THE VOICE OF BLACK MINNESOTA SINCE 1934
May 5 - 11, 2022
Vol. 88
PRST STD U.S.POSTAGE PAID TWIN CITIES MN PERMIT NO. 6391
Inside this Edition...
Read about ‘Celebrating the Sistas’ on page 2.
www.spokesman-recorder.com
No. 40
State report confirms racism, sexism among Mpls police By Cole Miska Contributing Writer
Mayor says he’s outraged and horrified, but some question his sincerity
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Photo courtesy of MGN
fter a nearly two-year investigation, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR) has found the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) engaged in a pattern of racial and gender discrimination. According to the 72-page report released on April 27, MPD is more likely to stop, search, cite, arrest, and use force against Black civilians than their White counterparts. They also had a pattern of using racist and sexist epithets on body camera footage, and used
fake social media accounts to surveil activists who were not suspected of a crime. The report was compiled based on interviews conducted by the MDHR with a wide variety of City officials and MPD officers and administrators, as well as 2,200 community members who have interacted with MPD. Statistics from between 2010 to present, 480,000 pages of City and MPD documents, and 700 hours of body camera footage were also examined for the report. MDHR Commissioner Rebecca Lucero and Deputy Commissioner Irina Vaynerman held a press conference on Wednesday to present the findings.
“This investigation is not about one individual or one instance, but whether there is a pattern within the police department of treating people of color and indigenous people differently because of their race,” Lucero said. According to the findings, Black people are almost twice as likely to be pulled over by the MPD than White people. Also, 78% of vehicle searches were conducted against Black people despite Black people comprising 19% of Minneapolis’s demographic makeup. “We found that MPD officers are more likely to stop vehicles with people of color and Indigenous individuals, ■ See MPD on page 5
LAKE STREET GETS REBUILT—AND REIMAGINED
Photo by Paige Elliott By Abdi Mohamed Contributing Writer Having grown up on Lake Street in South Minneapolis, Chris Montana was able to see the corridor transform from virtually nothing into the vibrant cultural district that it’s become today. “In the early ‘90s, that part of Lake Street wasn’t much to look at. There were a lot of abandoned buildings, and a lot of entrepreneurs of color came in and turned it around,” he said. Montana is now one of those entrepreneurs who has brought change to the corridor as the owner and founder of Du Nord Social Spirits, a distillery located on Lake and East 32nd Street and the first Black-owned distillery in the nation. He founded the business nine years ago and in the spring of 2020 nearly lost it all.
Montana’s distillery, like hundreds of other businesses along Lake Street, was damaged by the civil uprising that occurred in the days following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. Overall, the Twin Cities area incurred more than half a billion dollars in damages that summer. The cost was enough to shutter many businesses that were already struggling to stay afloat. “I know how many things had to go right to create the Lake Street corridor that we have, and to lose it in the span of a couple of days is heartbreaking,” Montana said of the arson and looting that took place during the uprising. “Because we’re usually undercapitalized, we don’t have a lot of margin for error. It only takes a couple of things going wrong for us to go out of business,” he added. Hundreds of small businesses owners found
Where climate change and racial justice intersect By Charles Hallman Contributing Writer
director of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy. In her position, Battle develops programming focused on equitable disaster recovery, global Black people need to be more aware of climate migration, community economic development, change and how it shapes our lives, contends climate justice and energy democracy. She was Colette Pichon Battle, the founder and co-executive in town last week for the Westminster Town Hall series on climate change science and solutions. She spoke to the MSR a few hours before her April 27 appearance at Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Minneapolis. “I feel like Black folks have got to wake up to this because we are going to be the first ones hit and sacrificed,” said Battle, “and always we’re the first ones to perish in this thing that we are not paying any attention to.” Battle is a generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana, located in the Gulf Coast, which makes up Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama and Florida. She has worked with local communities, elected officials, and others in the post-Katrina and post-Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster recovery and actively advocates for climate change mitigation and adaptation with racial justice and equity at its core. Colette Pichon Battle Photo by Charles Hallman ■ See CLIMATE on page 5
themselves in need of millions of dollars in repairs at the onset of a global pandemic. The situation called for massive fundraising and advocacy that individual business owners could not bear on their own. Lake Street Council channels funds Allison Sharkey is the executive director of the Lake Street Council (LSC), a nonprofit organization that caters to the business community along Lake Street. After witnessing the damage take place, Sharkey knew that her organization would have a role to play in helping the business owners rebuild after the uprising. “In 2020, after everything happened in May and June the day after the first fires happened on Lake Street, we thought, ‘Oh, wow, there’s going to be a need for direct support for businesses to recover,’” she recalled.
The council jumped into action and created a campaign titled “We Love Lake Street” to raise funding for businesses along the corridor hit by the uprising. They raised more than $12 million from over 80,000 donors. That money went to the immediate relief of business owners on Lake Street, some of whom had lost everything. After the Trump administration denied Minnesota’s request for disaster relief, people turned to local organizations like the LSC for assistance. “It felt like our community was really unprepared for this and that it was up to the grassroots organizations on the ground to step in and provide support. That was pretty shocking to me,” Sharkey said. She credits the organization’s deep community ties in the community to how it was able to connect with hundreds of business owners and divvy up millions of ■ See LAKE ST on page 5
State’s first Black-owned bank opens for business By Cole Miska Contributing Writer
First Independence Bank, which is headquartered in Detroit, held a grand opening ceremony at its The first Black-owned bank new Minneapolis branch on Unibranch in Minnesota celebrated versity Avenue in Prospect Park. About 150 community its opening on Tuesday, April 26.
members, business leaders and politicians, including Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, attended the ribbon-cutting ■ See BANK on page 5
Damon Jenkins cuts the ribbon at the First Independence grand opening on April 26. Facebook/First Independence Bank