PRST STD U.S.POSTAGE PAID TWIN CITIES MN PERMIT NO. 6391
THE VOICE OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY SINCE 1934
August 5-11, 2021, Vol. 88 No. 1
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“AS IT WAS SPOKEN ... LET US RECORD.”
Suni Lee’s gold a victory for all Hmong By MSR News Service
I
t’s an American story, an immigrant story,” is how Bo Thao-Urabe, executive director of the Coalition of Asian American Leaders, described the Olympic gymnastic success of gold medal winner Sunnisa “Suni” Lee of St. Paul. This is a part of the narrative of people pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.” The daughter of Hmong immigrants, Lee won the gold medal in Tokyo in the women’s individual all-around event of the gymnastic competition and subsequently captured the hearts of people worldwide. She also won a bronze medal in the uneven bars competition and
has garnered three medals including a silver as part of team USA in the team competition. “For our community, her win is a source of great pride,” said Thao-Urabe who is Hmong. This is what our parents and our ancestors knew we could do. They knew about out potential. “It’s unfortunate that we live in a country that has not given us every opportunity to sucTokyo Olympic Gold medalist and Saint Paul native ceed,’ she said. ‘We Sunnisa “Suni” Lee Photo courtesy of MGN, Olympic graphic courtesy of Pixabay could have had an
Olympian long before now. The way the press has talked about it [Suni’s success] is as if our community has not been here. It seems it takes something like this to almost create value and worth for us.” Lee took the spotlight after Simone Biles sat out due to emotional and physical issues. But before she reached the Olympics, the 18-year-old had to overcome the adversity of losing an aunt and uncle to COVID-19, her father’s partial paralysis, and her own injuries and anxieties. Both her parents expressed the significance of Lee’s Olympic success to the Hmong community. “I can’t find the words to express how happy we are, how important that was to me and my family and to the whole Hmong community throughout the world,” her father, John Lee, said in an Associated Press interview. Her mother expressed the same sen-
timent in a local story on Lee’s success: “It’s amazing that she’s the first Hmong ever,” said Yeev Thoj. “It’s a huge thing for the community and for our families.” Not only has Lee brought attention to her family and the Hmong community through her performance; she has also displayed amazing empathy and grace throughout the Olympic games. She almost skipped the national games because she wanted to be available to her father, who had suffered lower body paralysis after a fall off a ladder while helping a neighbor trim a tree. Her father’s accident occurred just before the national championships, and she told her family at the time she wasn’t going. But her father insisted that she go, telling his daughter that she had worked too hard not to compete. She has called her dad her best friend. He has supported her from the beginning, placing her in gymnastics at age ■ See Lee on page 5
Civil rights pioneer left a mathematical legacy Bob Moses passed on July 25, 2021 By Hasan Kwame Jeffries Contributing writer As an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the 1960s, Bob Moses traveled to the most dangerous parts of Mississippi to help African Americans end segregation and secure the right to vote. But it would be tutoring students in math 20 years later at his daughter’s racially mixed middle school in Massachusetts that would lead to his life’s work—The Courtesy of MGN Algebra Project. The Algebra Project is a nonprofit dedicated to helping students from historically marginalized terpret mathematics in a variety of contexts. Moses communities develop math literacy, which is an founded it in 1982. After researching Moses’ role in the Civil Rights individual’s ability to formulate, employ and in-
Movement—“Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt”—and later interviewing him for various projects about SNCC, it became abundantly clear to me that The Algebra Project sprang directly from his civil rights work in Mississippi. That work helped transform Mississippi from a segregationist stronghold into a focal point of the civil rights revolution. In his book “Radical Equations,” Moses recalls that in 1982 he was surprised to discover that his daughter, Maisha, who was entering the eighth grade at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, would not be taught algebra because the school did not offer it. Without knowledge of algebra, she could not qualify for honors math and science classes in high school.
Math endeavors Moses had a background in mathematics. In 1957, before joining the Civil Rights Movement, he earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Harvard University and then taught middle school math for a few years in the Bronx, New York, at Horace Mann School, a prestigious private school just north of where he grew up in Harlem. From 1969 to 1976 he taught algebra in Tanzania before returning stateside to work on a doctorate in the philosophy of math. Moses asked Maisha’s teacher if he could provide his daughter with supplemental math lessons in class since Maisha refused to be tutored at home—she opposed doing what she called “two maths.” The teacher consented, but on the condition that Moses instruct some ■ See Moseson page 5
Inmates released because of COVID face returning to prison By Niara Savage Contributing writer Kendrick Fulton, 48, is one of about 24,000 federal inmates who have been permitted to serve their sentences outside prison walls after being granted release on home confinement amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Since his release in September 2020, Fulton has gotten a job with Coca-Cola, earned his Commercial Driver's License, and celebrated his first birthday at home in nearly two decades. “It’s been great…just being home, having the chance to be re-acclimated to society,” he told the MSR. While living with his sister in Round Rock, Texas, Fulton has been working to rebuild his life after spending 17 years in prison on nonviolent drug-related charges. He views his release as a second chance. Now, Fulton and others who’ve begun working or started college outside prison
walls face the possibility of being forced to return in the absence of federal action. In recent weeks, pressure has mounted on President Joe Biden to grant clemency to prisoners who were released on home confinement as thousands of inmates grapple with the reality of their precarious futures. A bipartisan group of criminal justice advocates submitted a letter to Biden on July 19, asking that he use his presidential powers to commute inmates’ sentences. “This is your opportunity to provide second chances to thousands of people who are already safely out of prison, reintegrating back to society, reconnecting with their loved ones, getting jobs and going back to school," said the letter from 20 advocacy groups including the ACLU, Amnesty International and the NAACP. Phillip Holmes of the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee considered how inmates’ return to federal prisons would impact their families. “Once again families, husbands generally, are being plucked (l-r) Kendrick Fulton and his sister
Ed ‘Fast Eddie’ Manderville’s life celebrated By Raymond Boyd Contributing writer Minnesota lost a golf legend on November 19, 2020— Ed “Fast Eddie” Manderville, who passed November 11, 2020 at 88 years of age. His many friends and admirers celebrated his life on July 28 at Theodore Wirth Chalet. Lorraine, his wife of 62 years, Mayor Jacob Frey, Al Bangoura, Park Board Superintendent Tom Ryan, MGA CEO, and many friends attended the celebration that evening. Mayor Frey proclaimed
July 28 “Ed Manderville Day.” Fast Eddie is a golf legend, especially at Theodore Wirth Golf Course where everyone loves and respects him. He had 11 holes-in-one. He is not only a legend in Minnesota but a legend around the world after CNN wrote a story on him after his two back-to-back holes-in-one on two par-threes: holes seven and eight at Theodore Wirth on August 13, 2014. The national hole-in-one registry states that the chances are 67 million to one that anyone can hit two holes-inone in one round of golf. On hole seven at the par-three
COVID pervasive throughout U.S. prisons A January Justice Department memo issued under the Trump administration prior to Biden’s inauguration clarified that inmates released to home confinement under the CARES Act to curb the spread of the virus would have to return to prison one month after the official state of emergency ends if their sentences extend beyond that period. According to the COVID Prison Project, which tracks data and policy to monitor the virus and its impacts on the prison system, there have been more than 400,000 cases of COVID-19 among incarcerated people, and more than 2,500 have died. A Biden legal team concluded in July that the law was correctly interpreted in the Trump-era memo, which applies to about 4,000 inmates. Although the end of the state ■ See Prison on page 5
City finalizes rent control ballot measures Sam De Leon Contributing writer After six months of grassroots organizing by the Minneapolis United Rent Control (MURC), the Minneapolis City Council voted in favor of a ballot initiative that will create a pathway for a strong rent control policy. During the council’s Policy & Government Oversight Committee meeting, 11 of 13 council members voted in favor of two charter amendments establishing a process for passing rent control in Minneapolis on July 21. The proposals will appear on
■ See Manderville on page 5
away… They’re providers. It’s going to create unnecessary hardship on families that have dependent children.”
the ballot for the November 2021 municipal elections. “Minneapolis United for Rent Control [MURC] is fighting for a strong policy that caps rent increases at 3% annually and applies universally to all units, which is actually in line with the key findings of Minneapolis City Council’s own study conducted by the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA),” said Chris Gray of MURC. "The first lie big developers are going to use is that 'rent control' sounds like a good idea, but it doesn't work. Calling rent control 'rent stabilization' won't stop them from saying this, and 'rent
control' is easily understood by the renters.” Minnesota law prohibits any law to control rents on private residential property unless the ordinance, charter amendment, or law that controls rents is approved in a general election, according to Minnesota Statute. The first proposal would change Article I of the Minneapolis charter and allow registered voters to write rent stabilization policies and petition to put them on a ballot initiative by November 2022. The second proposal would change Article IV and allow the city council to write rent stabilization policy and submit it ■ See Rent on page 5