Kingfield Neighborhood Association Board Meeting, June 12, 7 PM, MLK Park
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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 22, 7 PM, MLK Park
Please consider donating to support your totally local non-profit and the work we do to address community issues and implement community solutions.
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
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Michael Chane, Founder www.projectsweetiepie.org
May
8
MLK Park Summer Soccer Day Camp
Filed Under board, community engagement, health and wellness, Minneapolis Park and Rec, mlk park, youth | Leave a Comment
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
Filed Under board, Minneapolis Park and Rec, mlk park | Leave a Comment
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.
May
7
Open Streets will take over Lyndale Avenue Again
Filed Under businesses, community engagement, crime, green, health and wellness, lyndale, traffic, youth | Leave a Comment
The Sunday event, on 20 blocks between 22nd and 42nd, will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
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By Chris Steller, Southwest Minneapolis Patch
The 2013 date for the event is Sunday, June 23, 2013, according to an announcement at theOpen Streets Mpls website posted Friday.
Open Streets closes Lyndale to motor vehicle traffic from 22nd Street W. to 42nd Street W.—and opens the street to every other kind of traffic and activity.
Read the rest of the article.
Do you have a business in Kingfield and an idea you might want to try at Open Streets? Contact sarah@kingfield.org and let’s talk about it!
May
6
Personal Restoration & Class/Home Resources
Filed Under art, businesses, health and wellness, youth | Leave a Comment
The techniques you learn will be applied personally, for your well-being, and then as specific teaching tools for your classroom and at home with your children. When employed in a classroom, preschool through high school, these yoga teachings will create a sense of calm, grounding presence for greater learning and classroom management, and develop a strong sense of community and altruism among your students.
This workshop is open to all teachers and parents. No prior yoga experience is needed.
Brynne, a teacher in Minneapolis, commented after participating in the Yoga B-A-L-A-N-C-E series with her students at Yoga Sanctuary-
“I am an elementary and junior high school teacher. I have also practiced yoga and used yoga with my students over the years. I have learned so much by being able to go with my students to Yoga Sanctuary! The expert teachers at Yoga Sanctuary have such a wonderful way of working with children and do a great job of explaining core yoga concepts and working through poses with them. I see my students centering themselves with their breathing (B), practicing “A, for AHIMSA” (non-harming) with each other, talking about doing yoga outside of class, and communicating with their families about what they are learning. I look forward to incorporating new techniques and ideas into my own practice and classroom instruction.”
Thursdays – July 11, 18, 25 and August 1 3-4:45pm
Early Bird Special $80 (by 6/30) or $95 (after 6/30)
Go to WORKSHOPS at www.yogasanctuarympls.com to sign up or call 612-567-9642 for more information.
May
6
Judson Streetfest May 18!
Filed Under community engagement, crime, fundraising, mlk park, youth | Leave a Comment
Bigger and Better than ever!
Saturday May 18, 11 AM- 8 PM Intersection of 41st & Harriet
FEATURED PERFORMERS Melismatics • Trailer Trash • J ack Brass Band • Kinda Kinky • Robert Everest & Choro Borealis • Cosmoline Dymaxium • Stereo Confession Metropolitan Boys Choir • Purple Bass GRAND FINALE : THE MAD RIPPLE HOOTENANNY
Plus…GREAT FUN! Silent Auction • Local Art Vendors Plant Sale • Inflatable Giant Slide Moon Bounce • Musical Petting Zoo Games for Kids • Meals on Wheels Service Project • Inner City Tennis Clinic
COMMUNITY CAUSES: KFNA and Judson teaming together to raise funds for the new King Park playground and Judson Church.
May
4
Kids YOGA CAMP
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Campers will learn yoga poses and games that emphasize cooperation, leadership, self-control, creativity, and self-awareness. This will be a good opportunity to deepen relationships between siblings and friends. Each day we will explore – our environment on a Meditation Walk, our food as we prepare healthy produce from the Kingfield Market. We will also explore our stories as we look inward and listen to what our bodies, hearts and minds are saying. We will tap into the power of our story and use art and creativity to express it outwardly.
Monday – Thursday August 5-8 1:00-4:00pm Early Bird Special $80 (by 6/15) $80 Registration after 6/15
Limit 18 students ~ Ages 7-13
Please go to WORKSHOPS at www.yogasanctuarympls.com to register, or call 612-567-YOGA for more information.