WINNER: 2020 T YPOGRAPHY & DESIGN, 1ST PLACE, PHOTOGRAPHY (PORTRAIT & PERSONALIT Y), 1ST PLACE, WEBSITE, 3RD PLACE
Insight News
March 1, 2021 - March 7, 2021
Vol. 48 No. 9• The Journal For Community News, Business & The Arts • insightnews.com
Minneapolis City Council candidates seek change
Creating a new narrative for governance ethnicity during World War II. And because of that, she says, she travelled to Cape Town, South Africa for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission authorized by Nelson Mandela (considered the gold standard for acknowledging violent pasts and listening to both perpetrators’ and victims’ stories) seeking to gain an understanding what must happen in the Twin Cities and other municipalities around the country for positive and necessary change to occur. Gibson last week joined other candidates for Minneapolis City Council seats in the 1pm Monday webcast of Conversations with Al McFarlane on YouTube and Facebook. For the next several months, host Al McFarlane said, the Monday webcast will focus on Minneapolis’ upcoming election and the inordinate amount of activism and organizing afoot at the grass roots level in Minneapolis neighborhoods. “Our business communities and tax base are crumbling, and a lot of the responsibility doesn’t just fall on the atrocities of 2020. If downtown is going to be
By Brenda Lyle-Gray Columnist If you don’t build your own dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs. Anonymous . The reality is there are so many astute, passionate, grassroots community builders, activists, and change agents who have and will continue to campaign and vie for voters to remember their name in November. There is a lot at stake; so many issues to be addressed; and decisions made based on the impactful gut-punch of the George Floyd execution and the year-long coronavirus pandemic having taken over 500,000 lives. The direction of city leadership will surely shift, but a lot of how and to what extent it will transform will depend upon the outcome of the much anticipated trial of Derek Chauvin, the white policeman accused of the televised murder of George Floyd. If breaking news headlines such as “The Rochester, N.Y. police officers involved in the death of Daniel Prude won’t face charges,” and in Brunswick, Georgia, “Ahmaud Arbery’s mother files a $1 million plus lawsuit a year after his murder alleging conspiracy to protect his killers” are any indication of justice,
Leadership series: Mondays 1pm on Youtube and Facebook. there’s no doubt there will be a long road of gaining righteousness ahead. Alicia Gibson,
candidate for Minneapolis City Council in Ward 10, might appear to some as being this ‘white privilege’ wife of a
physician who would have no clue ‘how the other half lives’. But she is not. She is a descendant of Japanese Americans who
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were imprisoned because of their
NELLIE FRANCIS: Fighting for racial justice and women’s equality in Minnesota Sharing Our Stories
By: W.D. Foster-Graham Book Review Editor Indeed, there are many stories and history that need to be heard and shared. Growing up in the Twin Cities as a child in the 1950s and 1960s in school, I never would have heard of the contributions African Americans made in Minnesota’s history.
Fortunately, authors such as Dr. William Green have given us a gift with his biography of Nellie Griswold Francis. Born in 1874 in the Reconstruction world of Nashville, Tennessee, Nellie and her sister Lula were children of parents that strongly believed in public service, such as the establishment of the first African American high school in Nashville, the drive for equitable opportunities for Black schoolchildren, and a cemetery for the Black soldiers and the community at a time when racism’s ugly head roared.
That spirit of service and desire of a better life for her community was instilled in Nellie and Lula at a young age by their father, Thomas Griswold. The family relocated to St. Paul in 1883. At her commencement ceremony from St. Paul Central High School in 1891, Nellie gave a stirring speech, a portent of what this 17-year-old girl would become. A light-skinned woman who could pass for white but identified as Black, Nellie’s future would be one of public service and complexity despite the conventions placed upon a
Kim Haas
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By Brenda Lyle-Gray Columnist
Attorney Ben Crump and daughters of Malcolm X reveal NYPD officer’s ‘death bed’ confession of NYPD/FBI conspiracy By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent @StacyBrownMedia Almost 56 years to the Feb. 21, 1965, assassination of Malcolm X, the slain leader’s daughters and a noted civil rights attorney are shining a light on those whom they believe are responsible for the heartless murder. The group gathered on Saturday, Feb. 20, at the old Audubon Ballroom – since renamed The Shabazz Center – with lawyers Ray Hamlin and Paul Napoli and Reggie Wood, whose relative, NYPD Officer Ray Wood, allegedly confessed in a deathbed declaration letter. The gathering occurred in the same venue as the assassination and just one day before the heinous crime’s anniversary. The new allegations
Wood’s purported death bed letter was delivered to three of Malcolm’s daughters – Qubiliah, Ilyasah, and Gamilah, pictured here with Attorneys Benjamin Crump, Ray Hamlin and Paul Napoli along with Reggie Wood, whose relative, NYPD Officer Ray Wood, allegedly confessed in a deathbed declaration letter. focus on Officer Wood and a conspiracy against organized civil rights groups that he said had been perpetrated by the New York City Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Reggie Wood alleges that authorities conspired to assassinate Malcolm X in
Harlem. “Ray Wood, an undercover police officer at the time, confessed in a deathbed declaration letter that the NYPD and the FBI conspired to undermine the legitimacy of the civil rights movement and its leaders,” Crump stated. “Without any training,
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Opening up the world: Afro-Latino Travels with Kim Haas
Wood’s job was to infiltrate civil rights organizations and encourage leaders and members to commit felonious acts,” Crump noted in a news release before the gathering. “He was also tasked with ensuring that Malcolm X’s security detail was arrested days prior to the assassination, guaranteeing Malcolm X didn’t have door security while at the Audubon Ballroom, where he was killed on Feb. 21, 1965.” Wood’s purported death bed letter was delivered to three of Malcolm’s daughters – Qubiliah, Ilyasah, and Gamilah. Reggie Wood, the administrator of Ray Wood’s estate, read the letter to Malcolm’s daughters. Ray Wood served as an undercover New York City police officer with the Bureau of Special Services and
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A people without history is like a tree without roots. If you don’t know where you’re coming from, you won’t know where you’re going. -- Marcus Garvey It was when Haas Haas traveled from Philadelphia to Acapulco, Mexico with her grandmother as a young child that she realized what path her life would take. “This lady was a powerhouse having come from the segregated south. She loved to travel and getting to know people everywhere we went. I’m so grateful she opened the world up for me, and I’ve been moving forward ever since,” Haas Hass said in a Conversations with Al McFarlane interview last week. The budding producer and stunning television host had very wisely majored in Spanish throughout her academic journey and learned far more about the African diaspora than any textbook or educator had taught her. Though Africans were enslaved in the Caribbean and South America in even greater numbers than in North America, Hass questioned why
people who looked like her were not on television in Latin America, or in Latin American oriented programming in the United States. Haas set out to fight for more people who looked like her to be on television. Doors were shut, but she would not be discouraged. “I had this idea for a travel show celebrating AfroLatinos after exploring Latin America for years and having Afro-Latino friends share their family stories with me. I rarely saw Afro-Latinos even on Spanish language television and media,” Haas said. Despite the number of travel shows with substantial audiences that air on public television, they are independently produced. It takes a lot of hard work and sponsored funding to cover costs and pay guides, writers, and camera operators. Primary support often comes from individual donors, non-profit foundations, corporate sponsorships, and even tourism bureaus of foreign governments. Latin America and the Caribbean have the largest concentration of people with African ancestry outside of Africa. Shared legacies of
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