Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Some old maps that start to tell the story of North Minneapolis



That's a old map from 1913 that shows the transit routes around Minneapolis and St. Paul. Why it's interesting is in North it shows just a few fingers of housing that were there at the time and Victory Parkway was just in the planning stages - wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Memorial_Parkway

Also, that this map, although a proposed park map, shows that as of 1883 most North of Broadway wasn't there:



This is what makes North really unique as far as housing and community. We run the range of the old grand upper middle and middle class (the workers were more over in NE) Victorian homes to the bungalows and arts and craft periods.

Or maybe I'm looking into too much on a day off, and thinking about it too much after meeting with some non profit housing partners that I will work with through HNC.


Thursday, December 10, 2015

Echoes of 1967


So I read something sad today in the news about North.
http://www.kare11.com/story/news/local/2015/12/09/funding-proposal-to-4th-precinct-causes-controversy/77077380/
Not sure why that's a big deal, as the building more than likely needs the help anyway but that's not the sad part. The article mentions a lady who was shouted over for speaking in favor of the council and police, which shouldn't happen, we all need to be able to speak our voice.

It also mentions a really scary quote from a lady who should be more responsible: "And the only reason this city didn't burn to the ground is because of that occupation outside of the fourth precinct," said Nekima Levy-Pounds - Minneapolis NAACP President.
The scary part is that this happened years ago: http://www.startribune.com/north-minneapolis-echoes-of-the-unrest-in-1967/351540861/

We're doing great things in North and there are issues that need to be addressed with the police, but I'm sorry, riots have no place in any discourse.

Also I have to disagree with the claim to ownership over North, or at least parts of it. It hasn't always been historically black, and in fact as a white with Western European descent I have as much claim to parts of it as the African American community. We're all in this together, we're all stewards of the community, and we need to take the best care we can of it while it's in our care.
Then I'm not sure what this refers to: "White people need to acknowledge their position of privilege and step back to allow the people of that community to speak for themselves. They're quite capable of doing that. They're capable of policing their own neighborhood," Gillette West said."

I guess that person hasn't looked at a shots fired map...

 

Anyway, I hope we're not as close to riots as it seems and I hope that leaders settle down and don't let things come to riots, it wouldn't be good for anyone.