Advocacy

Advocacy

The Minneapolis Urban League has a dual mission to provide human services and advocacy. While the human services side of our mission is apparent in our assistance to individuals and families, the advocacy side of our mission is demonstrated in the work that we do on behalf of all people of color in the state of Minnesota. We employ three strategies to fulfill our advocacy mission:

Public advocacy for change in systems that create barriers to success for people of color
Community education on issues affecting the African American community and other people of color to prepare them for participation in the political process
Forum for finding common ground on issues that affect all Minneapolis or Minnesota residents

We recognize that bringing change to systems and public policy is a very slow process. Nevertheless, we do not consider the obstacles before us sufficient reason to forego this endeavor. The African American community needs and wants to understand what is at stake and how they can influence the decisions that are made.

Every day, the Minneapolis Urban League is asked to support, speak out on, or lend its name to an issue or cause. While nearly all of them are worthy of our attention, we have chosen to focus our efforts in three areas:

the shortage of affordable housing in the core city
the disproportionate occurrence of deadly disease among African Americans
the academic performance of African American public school students

At this time, we are actively pursuing the issues of health disparities and affordable housing. We are participating in the Minnesota Department of Health's program to reduce the health disparities between whites and populations of color. In a partnership with the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, we will build a total of 31 housing units in the city of Minneapolis. For the time being, we will monitor developments in K-12 education as they relate to African American students.

We employ a number of on-going strategies to keep selected problems or issues before the community. For example, twice each month, a television program, On the Other Hand, airs early on a Sunday morning; commentary by the President/CEO appears weekly in Insight News; Minnesota Pipeline brings people of color in the central city into direct contact with policymakers and lawmakers via policy or candidate forums, lectures and community discussion; breakfast meetings engage policy makers in small group examination of issues; our website keeps visitors informed of upcoming discussions or events.

In addition to our own activities, the Minneapolis Urban League is often called upon to provide a venue in which all sides of an issue can be discussed. It is impossible to predict what might trigger the need for such a forum but we are ready, at any time, to be the catalyst for constructive discussion. In the past year, we have provided the common ground for the examination of police/community relations, the judicial system, legislative redistricting, and conversations with candidates for elective office.

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