Alright – so, let’s make one thing clear. No dfler can win any local, statewide or national election without the votes of black and brown people. What does this mean exactly? It means we are the ones giving them the power to help or screw with us. So ask yourself this question when Gov Walz was running for governor 4 years ago, what did he promise black and brown voters?
- Has he accomplished them?
- Did he hire people who look like us in a position of authority and influence in his administration?
- has that produced fruitful results in policy and prosperity?
I say no, no, and heck no. Here are the reasons.
First, he ran on one Minnesota, I call it one Minnesota hoax. He promised our kids will stay in school, not fail, and not be kicked out. Has he done that? Nope. Fact, every year he has put non-exclusionary methods before a kid is kicked out of school in his education bill, but his office never pushed it – ever. They always sided with the teacher’s union (aka today’s modernized mafia). It is the teacher who fails our kids and creates Minnesota to have the worst education gap for black, brown, and Native American students. Nothing happens to those teachers. No one holds them accountable, fires them, or even disciplines them. Over 95% of Minn teachers are white which means they do not reflect us. Oh and, he is against charter schools. There are so many Somali and other minority charter schools. Yep, if Walz wins again, we can kiss those goodbyes. He will decrease their funding drastically. We take our kids to charter schools after districts fail them. I took my son to a charter school in Minneapolis after the Bloomington school district suspended him.
2nd question – did he hire black and brown folks. Yes, but only for community outreach, community liaison, outreach coordinator, and my favorite senior community engagement & outreach coordinator. This is when they add all of the pretty words to make the person think he/she has an important job. They only use them to get more votes. Can’t our people be just regular – oh I don’t know policy adviser, director, manager, and so on and so forth? No to MN Dflers. Has he hired all of the black and brown campaign helpers who helped him win? heck no. They (MN dlfers) never do. If you get data from his office and see the make-up of his staff, you will notice most of his senior-level staff were in his campaign. You will also notice any black/brown person is just a community engagement coordinator. Seriously, if I see another black and brown highly educated and experienced person with these stupid and useless titles, I am going to scream.
3. The 2 black and brown folks he hired as commissioners or maybe asst comm, have they produced fruitful policies and prosperity? Well – ask yourself. I would say no because they are usually the go-along-to-get-along ones. Anyone with a spine and a backbone in this administration has been fired and scolded. For example, DHS has fired more black and brown people under Gov Walz than in the last 3 prev administrations combined. That is not an accident.
Now, this is the amusing (Jay Leno) and funny part. His office has been holding what they are calling “Focus on Black Minnesotans” zoom meetings. They break them into several categories such as education, health, home ownership, employment, etc. I have attended the ones that I thought related to autism. The education commissioner and her all-white staff told us years-old numbers from the Dayton administration that said – yeah it is true Minnesota has horrible racial disparities for black and brown students and students with disabilities. Shocker! Not really. You see that is old, old, old data. What has Walz done about these school districts? he went to sleep. He did not fund his human rights department to sue their ass off, he did not propose policies to take funds away such as not getting the funds for the kids they kick out. He did nada, nothing, zip, zero. Then he has the nerve to come back and give us the same data and pretend he cares. Are you bleeping kidding me. Anyone who believes this then please go back to living under the same rock.
Then his health department (you know the do nothing about autism agency) talked in another zoom meeting. They said black babies are not doing well, black mothers are suffering, black people are struggling with health issues. What in Minn? come on? It is like some white clueless dude telling us we are black or it snows in Minn. We already know this. What has MDH done in this area? Lunch on me for anyone who can say Walz put funding in his MDH budget for the last 4 years to address these health disparities. Remember, the highly educated Somali doctor from Mayo applied to work at MDH. He was interviewed by Commissioner Jan M a hundred times. She did not hire him. Yet, this woman hired Dan Pollock – you know the white lawyer who knew nothing about health. Oh please. I dare anyone to tell me this is not pure racism. You remember years ago under MDH’s prev commissioner Ehlinger and the elderly issues they had. Wait for it…..This will show you how Minn dflers screw with black and brown Minnesotans. Anyway, Dan P was there at MDH and everyone fled MDH after that including the commissioner. Guess where they hired Dan P at? waaiiiiit. DHS hires him and puts him in charge of the elderly. Imagine a black or brown person in charge of the elderly and things going so bad. That person would’ve become the scapegoat. Not in MN DFL land. They just re-shuffle their cousins. I knew Pollock when he was just a committee administrator for Rep Huntley who chaired the health and human services committee in MN House. Oh man, he was sooooooo against us. Huntley wanted to subsidize with millions of dollars for private insurance companies to cover autism therapy.
I remember one vivid conversation with Dan P during the conference committee. If you know state legislature procedures then you have seen the conference committee is like an African meat market. It is do or die. It is the wild card. You never know what the conferees will do and it is final. Pollock says to me if I convinced the Senate to take their language then next year they will help low-income autism families. I did the opposite. The senate was majority democrat at that time. Sen. Linda Berglin was the chair of the health and human services committee. Now, that was one good dfler. She called it from the hip, knew health legislation better than everyone in her head, and can shred anyone into small pieces with facts and data. I met her Sen. Berglin in a restaurant in Mpls and told her all about our autism advocacy, our struggles, and our needs. She was so kind and receptive. Long story short, she killed Huntley House version. She did it with sheer Berglin style and in your face. I remember, I sat on the floor in case we lost and I fainted or something, I wanted to be close to the floor. I closed my eyes and listened to their votes. I remember it like it was yesterday. After we won and the house’s stupid and discriminatory version that Pollock drafted was voted out, I looked at the Star Tribune’s reporter Warren Wolf whom I begged to do the story and breathed with a sigh of relief. You get a kind of a high that probably one could not get from any drug when you win in a conference committee. There is no better feeling. Sorry, I got off track here. My point is that guy is now at DHS in charge of EIDBI. How do you like them apples?
Then it was DHS’ turn and we were told all of the things happening in the human services. Well, actually they left out how DHS goes after providers of color for sneezing the wrong way, while white providers who take millions of dollars are never mentioned.
Finally, they asked us what would we like Gov Walz to put in his 2023 budget? what? how presumptuous of him. Of course, I told them what I would like in the 2023 budget is for Walz to lose the election.
Where the heck has he been the last four years? The audacity of Gov Walz asking black and brown people to hire him again and this time he will help us. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me another election, shame on us.
Black and brown folks will always be at the bottom of every pit unless we vote differently, we learn how to negotiate with our voices and we hold them accountable for what they did, not what they will do the second time. It is like an abusive husband who beats his wife but says come on – baby, give me another chance and I will not beat you up this time. If you know the answer to that question then you know how to vote this election cycle. We need to vote out Gov Walz – one Minn hoax.
The above words do not reflect any candidate, agency, or committee.
Idil – Somali Autism Mom & Advocate