University of Minnesota fails the underserved population of Minnesota, with the help of Black people that work there.
On Monday, November 3, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. the man that inspired the movie “Hotel Rwanda”- Paul Ruesabagina, will be coming to Northrop Auditorium to speak. This event is sponsored by the Department of Post Secondary Teaching and Learning and co-sponsored by the Department of African American and African Studies with African Read-In. This mess falls under the University of Minnesota’s – of Education + Human Development. This event is free and open to the public. (?)
About two weeks ago, staff from a local agency was contacted about doing possible advertising for this event. The firm contacted has the Twin Cities #1 minority-ethnic media news distribution and operates a full service Public Relations agency. The problem – the General Manager was a Black Man.
So often a group of Black people get to a point in an organization where they get make decisions (or not make decisions) that effect how important information is distributed to the community that never get to attend or hear about such events. This is the case with Ms. Serna Wright, Director of Events for the University of Minnesota College of Education + Human Development. These events are usually attended by 85 percent White and the rest a mix of students and some “stratified” individuals that got the word through the “IIBN – (I’m Important Black Network). Staffers at the agency asked the GM, “How the University of Minnesota College of Education + Human Development would get the word out to the Black, Asian, Somali, Hispanic-Latino and Hmong community without using Insight News, The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Asian American Press, LaVoz, Hmong Times, One Nation News and the African media outlets in Minnesota?”
In a telephone call to Ms. Wright on yesterday, she (Ms. Wright) was asked what are her plans for message and information distribution; Cost per point; GRP; Budget; Reach & Frequency. Her reply was, “I’m going to use radio. Of course this was a call for possible dollars into our agency, but also a concern about why she’s stalled for 2 weeks.
Being in advertising and marketing for over 30 years in Minnesota, I understood then that Ms. Wright has and is consistently wasting the U of M’s money on advertising and marketing on what she feels, rather than reaching a segment of the population that would like to engage this event. This is another example of “Blue Business Racism on Pluto”.
It was apparent to me that Ms. Wright has no clue what a clean media distribution would be as it pertains to attracting people of color to the U of M that might possibly assist in building capacity for students interested in Journalism, African American Studies or other courses the U of M might offer.
Those of you that get it must know by now – Ms. Wright is the “wrong” person for the job!
Another example that no one was reading or comprehending when WEB Dubois said, “The Talented 10th is responsible for the other 90%.”
Again the University of Minnesota fails the underserved population of Minnesota, with the help of Black people that work there.
The Council on Black Minnesotans Invites You to Attend A Community Issues Forum
Topic: Economic Development & Poverty Issues Impacting Black Minnesotans
Location: Hallie Q. Brown/MLK Community Center – 270 Kent, St. Paul, Minnesota October 14, 2008 – 6:00 to 8:00 PM
Mission: Since 1980 the Council on Black Minnesotans has been charged by the Minnesota State Legislature to advise the Governor and his administration, the Legislature, the Judiciary and other policy makers at all levels on issues impacting Minnesotans of African Heritage.
In response to this charge, the Council is presenting a series of Community Issues Forums that will focus on such issues as disparities and disproportionalities in the Minnesota Criminal Justice, Health, and Education, Economic and Children and Family systems. The first forum, held in August, was on Criminal Justice Issues. The Health forum was the second forum we sponsored. And, the third forum, on Economic Development Issues, is scheduled to be held on October 14, 2008, at MLK/Hallie Q. Brown Center in St. Paul (270 Kent Street).Please put this date on your calendar and Come and Participate.
Purpose of Forums: The Council is committed to creating, identifying, analyzing and disseminating policy oriented information essential to advancing people of African descent toward equity. More specifically, the Council will sponsor about four community issues forums. Through the use of dialogue and discussion, it is anticipated that these forums will educate residents of our communities, community policy makers, professionals, the CBM Board members and staff in our efforts to create and promote a Black Legislative/Policy agenda for 2009 and future years. It is also anticipated that greater collaboration will be promoted among key stakeholders through this process.
Forum Format: All community forums will have a similar format and rules of conduct:
• “Respect for all” will be the guiding philosophy for forum’s activities.
• “Rules of the game” will be explained by the facilitator.
• Appointment of a note taker – to capture the discussion and questions.
• Issue Presenters will provide an overview of the issue(s) and will have from five to ten minutes present their position/observations.
• After all presenters have made their presentations, a twenty (20) minute question and answer period will occur. Questions should be brief and to the point and be related to the presenter’s statements. Three by five cards might be used to solicit questions from the audience. Please, no speeches.
• Community Responses/Input/Discussion on their specific issue(s). Community participants will be allowed up to two minutes each to introduce an issue/solution. (Up to a maximum of twenty (20) minutes). Speakers are limited to one presentation, depending on available time and participation level. Please be brief and to the point.
• Evaluation/questionnaire. All program participants will be requested to complete a Forum Evaluation which will be handed out at beginning of forum. On this form, they will also be asked to identify, in priority order, their perception of the three most important issues facing Black Minnesotans and the three issues that they would like to see addressed in the Council’s Legislative/Policy Agenda for 2009 and Future Years.
Psychological Screening – The Good the Bad the Ugly, Don’t let the System Dictate for your Children!
Informing Parents of Their Right to Opt Out of Preschool Screening
The state must now inform parents that they have the right to opt out of preschool screening. The current law states that parents may conscientiously object to screening, but public notices to parents are highly misleading. They usually state that Minnesota law requires all preschoolers to be screened before kindergarten. Most parents were not told that their children do not have to participate in the highly subjective mental screening or the nosy personal questions about family life that ask about gun ownership, eating habits and “exposure to violence.”
This is a very important victory that will shield many families from intrusive data collection and many children from false mental illness labeling at an early age that will follow them throughout their years. It will also reduce unnecessary referrals for dangerous psychiatric treatment. Great thanks for this goes especially to Rep. Steve Gottwalt (R-St. Cloud), who sponsored this language as separate legislation, and to Sen. Betsy Wergin (R-Princeton) who worked to get it amended into the Senate bill. Thanks also to the DFL leadership for leaving this common sense parental rights language in the final bill.
Infant Mental Health Screening — Fails
The entire section of legislation to establish a Kindergarten Readiness Advisory Board that included infant mental health was dropped from the final K-12 bill.
This would have affected all children, birth through age 5, in the recommendations of a statewide early childhood system to be designed by this appointed board. (See EdWatch update here.) Part of that system would have included infant mental health as part of a federal grant program that seeks to “screen all children birth to age five early and continuously” for “behavioral health.” “Behavioral health” is used to describe socio-emotional or mental health. It requires screening and treatment which more and more frequently is drugs, even in very young children. Although this Advisory Board, appointed by elected officials, would have been preferable to the barely accountable MELF system which did pass (see Nanny State Expansion, Part I), concerns remained. The Advisory Board was directed to recommend a statewide early childhood system that included infant mental health. In addition, preschool mental screening continues in this state, with extremely vague or non-existent statutory authority and weak or non-existent parental consent or notification. Hopefully, this existing screening will be curbed by the parents’ rights language on screening that was passed and discussed just above (See item #1). Thanks goes to the Governor for threatening a veto and the House Republican Caucus for being willing to uphold a veto of the education bill that starved the funds for yet another bureaucratic intrusion into family life.
TeenScreen — Passes
Funding for mental screening programs like TeenScreen passed in the education spending bill (HF2245). Due to enormous opposition and pressure from you, the public, this program went from “in your face” specific implementation of the very controversial TeenScreen program to the stealth description of “voluntary, opt-in suicide prevention tools” in the Safe Schools Levy. Opt-in does not mean that parents have requested psychiatric screening or that they have been informed of the dangers of the program. [For more information on TeenScreen , click here.]
TeenScreen must be challenged at the individual school district level. Some districts in Minnesota have already been implementing TeenScreen, even before receiving the additional money this levy will provide. However, once parents and school boards are notified of the controversial and unscientific nature of TeenScreen with its high false positive rates and other problems, many boards across the country have refused TeenScreen or parental permission rates have been so low that schools have discontinued the program.
Besides many thanks to you for your calls and emails, great thanks goes to Representatives Mark Olson (R-Big Lake), Tom Emmer (R-Delano), Tony Cornish (R -Good Thunder), Laura Brod (R-New Prague), Paul Kohls (R-Victoria), and Sondra Erickson (R-Princeton) for sponsoring amendments to remove this provision and for speaking out on the House floor and in committees against this bad language. The entire House Republican caucus with the exception of Representatives Jim Abeler (R-Anoka), Carol McFarlane (R-White Bear Lake), Ron Erhardt (R-Edina), Morrie Lanning (R-Moorhead), Denny McNamara (R-Hastings), Neil Peterson (R -Bloomington), and Kathy Tinglestad (R-Andovor) voted to remove this provision. (Rep. Dennis Ozment, R-Rosemount, was absent.). No Democrats supported the amendment.
Discriminatory Mental Screening of Poor Children
a pilot program that will psychiatrically screen the children of low-income families passed in the Health and Human Services bill. Those receiving benefits through the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) will have their children screened for mental illness. The dangers of this psychiatric screening are the same as the dangers of TeenScreen. This program is also highly discriminatory and stigmatizing for poor and minority children, because it assumes that low-income families are more prone to mental illness.
Minority activists strongly opposed this measure by testifying and lobbying. EdWatch hoped for a veto of this appropriation. Mental screening in this program will lead to more drugging of poor and minority children than is already happening. According to a study by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 90% of children who see a psychiatrist will receive medication. Poor children on government programs like Medicaid are more likely to receive the strongest anti-psychotic drugs compared to children with private insurance.
Rev. Herron, an African-American pastor of Zion Baptist Church in north Minneapolis, representing many members of the community group Parents Speak Out, testified twice against the children of the poor being targeted for mental screening. Rev. Herron stated that the poor and minorities are aggressively drugged with dangerous and addictive psychiatric medications as a result of unreliable and subjective mental screening. He testified that universal mental screening is destructive to their families. (See details here.)
In Rev. Herron’s Senate Health and Human Services Budget Committee testimony, Sen. Berglin, the Committee Chair, Sen. Higgins, the bill’s author, and committee member Sen. Lourey all insisted that he was mistaken — that child mental screening was not in the bill. In reality, screening has always been in the bill, and these Senators seriously wronged this highly-regarded leader of the minority community. Rep. Sondra Erickson (R- Princeton) and Rep. Mark Olson (R-Big Lake) are to be thanked for their attempts to amend this language out of the bill.
Early Intervention to Include Mental Screening
Mental screening and behavioral intervention was included into an otherwise positive program that provides added instructional aid to students struggling with math and reading before referring them for special education. The problem comes with the “behavioral intervention” part of the program. Neither the language of the bill nor the program’s website clarify how students that are not yet identified as special education students are screened for behavior problems, what interventions taken, the scientific validity of these interventions, what the parental consent procedures are for screening or intervening, or how these issues are handled in student records. Both state and federal law require parental consent before special education evaluations occur, and Minnesota law upholds a parent’s right to refuse these evaluations. Struggling students should not be routinely screened and referred for mental illness or untested behavioral intervention, especially under such unclear consent procedures.
Dr. Karen Effrem raised these concerns in both House and Senate testimony. The sponsors, Rep. Tim Faust (D-Mora) and Sen. Kathy Saltzman (D-Woodbury), feigned concern about these objections, but in the end did nothing about them. The Senate added this language to the education bill on the very last night of the session. Sen. Warren Limmer (R – Maple Grove) is to be thanked for attempting to add parental consent requirements as an amendment.The entire Senate Republican caucus voted for that amendment with the exception of Sen. Gen Olson (R-Minnetrista), who inexplicably spoke against it.
All of the Democrats voted against it.
For more information, visit www.edwatch.org.
Minneapolis Urban League elects new chair and Board, will this change be only self serving?
Dear Readers,
Please read this press release carefully. Remember, your opinion counts.
MINNEAPOLIS, September 3, 2008 — The Minneapolis Urban League is pleased to announce that Catherine Wassberg, associate general counsel for Northwest Airlines, has been elected chairperson of its 24-member Board of Directors. The north Minneapolis-based non-profit also has elected seven new members to its board: Kenneth Charles, General Mills, Inc.; Roxanne Givens, ethnicHome, Inc.; Peter Hayden, Turning Point; Al McFarlane, McFarlane Media; Billy Russell, Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church; Kevin Wright, U.S Bank; and Leslie Wright, Minneapolis Marriott City Center.
As board chair, Wassberg will serve a one-year term and must be re-elected each year to the position. The new board members each will serve a three-year term. Wassberg and the new board members, along with the rest of the board, assumed their responsibilities this summer and were charged with leading the search for the organization’s permanent president/CEO. The entire board, which includes the interim president/CEO, will convene on September 24 at the Minneapolis Urban League’s Glover-Sudduth Center.
“Our chair and new members bring a wealth of experience and a set of established relationships with many of the communities we serve,” said David Oguamanam, interim president/CEO of the Minneapolis Urban League. “Their leadership will be crucial as we tackle the upcoming year’s objectives and define the goals and strategies that will determine our organization’s course for the next several years.”
About the Minneapolis Urban League
The Minneapolis Urban League is a community-based, not-for-profit organization that provides human services and advocacy that will enable African Americans and other diverse group members residing in the greater Minneapolis metropolitan area to cultivate and develop their individual and group potential on a par with all other Minnesotans. The organization provides a continuum of more than 20 programs and services, which operate from seven facilities throughout Minneapolis, and serves approximately 20,000 individuals and families so they can have access to quality employment, housing, health care, education and social services.
For more information about the Minneapolis Urban League, visit www.mul.org or call (612) 302-3100. The Minneapolis Urban League is headquartered at the Glover-Sudduth Center, 2100 Plymouth Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN 55411.
Shelia “Superwoman” St. James, the USA’s #1 Exercise Physiologist!
Twin City Business would like to introduce you to America’s #1 Exercise Physiologist, located right here in Minneapolis, MN. Shelia St. James a professional Clinical Physiologist is available to speak at your organizations about Disparities in Health and Wellness as it pertains to all people. Her “solutions and recommendations” are the best.
More about Shelia “Superwoman” St. James:
“Health and Fitness” go-to-girl, Sheila St. James is armed with a Masters Degree in Human Performance and Health Promotions and is a Clinical Exercise Physiologist living in the Twin Cities. She is America’s newest fitness inspiration. Producer and host of the award-winning wellness television program, “Shape Up With Sheila.” Her cable television show has won nods for Best Educational TV program for two consecutive years and it also won an award for Best Public Service Announcement.
During the last five years she has helped thousands lose unwanted fat, increase their metabolism and enjoy new healthier lifestyles with her educational seminars, personal training and, stellar aerobics classes. This New Orleans native and “energizer bunny” believes that your health is your greatest wealth. Sheila is also the author of the Shape Up With Sheila!-Daily Training Journal. She has many educational and professional titles including, Clinical Exercise Physiologist (CEP), Kinesiotherapist (KT), and Nutrition Consultant.
Sheila is a U.S. champion aerobics instructor, sports/swimsuit/fitness/figure model and competitor. The former beauty pageant contestant has reigned as Ms Orleans Parish, Ms. New Orleans and Miss “Fit” Louisiana. Her goal is to educate others on wellness issues and health empowerment. You can read more about Shelia by visiting her website at www.shapeupwithsheila.com. Shelia’s show, “Shape Up With Shelia” can be viewed on the following stations and networks: SHAPE UP WITH SHEILA – TV Show **NEW**St. Paul only (Comcast cable) Ch 15 Wednesday 6 pm and Thursday 1am, 11am; St. Louis Park Only(Comcast Cable) Ch. 15 Monday – 5 a.m., 1 p.m., 9 p.m. – Tuesday – 5 a.m., 1 p.m. – Friday – 9p.m. - Saturday – 5 a.m., 1 p.m., 9 p.m. Sunday – 5 a.m., 1 p.m., 9 p.m.; Minneapolis Television Network (MTN) (Comcast Cable) Ch. 17 Mondays – 11:30 p.m. Saturdays – 8:00 a.m. with Daily “Fit-Tips” on KMOJ-FM Radio – 89.9
