Fighting Over North

If you were watching the news August 11, you probably saw Rev. Jerry McAfee hijack Mayor R.T. Rybak’s press conference on fighting crime. Rybak and Council Member Don Samuels were standing on West Broadway Avenue when, the cameras showed, McAfee got into Rybak’s face. The next images were of Rybak scurrying to his waiting car.

This was another skirmish in the ongoing battle for the hearts and minds of North Minneapolis residents between Rybak-ally Samuels and activists such as McAfee, pastor of the New Salem Baptist Church. This tension between those African-Americans “workin’ with The Man” and those down in the trenches “struggling against The Man” has deep roots, going back to the “house Negroes”-versus-“field hands” days.

Since both McAfee and Samuels want (in McAfee’s words) to have the police “target those that need to be targeted,” why can’t they “just get along” and focus on getting things done? Because each man has a different view of how to interact with the majority culture and establish political legitimacy. McAfee, who calls Samuels “Rybak’s house Negro,” claims that Samuels has let scarce city resources, such as video-surveillance cameras, go to more affluent parts of the city. Samuels counters by saying that McAfee is a “wannabe power broker and professional hell-raiser,” who “makes a living off the suffering in North Minneapolis” while he retreats nightly to the relative safety of Brooklyn Park.

McAfee, whose two-thousand-member church is one of the largest black congregations in the city, boasted to me about how his organization is working. “We have a crack-fighting team, a mentoring team, and a team that works with people in prison. We are on the streets daily. We respect the members of our community and we demand respect from people outside our community.”

Were his actions that day motivated by his fears of racial profiling, along with pique at not being invited to participate in the press conference? “Absolutely not,” McAfee said. “The mayor came up here with an attitude. Me getting in the mayor’s face only happened after he repeatedly ignored my questions about why it took him so long to focus on crime in North Minneapolis. I wanted to know—why did South Minneapolis get surveillance cameras before we did, even though twenty-six of the forty-one murders so far this year have been in this community?”

Samuels denies that Rybak disrespected McAfee. “It is Lord of the Flies time up here, and McAfee is crying about getting ‘respect.’ Well, the grown-ups are coming and we are prepared to face the thugs and guns that McAfee, who does not live in this community, apparently cannot deal with. What happened at the press conference tells these immature, morally deprived kids that it is OK to be violent and stay stupid.”

The major difference between McAfee and Samuels revolves around their relationships with Rybak. McAfee dislikes Rybak and sees him as someone who only comes to North Minneapolis to record sound bites. Samuels makes no apologies for his relationship with Rybak. “The mayor is advocating a targeted precision strike for a limited period of time by forty cops. This is a good thing! My relationship with the mayor is an asset for this community. McAfee’s attempt to publicly humiliate and excoriate me because I can work with him is wrong.”

The harsh political reality is that North Minneapolis desperately needs the juice that both men bring to the table. Samuels is North Minneapolis’ voice on the council. Suggesting that he is an Uncle Tom for creating a political alliance with the mayor only makes it less likely that Northsiders will get city resources. Nevertheless, Rybak and Samuels have got to forge a working relationship with people like McAfee. He has credibility with factions of the community that distrust Rybak—and by association, any politician who is at his side whenever he comes to the hood. Neither man can claim political legitimacy without maintaining an effective bond with the other. And both should realize that claims of political legitimacy do not mean much in comparison with the twenty-six people who have been blown away in less than eight months.