Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page B11

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 2002STARTRIBUNE PAGE B11 On July 31, three weeks before CNN broadcast images of a vehicle burning at 26th and Logan Avs. N. as part of its coverage, a group called the Jordan Livability Committee hosted a neighborhood forum. City officials from corrections and housing code enforcement agencieswere invited. Rybak and Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar attended.

And more than 120 Jordan residents concerned about their future also showed up. were black folks, white folks and Asian said Steven Oates, the general chairman. point is it just white homeowners ticked off at black folks. not a black-white issue. not about pointing fingers.

about a community letting things go too far and saying: responsible and I want to do something to get the drugs out of Anne McCandless, a retired Minneapolis police sergeant and longtime Jordan resident, fears all the attention from Aug. 22 wrecking everything been working She has joined neighbors in weekend pickets at the raided house, spearheaded the community garden effort and was angered at a recent newspaper letter-to-the-editor from a Minnetonka man who blamed drug-buying residents for the problems. dear, probably your neighbor in Minnetonka buying the damn she said. Don Samuels, a toy designer raising his family in the Jordan area, echoed her feelings. is clearly one of the poorest, least-enfranchised communities and people go here for sex and he said.

finger has to be pointed at a much broader location than north Minneapolis or the Jordan neighborhood. We are the receptors of a lot of the larger Tim Dolan, head of the Minneapolis Police Fourth Precinct, said dangerous to paint the Jordan area with a single brush. in the suburbs realize the reality is we have two communities of people up Dolan said. that works, owns property and raises families, and a community of people that is selling drugs and committing crimes and would like to see the police leave the neighborhood. problematic community is probably less than 1 percent but now the area is a focal point for everybody with a cause from police brutality to animal Dolan said.

Jordan residents and the police here are the ones that Before the disturbance, the Jordan Livability Committee scheduled a Sept. 5 followup meeting from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Unity House at 2507 Fremont Av. N. They will continue to talk about strategies for getting the drugs out of the neighborhood.

Many are upset that Police Chief Robert Olson offered black leaders from other neighborhoods money to patrol their neighborhood. we move too Rybak said, going to go back to the Jordan group and find out what they want us to do because they know Jay Clark, a University of Minnesota neighborhood organizing trainer who ran the Jordan Area Community Council in the early 1990s, hopes Rybak and others get the point. a context to he said. not just a single episode or a one-time explosion, but a continuum. The raid was a result of frustrations by neighbors of all different ethnic types who are tired of the ticker-tape parade of drug dealing on 26th Avenue and have been fighting to stop it for Police distrust While some Jordan residents laud the police for raiding the house at 26th and Knox, the accidental shooting of young Julius Powell reignited anger among many black residents who say a police department that is overwhelmingly white has been too quick to shoot people of color.

important to do two things: look at the big issue of police-community relations, but also look at the individual events that got people said former Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, a senior fellow in race relations at the University of Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. She thinks misinformation about the wounded child spread a through the area Aug. 22, prompting the violence. By the time word that the shooting was accidental got around, most of the damage had been done. understand immediately that it was an Sayles Belton said.

police shooting of a child takes people back and conjures up all the emotions of an innocent child being Whether because of the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Abdullah Simmons by police last summer, in the Folwell neighborhood after a chase that began in Jordan, or the police wounding of 19-year-old Terrelle Oliver Aug. 13 in Jordan, or the Aug. 1 shooting deaths of police officer Melissa Schmidt and housing project resident Martha Donald in south Minneapolis, the backdrop is highly charged. And not just the shootings, said community residents including Marguerite Cannon. She complained that lesser examples of police misconduct in the Jordan neighborhood are commonplace.

She said a teenage neighbor out past curfew ran from police, who chased him and gave him a black eye. On July 4th, neighborhood kids were hassled for the rather common use of illegal fire- works. of saying: me take those from you because they might hurt all we hear is cops yelling obscenities and threatening to your butts off to jail if we come what is said to young African-American males who will still have that in their heart when they grow up in a couple she said. lack of respect hurts me to my damn bones and gotten to an all-time Alice Lynch, executive director of the Black, Indian, Hispanic and Asian Women in Action group, said racial profiling and random stops of black residents by white cops has eroded the frail level of trust between some community members and police. of them have military training and act with a mentality of being in a she said.

Rybak, just a year removed from upsetting Sayles Belton in the mayoral primary, said he has heard the war stories of bad police relationships over and over. I door-knocked the city, most people felt the same on most issues with one glaring the mayor said. are dramatically different perceptions of the police department in different parts of the community and it breaks along racial and economic lines. find that absolutely unacceptable but one thing for the mayor or the chief to say it, another thing for the rank and file cops to really get Rybak said. He hopes folding the Civilian Review Authority into the Civil Rights Department will improve the level of trust among residents filing complaints against cops.

He also vowed to hire more black offi- cers; currently only 5.8 percent of the force is black. are some great cops that always understand that, intentionally or not, the rhetoric they use or the posture they take sends a Rybak said. some are just plain out saying stupid The Rev. Jerry McAfee of the New Salem Baptist Church in north Minneapolis, a veteran black leader, said he hears more complaints from black residents about police misconduct than he can count. relationship between the community and the police is kind of strained because some cops are burned out on their jobs and simply treat even innocent people like McAfee said.

can take care of this beast if we work together on it. But just as the police suggest to our people that we turn criminals in as we should, it should work the same for the rogue officers who get turned Oates, chairman for the Jordan Livability Committee, said everyone can agree that police at times can be heavy-handed, but that distracts the attention from the real problem. we have to get rid of the drugs, then we can talk about whether the cuffs are too Oates said. are destroying black families in poor areas, not But others see the drug issue as a symptom of larger, harder-to-tackle social ills. all those who say: get these homegrown drug dealers off the saying look at creating all these dope said Steve Wash, a south Minneapolis housing advocate.

the only viable economic opportunity for many of these young men. People want to hear that, but the true problem is a solvable economic Rybak said overhauling the development arm to enhance job creation and housing. But Wash looks at the millions being spent on light- rail transit, the millions cut in welfare benefits and the shrinking stock of affordable housing. many guys from the are getting hired for those light-rail Wash asked. a defeated community gets so angry it boils over, a team is brought in to quiet them down but not advocate for better conditions.

hear that a time for peace and it might sound crazy, but why should all these poor people remain quiet and keep going along with a system that marginalizes he asked. With an eye to the future, Rybak looks back toward the sunflowers in the community garden adjacent to the raided bungalow on 26th and Knox and finds seeds of hope. garden represents people building Rybak said. may be easier to live in the and point fingers, but I see too many more acts of bravery than Curt Brown is at curt.brown@startribune.com. JORDAN fromB1 are the receptors of a lot of larger Photographs by Richard Tribune Don Samuels held his 3-year-old daughter Amani during a meeting with community leaders at Unity House in the Jordan neighborhood.

The toy designer said, is clearly one of the poorest, least-enfranchised communities, and people go here for sex and Minneapolis Police Lt. Lee Edwards said Friday more patrols have been added in Jordan since Aug. 22, let the knuckleheads realize that not going Star Tribune map Lowry Av. Knox Av. N.

26th Av. Golden Valley Rd. Penn Av. N. Xerxes Av.

N. 0 Miles Jordan Minneapolis Miss. R. Area of detail NEXT Community healing Even before last violence, the Jordan Livability Committee had scheduled a community meeting to continue discussing strategies for getting illegal drugs out of the neighborhood. When: 6:30 to 8 p.m.

Thursday. Where: Unity House, 2507 Fremont Av. Minneapolis. Orphan train riders, now few, hold annual family reunion Associated Press LITTLE FALLS, MINN. They share no blood relation, but a common experience makes them family.

For children who rode the so-called orphan train from New York to the Midwest in the 1920s, their annual reunion in central Minnesota remains a chance to recall the pain and joy of their journey. is like a real said Sister Justina Bieganek, 90. She was 2 when she traveled to her new home in Holdingford on the orphan train. From 1854 to 1929, thousands of orphaned and abandoned children rode trains from New York and other East Coast areas to the rural Midwest to find a home. Families ordered some of the children like merchandise from a catalog.

Other children had no arrangements before they stepped off the train. Families picked up the children either to love as their own or sometimes as extra farmhands or maids. Between 150,000 and 250,000 children traveled west on the trains. Today, some estimate that about 200 of the riders are still alive. As time passed, the group that meets in Little Falls also dwindled.

is pretty good, because not many of us Bieganek said. becoming an endangered Bieganek remember much about leaving New York or riding the train, but she does know that she had pinned to her clothing. Her Holdingford order number was 41. asked for a child with blue eyes and blond she said. what they Like siblings, 86-year-old Irv Dobis delivered a friendly jab to 87-year-old Sophia Kral as they met last week.

Kral smiled and gave him a giant hug in the St. Francis Center. Others visited quietly in the basement cafeteria, telling their daughters and granddaughters about their experiences riding the trains. At least 13 orphan train riders were expected to attend the 42nd annual New York Orphan Train Riders Group reunion. like my brothers and Kral said.

is where all like one anoth- If one family member was an orphan train rider, then the whole family shares that experience, children and grandchildren of the riders said. daughter, Renee Wendinger, started to trace her story because she loves genealogy. But tracing through records proved difficult. here, but I have no birth Kral said. Wendinger said she has used every clue to find what she can about her mother.

The family was the second to be able to look at records compiled on some of the orphan train riders in New York. As she looked, she found the name of mother. But her last name was illegible. No handwriting expert has been able to decipher the last name, Wendinger said. The experience of riding the orphan train sometimes is something that only other riders can truly understand, said Joe Gould, 84.

Gould rode the train to Crookston as a baby to be taken home by a Bemidji family. come here to be able to see other people who went through the same he said. was an Joquin Cloud Times via AP Sister Justina Bieganek, 90, helped last week with the 42nd reunion of Orphan Train Riders at the St. Francis Center in Little Falls, Minn. Like thousands of other East Coast orphans from 1854 to 1929, she boarded a train from New York to the Midwest, landing in Holdingford, at age 2.

Quest to find families in Midwest created a bond as thick as blood.