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Did the Minneapolis NAACP branch "loan" $85,000 for investment in grocery stores without a written agreement to repay?   |   Ron Edwards comments on Mpls issues forum discussion   |   Re: [Mpls] Did Mpls NAACP branch "loan" $85,000 for investment in Grocery stores?

Re: [Mpls] Did Mpls NAACP branch "loan" $85,000 for investment in Grocery stores?
Subj:     Re: [Mpls] Did Mpls NAACP branch "loan" $85, 000 for investment in grocery st...
Date:     4/6/2005 6:24:31 PM Central Daylight Time
To:     mpls@mnforum.org

Also see: "Ron Edwards comments on Mpls issues forum discussion"
re: Did Mpls NAACP branch "loan" $85,000 for investment in grocery stores.
Blog Post by Ron Edwards, April 5, 2005  
https://educationright.tripod.com/id460.htm

In a message dated 4/1/2005 3:03:18 PM Central Daylight Time, eric mitchell writes:

<< ...Clearly this is about a small group who cannot get elected to run the Mpls NAACP so they have decided to run the once credible organization into the ground...  >>

[Comment by Doug Mann]
For the past 6 years the Minneapolis Branch has been run more like a mutual aid society for African-American politicians and businessmen than a civil rights and human rights advocacy organization. The NAACP leadership has been using its influence as representative of an oppressed people as a bargaining chip in back door deals to help their friends get jobs, contracts, etc.    

The situation here reflects a shift by the National NAACP leadership toward a closer relationship with the Democratic Party in 1995. Kweisi Mfume was appointed President / CEO that year. The NAACP has also oriented itself more and more toward black professionals and their networks of friends and business associates.

In Minneapolis, Mfume's administration helped a slate headed by Ricky Campbell, representing a conservative faction within the NAACP branch, win an election of officers in 1999, with considerable help from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and the Links (a club for well-to-do, college-educated African-Americans). The Cambell group represented a fairly small minority of members who regularly attended meetings, worked on committees, etc.

The settlement of the NAACP educational adequacy lawsuit in 2000 is a good example of the back door deals mentioned above. The settlement stipulated that the NAACP agreed that "the choice is yours program" (a limited, one-way city-to-suburb bussing program) and other provisions of the settlement "solved the problem" of students of color getting an inadequate education.

In my opinion, the settlement agreement was not consistent with educational policy statements approved by any NAACP convention that I know about. The basic problem since the 1890's has been the segregation of black students into inferior schools and into "low-ability" curriculum tracks in racially integrated schools.

The NAACP educational settlement also set far lower standards for the Minneapolis School District than Minnesota's "Voluntary" Desegregation Rule with respect to giving students in racially identifiable schools the right to attend schools that are not racially identifiable, and with respect to accountability measures. For example, the Deseg rule states that the commissioner of education shall ask for, and the district shall provide, in its deseg plan, specific information needed to determine if resources are equitably distributed, including data on teacher qualifications and experience. The Minneapolis School District and the MN Dept. of Education are not in compliance with the Desegregation rule, and you don't hear a peep out of the NAACP leadership about that.

The NAACP's contract with the MN Department of Ed to run Parent Information Centers was the NAACP's payoff for betraying its constituency and supporting the status quo.     

The NAACP leadership, at the branch and national level, also repeatedly took actions in relation to monitoring implementation of the Hollman Consent Decree (the settlement of a housing discrimination lawsuit) that served the interests of the city of Minneapolis (one of the defendants) at the expense of the plaintiff class. See:

The Fight Against Urban Cleansing and Gentrification in Minneapolis
https://educationright.tripod.com/id41.htm

Hollman Achieves
https://educationright.tripod.com/id290.htm

-Doug Mann, King Field
Bureaucratically removed member at large
Minneapolis NAACP branch executive committee