Kingfield Neighborhood Association Board Meeting, June 12, 7 PM, MLK Park
*****
Dr. Martin Luther King Legacy Council, June 13, 6:30 PM, MLK Park
Crime Prevention and Safety Committee: May 21,6:30 Social & Meet KFNA's new project organizer, 7 PM, Neighborhood Clean-up, meet at MLK Park
Youth & Schools Committee, no meetings planned at this time.
Green Committee, Solarize Kingfield happening now contact info@kingfield.org for more information!
Redevelopment Committee, May Meeting Postponed due to Cancellation of Presenter!
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May
21
Youth Soccer at MLK Park Summer 2013
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Children will learn sportsmanship and the fundamentals of soccer in a low-key, fun filled, supportive environment from Kingfield neighborhood volunteers while at the same time focusing on a healthy outdoors life style. Participants will be grouped by the following age groups: 4′s, 5-6, 7-8, 9+.
| Meeting Dates | From June 8, 2013 to August 3, 2013
Each Saturday from 10am to 11am |
| Location | Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Park |
| Price | Resident: $20.00
Non-resident: $30.00 |
May
13
Kingfield Community Clean-up May 21, 6:30 PM
Filed Under community engagement, crime, green, Minneapolis Park and Rec, mlk park | Leave a Comment
Graffiti at King Park
The KFNA Crime Prevention and Safety Committee Community Clean-up on Tuesday May 21, from 6:30-8:30 PM. We will gather at MLK Park for a snack and a chance to meet KFNA’s new Project Organizer, Cheryl DeGroff. Then we will fan out and start to clean up some of the dozen or so graffiti tags located in and around MLK Park. Materials for the clean-up will be provided but if you have a small bucket please bring it, as it is often helpful to wash down the tag-site with plain water after using the chemical remover. Please invite your neighbors to attend this event with you and help make Kingfield more beautiful and safer (graffiti attracts more graffiti—let’s keep it out of Kingfield!) To make sure we have enough supplies on hand including maps of the graffiti sites, please RSVP for this event to sarah@kingfield.org.
May
9
Healing from the 35W divide–50 years later
Filed Under dog park, garden, green, health and wellness, Minneapolis Park and Rec, mlk park, youth | Leave a Comment
Project Sweetie Pie and Kingfield Neighborhood Get Morrill Hall/Tilsen Foundation Award to continue community healing.
Few track the anniversaries of highways, but 35W built in 1963 was a strategic decision to divide the Black communities from the more affluent white communities in Minneapolis–and it succeeded. Cultures evolved differently and continue to this day between the Kingfield Neighborhood with an average of $50,000 and adjacent Bryant neighborhood with an average of $12,000. Other statistics couldn’t be more sharply contrasted. The healing started, and this year exciting events will help it continue. Project Sweetie Pie is part of the healing.
Partnership between Project Sweetie Pie and Kingfield Neighborhood Association:
To honor the work of the Afro American Action Committee (AAAC) and Rachel Tilsen, the Kingfield Neighborhood Association, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Committee (with members of Field, Regina, Bryant, Lynhurst and Kingfield neighborhoods), and Project Sweetie Pie will be creating a mosaic vegetable garden at the Martin Luther King Park in South Minneapolis. This project galvanizes mutual understand and friendship between neighbors in the Kingfield, Bryant and Field communities. Together the Kingfield Neighborhood Association and Project Sweetie Pie will engage people young and old to benefit from gardening, creating art, and culinary classes.
The Morrill Hall/Rachel Tilsen Social Justice Connection:
During 1968 after the assignation of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hundreds of organizations on and off campuses across the country took action to create social justice. In 1969, at the University of Minnesota, a campus of 40,000 students, only 87 were Black and none were from the local area.
In 1968 the Afro American Action Committee (AAAC) emerged and in 1969 staged a sit-in at Morrill Hall, then the President’s office and the hub of college business. Take a moment to view the AAAC’s award-winning video at www.vimeo.com/6608437 with a story told by Rose Freeman Massey, Ph.D, Horace Huntley, Ph.D., and John S. Wright Ph.D. Their stories are outlined in an article from the Mn Daily Rachel Tilsen was a fierce freedom fighter and lover of life. These courageous 30 students, Rachel Tilsen, Ken Tilsen and the Tilsen generations give us an example of how simple actions create social justice for all. On their behalf, our project was chosen, and we are so grateful.
From Dog Park to Gardens:
A proposed Dog Park at MLK tore these communities apart—right down either side of 35W, which 50 years ago institutionalized a divide between the predominately white and Black neighborhoods. For 50 years this issue these neighborhoods seemed to have little to talk about and not much to share. When white neighbors could not understand why Black neighbors were so opposed to a dog park everyone realized that there was a huge problem. The press misconstrued the issues and the historic lack of communication and separate actions fueled outrage and confusion. The dog park was framed as symbolism. The tension, the labeling, the race-batting clearly demonstrated that we were on separate sides of the highway had two world views.
Clearly residents of the Kingfield neighborhood didn’t understand about the continued issues of race but fortunately wanted to learn.
They began in earnest. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Council literally began building bridges across 35W. One of the first actions was to honor the Lee Family, hold a march and raise funds for a historical plaque giving voice to, and honoring the home and struggle of the first Black family in the Field neighborhood. The neighbors then launched what has now become the City of Minneapolis One Read program with Michelle Norris’ book and a curriculum. Last year the book was the Spirit Car. From anger and misunderstanding have come a host of ambitious projects including this mosaic garden.
History of the The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Council:
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Advisory Committee was born out of a series of meeting the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) held to consider and approve an appropriate site for a dog park in King Park. The proposal created tremendous controversy in the community at large and overwhelming opposition in the African American community. This issue of whether or not King Park was an appropriate place for a dog park also exposed a very deep rift and lack of understanding between African Americans and Caucasian Americans.
As a result of several public hearings the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board chose to eliminate King Park from consideration as a dog park location and instead established the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Committee. The goal of the newly formed Committee was to develop a plan to honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at King Park. The MPRB also approved an allocation of $32,500 for improvements to the Park, the same amount allocated for the creation of an off leash dog area.
The committee held 6 meetings during which a series of recommendations along with a schematic design were developed for presentation and adoption by the MPRB. The Plan consisted of a multi-phased approach for the improvements at the Park.
The Committee is guided by the belief that the adoption and implementation of these recommendations will ensure that the Legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will live on at the Park for future generations. These steps will transform the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park into a place of statewide significance and instruct the larger community on living and building a truly liveable community.
The project will begin this year as a youth garden organized and led by Project Sweetie Pie, integrating paid youth interns from Step-up with unpaid community youth. It will be small– 9 raised beds or 81 square feet. The beds will mimic the demographics of the Mosaic Quilting project recently installed on the other side of the building which celebrates the cultural communities that make up our neighborhood. The mosaics of glass and metal interpret cultural textile patterns. The gardens will do the same through cultural food crops, and eventually though cultural cooking and celebrations we hope.
Thanks to the MN Horticultural Society we are receiving the cedar boxes , dirt to fill them, and a donation of plants at no cost. We will pick these up next week, and then begin to try and figure out dates for the community interaction to begin on this project. If you are still interested in this project and want to be kept informed as we move forward, including being invited to volunteer plot building, planting, and cooking days…please let me know!
Thank you all for your energy and commitment to a greener and healthier Kingfield—please let me know how you would like to be involved!
Sarah Linnes-Robinson, Executive Director Kingfield Neighborhood Association
&
Michael Chane, Founder www.projectsweetiepie.org
May
8
MLK Park Summer Soccer Day Camp
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The 2013 Program is currently scheduled to be Saturday mornings only, starting Saturday, June 8th, through Saturday, August 3rd. The kids and families are told to show up by 10 AM, and, depending on age group of the kids, we will be done by 11:15 AM.
This is the 11th year of the current version of the Little Kids Soccer Program at King Park. The Program was started as a Kingfield Nieghborhood Association (KFNA) Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) in 2002, with the objective of drawing Kingfield families with young children to King Park with a fun, family-friendly, outdoors program. The Little Kids Soccer Program is about kids (and their parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents) having fun playing games using a soccer ball, or many balls. It is not about creating soccer teams, playing a bunch of regular soccer games (at least not much). We do not form the kids into soccer teams. Whichever kids show up on a given Saturday (sometimes up to 75+) are placed in appropriate age groups, and we use the games you as the coaches choose to keep the kids moving and having fun. For the older age groups we often end a session with a 10-minute regular soccer game, sometimes with just kids, sometimes intermixed with parents, anunts, uncles, and grandparents). Obviously not all games are appropriate for all of our age-groups of kids. Those working with the 4-year-olds, in particular, play with the most simplified of games, and usually conclude sessions with the hokey-pokey and a round of “duck, duck, grey-duck”.
Registering kids for the Program can be done on-line by going to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board web site, and follow to the “Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” page for finding the program under the registration listings. The standard cost for the program for the summer is $20, but there is a waiver possible (fill out and submit the waiver form). No Minneapolis resident will be turned away due to inability to pay the $20 registration fee. It is also possible to register at the field along 42nd Street, particularly between 9:30 AM to 10 AM on the first several Saturdays of the sessions.
This program is volunteer-led, thanks to the dedication of Kingfield neighbor Michael Vanderford. You may contact him with any questions at ‘michaeljvanderford at gmail.com’
Registration link here.
Read more
May
7
KFNA Board Meeting Wed. May 8
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7-8 PM, MLK Park
Guest Presentation on the City of Minneapolis draft “Blueprint for Equity”. View it here:
Community Forum following until roughly 7:30, followed by the KFNA Board regular monthly meeting which includes a brief presentation by the MPLS Park and Rec Board regarding the procedures and outreach plan for the new MLK Park Playground. The meeting will close at 8 PM for a New Board Orientation.
Apr
26
The Mosaic Quilts are hung
Filed Under art, board, Minneapolis Park and Rec, mlk park | Leave a Comment
King Park - Unveiling Photo
….but you can’t see them until Saturday!
Join us for the Unveiling Celebration! Food, music, and GREAT art on Saturday April 27 at 1 PM,MLK Park, 4055 Nicollet! Learn more and share the Facebook Event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/322450314550740/?context=create#
This is a project of the Kingfield Neighborhood Association & VOA Southwest Senior Center funded by the City of Minneapolis Graffiti Prevention Grant and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Legacy Fund.
Apr
19
MLK Park Earth Day Clean-up Postponed!
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The Earth Day Clean-Up event scheduled for Saturday, April 20, 2013 has been postponed by the Minneapolis Park Board due to inclement weather. A new date will be announced in the coming weeks.