September 15, 2018

"Dubbed the 'Wall of the Forgotten Natives' because it is located along a highway sound wall, the tent camp houses a population that is largely American Indian..."

"... including some families and children. It has quadrupled in size over the past month. Many of the tent dwellers say they have struggled to find affordable housing and feel safer living in a large group than sleeping alone on the streets or in emergency shelters. City leaders' approach has differed from those in many other large cities, where authorities have used sweeps, raids and other punitive measures to break up camps...."

From "Second death is linked to Minneapolis homeless encampment/Wade Redmond, 20, had 'a family and a home,' but was drawn to the camp" (Minneapolis Star Tribune).

"Wade had a family and a home, but struggled with a number of issues... It's not just people without homes who migrate to it.... Many people go there for a variety of reasons related to their specific lives," said LaDonna Redmond, a local political candidate. The Star Tribute adds, "She said Wade identified as queer and preferred to be referred to by the pronouns 'they' and 'them.'"

58 comments:

mockturtle said...

They could always build a casino.

Fernandinande said...

"She said Wade identified as queer and preferred to be referred to by the pronouns 'they' and 'them.'"

Aww. Did he play tennis?

rhhardin said...

Teepees, not tents.

bagoh20 said...

How is a Native American in a tent homeless?

I bet most are as Native American as Fauxcahontas.

tcrosse said...

I bet most are as Native American as Fauxcahontas.

Au contraire. Minneapolis has plenty of genuine full-blooded Native Americans right off the Rez.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Indigians are incapable of adjusting to modern conditions that changed over one hundred years before they were born.

Howard said...

someone should hand out blankets, problem solved.

Carol said...

struggled with a number of issues

Oh, wtf does that mean anyway. What a tired expression.

tcrosse said...

someone should hand out blankets, problem solved.

Bus tickets to a warmer climate. California, say.

FullMoon said...

The story less about Indians and more about the dead guy's mother running for commissioner and fighting for "food jusstice":

"she said that Wade was the inspiration for her drive to bring food justice to poor and minority populations across the country. Wade was born with severe food allergies during a time when her family had little access to fresh and healthy food because of the absence of grocery stores in their Chicago neighborhood, she said. That situation led her to research better ways to produce and market healthy food.

For the past several years, she has spoken nationally on behalf of the food justice movement, including in a widely shared TEDx talk."

Mary Beth said...

someone should hand out blankets, problem solved.

Dark humor. I like it. (I like the joke, not doing that as an actual solution.)

todd galle said...

I think if the recipients want 'food justice' they should stop selling SNAP cards at .50 cents to the dollar for cash. Their money would go twice as far if my math is right, and would increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables available to a client (I really hate that term) by a similar amount.

Paco Wové said...

Minneapolis, the San Francisco of the Prairies.

Michael K said...

Food Justice sounds like another scam. Has Serena Williams commented ?

BUMBLE BEE said...

Prager often quotes Talmud (Old Testament). Goes something like "He who doesn't work doesn't eat". People sell their SNAP cards to provide for their "issues". Prostitution comes to mind as well.

cubanbob said...

What the article has to do with American Indians isn't in the article. I saw a picture of a black kid with his mom and the mom talking about "food justice" and that the kid died from a cardiac arrest. No relationship to being an American Indian living in a tent and dying due to his living conditions.

gilbar said...

This is what happens when you approve the Dakota Access pipeline; without Soros money for homeless demonstrators, they have to go back to their home(less) bases.

But i think it's interesting that the mini-apple has expanded homelessness to include people with homes, that just want to experience the outdoors in town!

"Wade had a family and a home, but struggled with a number of issues... It's not just people without homes who migrate to it.... Many people go there for a variety of reasons related to their specific lives"

Birkel said...

If they were raised on the communist reservations that Congress provided (spit) then they should be ardent free marketers.

Why aren't Natives reacting to the reservation system like the Poles and the Hungarians?

gilbar said...

So, Wade's mom, "Redmond, 54, a diversity manager for the Seward Community Co-op and a self-described food justice activist ".
"Seward Community Co-op is a natural foods cooperative, providing customers with the highest quality products and service", so I understand why one of their employee's wants "food Justice"; she wants people to be required to buy 'highest quality' 'natural foods' from the SCC. What i Do NOT understand is WHY a Natual Foods store needs a "diversity manager"?

Could someone help me out? Does that mean she is the token?

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Ah, "food justice." "Food deserts." I know all about food deserts, having lived in one for some years. The nearest places selling any food at all (with an exception I'll get to in a minute) sold mostly cheap booze -- and by "cheap" I mean cheap, as in Wild Irish Rose and Night Train Express -- and the closest place purporting to sell actual produce had exactly the kind of wilted, fly-covered produce you've been led to expect. Even that was over ten minutes' walk, which ISTR is how they define a food desert.

Ah, but the exception? It was a tiny storefront called Janta International, presumably related somehow to the Indian powerhouse of the same name, and the stock was as you'd expect: a lot of Bollywood videos, Indian cooking utensils, and Indian foodstuffs (some of them sorta-perishable, like bags of onions and potatoes). This is exactly what you do find, repeatedly, in food deserts: There's perfectly good food right under your nose, but given the choice between the little Indian store and Black & White Liquors, you'll pretend the former doesn't exist, and the latter is all you have. Besides, who wants to learn how to cook Indian? Well, I didn't then, but I do now.

Theodore Dalrymple had an article in www.city-journal.org many years ago documenting the same phenomenon: Right in the middle of a notorious "food desert" was the place where he did a lot of his shopping. Bulk root veggies, rice, curry pastes and the like were all insanely cheap. But his shop was run by Pakistanis, so it didn't count.

You see the same phenomenon everywhere. I used to work in the Mission District in San Francisco, and I saw it every day: Kids walking past the pho place, the several taquerias, the teriyaki-and-burger joint, the Indian buffet, the Chinese joint, a Safeway simply crammed with healthful lunch foods (this is all on the same ten-minute-walk section of street!), all heading for Burger King. And there they bullied the staff so mercilessly that only someone desperate for the money would've stood more than a day of it. I ate there a few times myself, until I couldn't take it any more. The staff was all-Hispanic; the bullies were all-black.

But my point here isn't about race; it's about not recognizing good food even if it gets out on the sidewalk and practically bites you in the ass. I see I've left out the groceries apart from Safeway. Within a block from 16th and Mission BART, there were two: a huge Asian one on my side, a big Hispanic one in the other direction. Between them you could outfit -- not every meal, but an awful lot of them. But that would entail cooking.

gilbar said...

"Food deserts." Imagine The Horror of having no choice but Burger King! Where's the Popeyes's? Where's the Mickey D's?

I live more than a 10 minute walk from the nearest Grocery Store. The closest we have to Real Food is a Hardees and a Subway. Not even a Burger King :(

Fortunately, there's a delicious diner across the street; where you can get grilled Salmon and
California vegetables with homemade rolls. . . AND (while it's still in season) FRESH PEACH PIE!! That's the sort of "Food deserts" for me!!

Achilles said...

The globalists are pushing these homeless camps in every major city. There are several such encampments in Seattle and they are opening these camps up to the ms-13 heroin dealers explicitly.

The left is a cancer on a free society.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

gilbar,

I wasn't saying precisely that the Mission District is a food desert (unlike my little chunk of Emeryville), only that a lot of people chose to treat it as though it were one, studiously ignoring the amazing food on all sides because it was unfamiliar or might (heavens!) involve speaking a syllable in a language not English. Kids, if you want never to have to interact with other languages, you might want to reconsider living in the Mission.

The Mickey D's, btw, is at 16th and Mission, so I assume that the kids not going to BK mostly go there.

Geoff Matthews said...

So a guy who used gender-neutral pronouns was self-destructive?
Should this be a surprise?

LakeLevel said...

Achilles: "The globalists are pushing these homeless camps in every major city."
Luckily at -20F (-30C) even the native natives can hear Florida and California beckoning. Then the city can go in and pave over the whole place and put up speakers playing classical music.

stevew said...

"Many people go there for a variety of reasons related to their specific lives,"

What is the world does that even mean? Is it related to Wade's identifying as queer? Can we see a list of these reasons, I'm having a hard time simply evaluating this explanation without some specifics.

-sw

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

LakeLevel,

It's not just this tent city; Minneapolis also has (IIRC) the largest Somali immigrant community in the US. Why people from one of the hottest climates on Earth should choose Minneapolis of all places to settle in is anyone's guess. I'm thinking maybe an expanded definition of "chain migration" might cover it. A few Somalis settle there; they have friends back home; word spreads.

Me, I'd practically kill for classical music, even the lame-o American radio stations. (If you want such niceties as whole pieces, or vocal music, or anything written after 1910, try the BBC, or Norway's Alltid Klassisk, or Bavarian State Radio.) Why can't people just tune it out when they want to? Obviously that's what they expect me to do, when every store is laden with anodyne rock "classics" all the time, or when they come slowly cruising past with the rap going full blast.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

A 20 year old died of cardiac arrest? No one is investigating? We're being lied to.

gilbar said...

John Lynch said...
A 20 year old died of cardiac arrest? No one is investigating? We're being lied to.

he was in a coma, and they removed his life support; his heart stopped on account of because of the fact that he was brain dead, and it all makes much more sense
why was he in a coma? well, it was either:
lack of 'food justice', because it was a food desert
*OR*
he OD'd on GOD knows what drug addicts OD on these days, which burnt out his brain

ga6 said...

Why Somali immigrants in MN? Thank Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities with the ever growing public sector "helping" agencies. This unofficial co-op cut their teeth on the Hmong after the Democrats surrendered Viet Nam. The money poured in from both private and government sources. Now staffed to the hilt these groups found that there was a limited supply of South Asia forest people who wanted to live in the frozen North. So they are now ever on the prowl for groups which can be identified as needing free passage to the land of the great EBT and of course these new comers are in need of the services the agencies hand out, and the agencies need evermore money.. there is a rumor that if Ebola can be tamed the Congolese are next on the list..

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Talk about burying the lede! A person is dead, and they want to write about "food justice." Hey, someone died, can you please tell me why?

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

I guess LGBTQ lives don't matter if lefty politics is on the line.

Fernandinande said...

Hey, someone died, can you please tell me why?

Stage 12 scurvy.

USDA Defines Food Deserts

"Food deserts are defined as parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas." Food deserts are almost entirely the result of the desert dwellers' lack interest in fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas.

tcrosse said...

BTW the Seward Community Coop is located on the more fashionable end of Franklin Ave, a long way from the Native-American neighborhoods west of Hiawatha Ave.

n.n said...

Hey, someone died, can you please tell me why?

Illegal Alien Charged with Murdering 16-Year-Old New Jersey Girl

Diversity, anti-nativism, political congruence, debasement of human life. It's imperative that there be emigration reform and a curtailment of social justice activism in order to escape the cycle of Obama's trail of tears, children in cages, selective-child (i.e. elective abortion), labor arbitrage, and civil disenfranchisement.

glenn said...

Everybody does the best they can folks.

The Crack Emcee said...

The photo of them is beautiful.

The Crack Emcee said...

bagoh20 said...

"I bet most are as Native American as Fauxcahontas."

tcrosse said...

"Au contraire. Minneapolis has plenty of genuine full-blooded Native Americans right off the Rez."

I bet bagoh20 totally ignores being so wrong, and goes right on being "white" - AKA randomly assuming bad things about other Americans who A) have no escape from him B) don't need his assumptions, and C) don't need the likes of him.

Go practice "Dueling Banjos" somewhere, bagoh, and wait for your moment.

The Crack Emcee said...

Todd Galle said...

"I think if the recipients want 'food justice' they should stop selling SNAP cards at .50 cents to the dollar for cash."

But cash has no restrictions on what food you can buy - SNAP cards do.

"Their money would go twice as far if my math is right, and would increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables available to a client (I really hate that term) by a similar amount."

Your math is right, but your reasoning is unrealistic.

The Crack Emcee said...

Michael K said...

"Food Justice sounds like another scam. Has Serena Williams commented ?"

I don't know why you guys call me racist when you hang out together.

The Crack Emcee said...

BUMBLE BEE said...

"People sell their SNAP cards to provide for their "issues". Prostitution comes to mind as well."

Here's another one. Can you guys think beyond the worst examples of what the poor do, to actually deal with the issues? That would at least let you look like responsible people talking, instead of a group of assholes.

The Crack Emcee said...

gilbar said...

"Could someone help me out? Does that mean she is the token?"

You guys are a hoot. About as bright as a cardboard box, but a real hoot.

Jeff said...

The story contradicts itself:

The death of 20-year-old Wade Redmond of Minneapolis this week is the second linked to the homeless encampment that has been rapidly growing in south Minneapolis, although it was not clear Friday whether circumstances at the camp played any role in the death.

The young man who died and his mother the food justice activist diversity manager are both black and most of the residents of the encampment are not. Maybe Wade bought some bad drugs at the camp and overdosed on the spot, but if the camp wasn't there he would have just found another dealer somewhere else. Maybe he wouldn't have OD'ed the same day, but he was heading that way eventually. There's not enough information in the story to know if he could have been saved from himself.

The Crack Emcee said...

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

"You see the same phenomenon everywhere."

I see whites lying (I live in a food desert and there's no indian store anywhere, thanks) and they think the goofy name "Dalrymple"
translates as "God".

Seek professional help.

The Crack Emcee said...

Jeff said...

"The story contradicts itself"

It's a terribly written story - for an obviously terrible readership.

The Crack Emcee said...

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

"I wasn't saying precisely that the Mission District is a food desert (unlike my little chunk of Emeryville), only that a lot of people chose to treat it as though it were one, studiously ignoring the amazing food on all sides because it was unfamiliar or might (heavens!) involve speaking a syllable in a language not English."

I lived in SF for almost 30 years and have no idea who you people are.

The Crack Emcee said...

Achilles said...

"The left is a cancer on a free society."

Why don't you guys tell the whole truth:

"The left is a cancer on a free society - and the right had NOTHING to do with it - beyond making ourselves repulsive to other human beings."

Then we'd at least think you're honest.

The Crack Emcee said...

Unknown said...

"Many people go there for a variety of reasons related to their specific lives,"

"What is the world does that even mean?"

It means they go there to be accepted, you moron.

The Crack Emcee said...

John Lynch said...
Talk about burying the lede! A person is dead, and they want to write about "food justice." Hey, someone died, can you please tell me why?

9/15/18, 5:42 PM
Blogger John Lynch said...
I guess LGBTQ lives don't matter if lefty politics is on the line.

9/15/18, 5:49 PM

How do you guys do that? Go from sounding like normal people to right-wing fruitcakes in 7 minutes? (Just had to come back to "get it in", did you, John?)

"White" people are their own worst enemies.

The Crack Emcee said...

Fernandistein said...

"Food deserts are almost entirely the result of the desert dwellers' lack interest in fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas."

Can someone here tell me what there was about a slave's diet - eating the scraps from whites - that formed the basis for decent food awareness?

You do seem to be the experts.

The Crack Emcee said...

glenn said...

"Everybody does the best they can folks."

Thank goodness, there's hope for "white" folks still.

Rusty said...

I see the high plains grifter has shown up to show us the problem is all about him.

The Crack Emcee said...

Rusty said...

"I see the high plains grifter has shown up to show us the problem is all about him."

I see this cult is saying thew same things "whites" have said to me here - that blacks are better off because they brought us here:

Among her allegations is that Deborah Green ordered her to kidnap a little girl from Mexico. She told PEOPLE she was instructed to wait until dark and then to just “grab” a child. Green allegedly reasoned that children “shouldn’t be on the street, so if we were to take them, we would be giving them a better life.”

Tell me, Rusty, why do "white" Americans think like evil kidnapping cultists - still?

rwnutjob said...

Take them to the Mall of Africa with the Somalis.

I've been to MSP when it was -31
Trust me.
This problem will go away one way or another.

Rusty said...

Sorry, Crack. I don't speak demented.

Freeman Hunt said...

That is the strangest news story. A young man died from cardiac arrest, a pretty rare thing and a pretty big deal that deserves a local news story, but the story isn't about that and is instead about a homeless encampment, which may or may not have something to do with the young person's death, and lack of availability of fresh food in some areas, which doesn't seem to be related to the death. Read like three different articles edited together.

Chris N said...

Many moons ago, City Council emerge from White Man Law. Leaping Prog sit on Council and sing Kumbaya.

Sad old white women and shabby man zealots need origin myth too

Skippy Tisdale said...

"Why Somali immigrants in MN? Thank Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities with the ever growing public sector "helping" agencies."

This is absolutely true.

I have lived in Minneapolis nearly all of my life and have worked with the homeless here, especially youth, so I can say with absolute certainty that there are no food deserts in Minneapolis. None.