Monthly Archives: May 2021

Part 1 of a series

A virtual Town Hall meeting 1pm Tuesday, April 6 explored issues and opportunities created by the search for improvements in the Highway 252/I94 Corridor segments in North Minneapolis, Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park.

Stairstep Foundation CEO Alfred Babington-Johnson joined Conversations moderator, Al McFarlane as co-host, to introduce an initiative to support Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) efforts to broaden engagement around the project for African American and African immigrant residents who may be impacted by improvement considerations.

Forum participants included: Reverend Dr. Francis Tabla, senior pastor Ebenezer Community Church in Brooklyn Center, Bishop Richard Howell, the Diocesan Bishop of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World and Pastor of Shiloh Temple Church in North Minneapolis, Reverend Cyreta Oduniyi, a pastoral leader at Liberty Church in North Minneapolis and Superintendent McKinley Moore, pastor of Jehovah Jireh Church of God in Christ in Brooklyn Park.

The Town Hall meeting was the first of three planned Town Halls in the effort engage leaders of African and African American church organization congregations and neighbors, and marketing outreach through McFarlane Media, producer of Conversations with Al McFarlane and owner of Insight News.

Often when we hear corporate CEOs and political office holders or leaders of civic or educational institutions speak, they cite strategic plans that guide their steps. When we lift the curtain and get a chance to see these plans, what we discovered is that they're not simply minutes of a discussion was held in the previous week. Now, we see plans that represent the thinking of the best minds that are available in the timeframe of the planning is 10, 15, 20 years, or more, said Babington.

The truth of our village is that we are not aware of, nor are we often included in the early discussions of important social or physical infrastructure changes that dramatically affect our lives. That is why this moment is so exciting to me. From the governor, to the commissioner of MnDOT, to our gathered friends here, this forum, there's a determination that we will begin anew with intentional inclusion of folks that have traditionally been left out. The process begins with the information. The Bible says, My people perish, for lack of knowledge. We've determined that none will perish for lack of information about 252/I-94, Babington said.

April Crockett, MnDOT risk area manager who leads the 252/I-94 project called the effort is a significant undertaking for the department. We have challenges and we have opportunities. We have the opportunity to address operational issues as well as have a conversation with and within the communities. We're exploring, making connections, building relationships and having conversations in a way that we haven't been able to do, she said.

John Thompkins is multimodal planning director for MnDOTs Metro District. He is responsible for implementing modal plans, like, for instance, a bike plan, pet plan, Americans with disability plan, or even a freight plan involving rail, water or trucking. In implementing those plans, Thompkins said, we have to be mindful of quality of life, environmental stewardship and economic vitality, which articulate MnDOT's vision for transportation. And with that we have to be able to hear all voices, all voices of the community, not just one in particular, but all voices that matter.

We have a challenge in reaching African and African-American communities. We had to better articulate what we want to do in the historically underserved or sometimes uninformed communities. We wanted to do outreach and engagement that was intentional and authentic with the target communities, Thompkins said.

Project Manager Jerome Adams said the 252/I94 Project starts at Fourth Street North in downtown Minneapolis and goes up to highway 610 in Brooklyn Park. We are starting the process of looking at alternatives. The goal is to pick an alternative to construct by 2024. It's going to be a three-year long process to look at alternatives. And then the goal is to begin construction in 2027, Adams said.

Providing background information on why modifications are being explored, Adams said, Currently, we're seeing a high number of crashes, traffic congestion, and significant barriers for pedestrians and bicyclists in this project area. Also both roads are deteriorating and need to be repaired.

Adams said Brooklyn Center, in 2016 and Hennepin County, in 2018 did studies to understand issues on the corridor. And we're doing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that will outline potential projects benefits and impacts to the area surrounding highway 252/I94. Our team will continue engaging with the community and other stakeholders at each step in the EIS process, he said.

Superintendent McKinley Moore of Jehovah Jireh Church said the intersection of Hwy 252 and 85th Avenue in Brooklyn Park has concerned for the community for many years. The safety of vehicle, bicycle` and pedestrian traffic through the intersection is a real and present danger. We've lost several young people at that intersection. Our own congregation lost one young man who was struck and killed by a vehicle at that intersection. So it is indeed a present danger and we would like to see important changes made at that intersection, he said.

That's one of the reasons why we're here, Superintendent Moore, Adam said. Over the next three years, we want to look at solutions that can reduce if not eliminate these fatalities. Also the intersection at 66th Avenue was ranked second worst for crashes in all intersections across the state. 85th is ranked ninth. So, yes, it is a big problem. on the project. Right now 252 has six signals and we'll be looking at several options including do we get rid of the signals and replace them with grade separations, meaning putting a bridge over the local road or vice versa.

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MnDot seeks authentic, intentional engagement with African and African American residents along the Hwy 252/I94 Corridor - Insight News

As the Biden administration considers federal resources for coal workers and their communities, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) urge a set of comprehensive supports estimated to cost between $33billion over 25 years to $83billion over 15 years. The analysis, Supporting the Nations Coal Workers and Communities in a Changing Energy Landscape, underscores that a fair and equitable shift to a low-carbon economy requires intentional, robust, and sustained investments in coal workers, their families, and their communities.

Coal-fired electricity is down to 20 percent today from about half of the nations electricity generation a decade ago. With more closures on the horizon, a sustained and comprehensive set of supports is needed to ensure individuals who have powered America for generations can stay in their communities, prepare for new careers with family-sustaining wages, and can retire with dignity.

For decades, the coal industry has simply locked its doors and forgotten the individuals and communities who rely on the coal industry and who exist in almost every state across the country, said UWUA President James Slevin. Approaching these closures with the right set of economic supports offers a better alternative to the chaos and devastation were seeing today.

Recognizing coal and mining facilities often directly employ hundreds of individuals and many more indirectly across several counties, the economic and social infrastructure of a region undergoes lasting changes when facilities close.

The economic upheaval resulting from the dramatic job losses in the coal industry over the last decade has uprooted families, deepened economic anxiety, and left community leaders scrambling to keep schools open and social services in place, said report co-author Jeremy Richardson, a UCS senior energy analyst who comes from a family of coal miners. But solutions are readily available with forward-looking and visionary action by policymakers.

According to the UCS/UWUA analysis, approximately 90,086 coal miners and coal fired-power plant workers were employed in 462 counties across 47 states in 2019. Decreased demand has uprooted families, contributed to generational poverty, decimated tax revenue and gutted community services, including educational and emergency response funding. Many more coal workers and communities face the same fate without intentional policies to address these changes.

The analysis identifies specific policy supports lawmakers should enact to help dislocated coal workers find new career opportunities: five years of full wage replacement, health care coverage and employer retirement contributions, robust educational opportunities including paid tuition for academic, vocational, and other programs for up to five years for not only workers, but also for their children to prevent a fall into generational poverty, as well as access to a suite of social services.

Giving these workers a fighting chance to find new career opportunities is not only the right thing to do, but the cost is only a small fraction of what must be invested in the energy system to shift to a low-carbon economy, said Richardson.

UCS and UWUA urge the Biden administration and Congress to work together to develop and fund comprehensive programs and policies to support workers and communities that will be impacted by the shift away from coal. The proposed assistance package would cost less money if the services were made available over a longer time frame, in the range of 25 years, because more people would hit retirement age and not need support, according to the analysis.

Job losses in the coal mining sector were formerly centered in Central Appalachia, a region which saw tens of thousands of job losses in the early part of the decade. Today, western mines, including recent high-profile layoffs in Wyoming, are experiencing the impacts of this shift. States in the Midwest, including Michigan, in particular, will be impacted by coal plant closures over the next five years.

We hope this kind of analysis offers a path forward as lawmakers seek well-designed policy at every level of government for coal-impacted individuals and communities, said Lee Anderson, UWUA government affairs director and report co-author.

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UCS and UWUA say $33-83 billion needed for laid off coal workers - Union of Concerned Scientists

RALEIGH The Triangle is already primed and structured to capitalize on new opportunities in the post-pandemic economy, says author professor Richard Florida, best known internationally as a thought leader on development and author of The Creative Class.

Welcome to the rise of 15-minute neighborhoods.

The emerging trend is on the decentralization of business districts in favor of a re-envisioning of what he termed neighborhood center districts with vibrant work-and-play hubs.

The idea of a 15-minute neighborhood, or what I like to call a complete community, is a community where more-or-less you could do all of your daily activities, Florida told an econimic development conference put on Tuesday by the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. This has been the real reset in the pandemic, is that more and more people realize they want that.

The Triangle already has clustered neighborhoods with vibrant live-work-play centers, he added.

Downtown Raleigh, Downtown Durham, Raleighs North Hills and the emerging Hub RTP in Research Triangle Park fit his concept in many ways, to name a few.

Housing pain: Apple, Google, other projects will stretch already tight Triangle markets, experts say

You have a particular competitive advantage for competing for families, Florida added.

While Florida did not mention recent economic developments in the area in the pre-recorded discusses with Chamber CEOAdrienne Cole, the region is winning many of them from a new $1 billion Apple campus to a new Google engineering hub and numerous life science expansions.

Looking ahead, the regions that will be most successful in the future and capitalizing on subtle, nuanced shifts in the post-pandemic economy are going to be ones where the companies present will also support the indirect service-sector jobs created by the economic growth of the region, Florida added.

Regions must also be able to support individuals working in the service sector who generate enough income to afford to live within the region, and within the areas 15-minute neighborhoods, argued Florida. Otherwise, these workers will be pushed further and farther from these vibrant communities, resulting in less diversity, more income and wealth disparity, and more inequity.

Diversity and equality are emerging as advantages for communities, Florida added, noting that based on anecdotal information young people like living in communities of different people.

Being intentional around talent, being intentional around place making, being intentional about fostering equitable communities, those are the opportunities, said Florida.

COVID-19 did force one significant change: How we work. And theres fallout from that.

Weve had a giant, forced experiment in remote work, and what did we find, asked Florida. We know that we kind of like to go to the office occasionally, but not every day, 9-5. Especially if were doing mental work, writing work, thinking work, we can be very effective at home.

Apple, Google deals are transformative but come with costs, says NCCU entrepreneurial leader McKoy

What that will mean is that businesses may continue to invest in office locations, but that workers wont be required to be present each day or all day.A big change is going to be in our central business districts, said Florida. I think of these as factories for information processing.

The office towers arent filling, said Florida, and thats particularly true right now for cities with central business districts that are typically and traditionally accessed by public transit. People arent scared of the elevator, theyre scared of the train or transit to get there.

Florida also addressed some issues such as reports of a mass exodus from urban centers due to COVID-19.

The shifts in the economy that have occurred since the beginning of 2020 are not as dramatic or drastic or dire as some predicted early in the global spread of the coronavirus, Florida said. Rather, the shifts that were seeing in the economy are more subtle and more nuanced.

Despite commentary describing the fleeing of people and families from larger urban areas, such as New York City, to smaller suburban or exurban communities as widespread and permanent, Florida argued differently. Two groups of people were largely responsible for geographic transitions, he noted.

According to Florida, one group that moved away from urban cities were students, whose parents invited them to return to their more suburban or rural homes.

The pandemic accelerated family formation moves, said Florida. These moves that would have taken over one, two, three, or five years, well, they really happened in one or two months.

Young people will return to cities following the pandemic if history holds, he added. Thats what was observed after other global pandemics, Florida noted, and given the importance of talent markets in these cities as well as the social opportunities that young people seek, cities will remain important in the future economy.

The bigger trend is not where we live, but where we work, said Florida. So while the regions that were growing prior to the pandemic, which includes New York, Boston, and the Research Triangle, will not die, rather, they will probably accelerate.

What is changing is how and where people work. Historically, most people were limited in choosing where to live based on where they could work, and that relied on some form of transit, whether by train, subway, or automobile, said Florida. The rise of remote work has stretched the boundaries of metropolitan areas, and one of the things that were seeing is emerging interest in beautiful rural areas outside of major metropolitan areas, he added.

Florida expects top cities will continue to attract people, but for that attraction to be spread out to their more exurban, fringe areas, not just in the suburbs. Meanwhile, said Florida, were going to see some of what Steve Case calls the Rise of the Rest, but I dont think its going to be infinite.

Duke professor: Apple project may widen disparities in North Carolina

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Creative Class author touts Triangle for more growth in rise of '15-minute neighborhoods' - WRAL Tech Wire

The ongoing racial injustice, pandemic and associated disruption of 2020 -- along with the attack by violent insurrectionists on the U.S. Capitol building -- have taught us many things about our societies, not only in the United States but also around the globe. Among those lessons is that higher education is deeply implicated in the impoverished and fragile state of democracies. Some academic and student leaders are calling for postsecondary institutions to make the creation of antiracist, inclusive, socially just democracies throughout the world priority No.1. Such an undertaking requires disruptive change in higher education values, use of resources and its privileged place in many of our societies. Is higher education ready for such change?

At the 2020 Association for the Study of Higher Education conference, we shared research and practice from universities in South Africa, the United States and the International Association of Universities. We concluded that postsecondary institutions -- notable contributions during the pandemic notwithstanding -- have too often been complicit in systems that create or reproduce savage health and economic inequities, public disregard of science, and individuals who feel alienated and forgotten. Examples include the scarcity of locally situated university clinics and the lack of educational opportunities that perpetuates the exclusion of marginalized groups and working-class students. Indeed, COVID-19 has revealed the extreme poverty, persistent deprivation and pernicious racism that fester in the shadows of some of the nation's foremost institutions of higher learning. This disconnectedness from local community needs has promoted a sense of disenfranchisement by communities of color and increased the distrust society has of academics.

The widespread assumption that universities are progressive, multicultural, antiracist places has insulated many of us who work and live in higher education from reckoning with the lived experiences of marginalized communities all over the world. Indeed colleges and universities are gendered and racialized, and many institutions perpetuate systemic racism, colonialism and sexism through gatekeeping, educational discrimination and not sharing vital resources with local communities.

It is crucial to embrace these multiple realities simultaneously: that higher education is deeply implicated in reproducing systemic discrimination and racism in the United States and around the world and, as we imagine what could be next, higher education is distinctly positioned to help build and develop the infrastructure, resources, values and education systems necessary for diverse, inclusive, antiracist democracies. And there are examples of students, faculty and staff engaged in that work.

In this moment of disruption, postsecondary leaders, students, faculty and staff might humbly consider four steps to advance antiracist, diverse and just democracies locally and globally.

No. 1: Redesign universities to focus on the development of students who help create antiracist democracies around the world. Although postsecondary institutions will always play a vital role in social mobility, the pandemic has made it clear that the most important thing K-12 and higher education can do is to educate ethical, engaged citizens for antiracist, diverse and socially just democracies. That means galvanizing students' growth as organic intellectuals, collaborative problem solvers and agents of social change.

For example, the University of Costa Rica requires 800 hours of community work for each student who matriculates. In 2017, a total of 4,631 students did 1,038,150 hours of community work, in 164 projects in all areas of knowledge. Of significance, the former rector describes the purpose of this effort as to raise awareness and promote social and critical awareness among students and the university community; and to collaborate with communities in identifying their problems in order to develop their own solutions, within horizontal relationships conducive to mutual learning.

To better translate its strategic plan into action, the university has repositioned some of its buildings in the most underserved parts of the country, opening the doors to all people not attending yet interested to engage. Education for democratic citizenship through active engagement and collaborative problem solving with the local community should become a core purpose and pedagogical principle of higher education.

No. 2: Reimagine the knowledge project. The future we are imagining requires researchers from various fields and disciplines to take on the problems of our democracies and focus on issues of human benefit and local/global significance. To make that happen, universities need to incentivize and reward student, faculty and staff efforts to take on those issues in interdisciplinary ways, listening to and in partnership with local communities. That will not only help democracies thrive but also make for better scholarship, as knowledge is powerfully advanced when research is conducted through partnerships between academics and nonacademics. Higher education institutions have been rightly critiqued by various members of society -- including families, students, policy makers and community leaders -- as gatekeepers, distancing the credentialed knowers from the uncredentialed receivers of knowledge.

The ongoing dialectic in South Africa between government, universities, social movements (like the Treatment Action Campaign) and industry produced a swift repurposing of university-based research and innovation platforms created to address the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic. This resulted in the participation of scientists in the global effort to identify new variants of the virus as well as to develop COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. In addition, engineering schools in the country have turned their attention to using 3-D printing to manufacture PPE and noninvasive ventilators.

More universities should play a key role in linking expertise from those within the academy and those on the ground, creating a community of experts and diverse voices to solve our worlds most serious problems, such as poverty, unequal schooling and health care, and environmental degradation. We need to foster inclusive, expansive notions of expertise.

For instance, social scientists and educators can conduct participatory action research and develop methodological approaches that center community members voice and place-based knowledge to more effectively solve locally manifested universal problems. Only then will the knowledge imperative be seen as relevant to the well-being of the many as opposed to the private gain of the few.

No. 3: Change ownership of the university. For too long, citizens have viewed their universities like privately held companies that have little relationship to their own lives. Yes, people have local pride when sports teams win, but that is not the same thing as postsecondary education being relevant and tied to the destiny of local citizens. That must change. A case in point: in Thailand, Siam University has decided to revitalize the unsafe university surroundings to provide for better living conditions and well-being for Thai people who have never before set foot in a university.

On the other side of that world, University College Dublin has developed a wide range of initiatives to facilitate and enhance community engagement opportunities and build strong bridges between its campus and the neighboring communities. Universities must commit to serving as vital bridges between societies -- and as multilateral organizations using their vast resources (especially their human and academic resources) and positions of privilege to advance social justice.

No. 4: Get the values right. The values that universities should hold dear are open inquiry, diversity and inclusion, democracy, equity, and justice. Equity and justice require inclusive representation among students and academics -- including more people who are first-generation, from marginalized and working-class communities, and women. That would entail intentional recruitment within high schools situated in historically minoritized and working-class neighborhoods, as well as actively recruiting recently minted Ph.D.s from BIPOC groups to fill the ranks of the professoriate.

It would also involve universities working in serious, sustained, comprehensive partnerships with public schools in their locality to diversify and enrich the educational pipeline. Universities should also reallocate funding to support the hiring and retention of women and people of color within the faculty and administrative ranks of the institution, as well as provide more scholarships to first-generation students.

To realize the values cited above requires a reorganization of resources to infuse democracy across all aspects of higher education. If such values were in place, we would use technologies in ways that do not exacerbate inequalities but strengthen their impact on human well-being and development. For example, the pandemic made clear that institutions have the capacity to provide more online education. For students who may not have the financial resources to attend universities face-to-face, online education can remove financial barriers that may otherwise hinder access.

Strengthening internationalization of higher education and global engagement and collaboration is crucial for these efforts. We need a global movement -- one that leads to a global commons of engaged scholars and their community partners, scholarship and knowledge. To accomplish this, we need to incentivize scholars so they are rewarded for engaging in community-based projects. Many faculty members, particularly early-career ones, are dissuaded to devote any time that takes them away from the dominant discipline-based publication process. Thus, tenure and promotion should place more value on publications and other scholarly products that focus on work with and contributions to communities.

Scholars also need to earn trust from communities. Community members have long complained that faculty come and mine places for data and leave without ever helping support the communities from which they collected those data. Universities and faculty need to help amplify the voice of the community and illuminate their needs to policy makers. These kinds of institutional changes will require lots of sharing and learning from colleagues across the globe, as occurs through both the International Association of Universities and the International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility and Democracy.

In the United States, people have criticized elected officials like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz for inciting violence at the U.S. Capitol because, having attended selective universities like Stanford, Princeton and Yale, they should have known better. Putting aside the elitist and rankist assumption that such institutions would have the monopoly on knowing better, we must recognize that, in fact, higher education has too often failed to effectively educate active citizens dedicated to creating and maintaining antiracist, inclusive and socially just democratic societies.

Just as many colleges and universities are reckoning with their own institutional histories of exclusion, higher education as a field must recognize where it has failed and come up short. Only then can it come honestly to tables with communities, governments and citizens to build inclusive, antiracist democracies together.

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Higher ed must play a role in creating antiracist and just democracies (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed