbit, she’s initially resistant. “My son is not a case,” she says. Gradually she resolves to make “America bear witness.”

For her, it’s a gut-wrenching decision because it means not keeping her grief for her son — all that she has left of him — to herself. “You’re not just my boy anymore,” she whispers to him at the open-casket funeral.

Mamie travels to Mississippi for the trial before an all-white jury in a hopeless

effort to bring Emmett’s killers to justice. When she takes the stand, Chukwu deliberately avoids letting the camera fall on the many places it might usually settle in a courtroom drama — on the attorneys, on the disinterested judge, on the murderers. The movie’s precision in focus doesn’t allow such distractions. “Till” isn’t about them. It’s about the sacrifice and courage it takes Mamie, and so many more, to confront racial injustice. One of the film’s postscripts — the date the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed: March 29, 2022 — is a reminder that “Till” is in many ways no period piece. And, as one NAACP attorney says: “There’s no testimony like a mother’s.”

“Till,” an MGM release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for thematic content involving racism, strong disturbing images and racial slurs. Running time: 130 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

photo/Lynsey Weatherspoon

This image released by Orion Pictures shows Jalyn Hall as Emmett Till, left, and Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till-Mobley in “Till.”

photo/HONSTill

This image released by Orion Pictures shows Danielle Deadwyler, left, and Jalyn Hall in a scene from “Till.”

photo/Lynsey Weatherspoon

This image released by Orion Pictures shows Danielle Deadwyler in a scene from “Till.”

Manners

at the Dining

Memorable at the Dining Table.

By: W.D. Foster-Graham Book

Editor

Manners Are Memorable

By Juliet (Ms. J) Mitchell

Good manners never go out of style. Our mothers and grandmothers were, more often than not, the experts at teaching us those manners—I know they were with my family, especially if we were having guests for dinner or other special occasions. Simple place settings are one thing, but when they become more complex, I hand the honors over to our master etiquette trainer, Juliet Mitchell, in her book Manners Are

In this book, Mitchell reminds us of the lessons of fine dining and helps us navigate our way through place settings, be they for a simple sit-down dinner or a royal banquet. She teaches us the history of the dining utensils, which were at first reserved only for the aristocracy. From place cards to plates to silverware to glasses to napkins, we learn the function of each and their placement in the grand scheme of the dining experience. She simplifies what can mystify us.

Mitchell gives us the tips, illustrations, and strategies that help us in any social situation. She is the creator of an etiquette curriculum, Social Education and Life Etiquette (SELF). She is also a columnist for the Minnesota Spokesman Recorder with the byline Life Etiquette According to Ms. J,

and the recipient of the Fearless Commerce Award, recognizing the success of Black women entrepreneurs.

Manners Are Memorable can be purchased through her website, lifeetiquetteinstitute.com.

Thank you, Ms. J, for carrying forward the lessons our grandmothers taught us, the kind that last a lifetime.

Juliet

A journalist sought to amplify the voices of Minnesota’s communities of color

Sahan Journal,