Two of Minneapolis’ business and community leaders explored efforts to break down barriers and create opportunities for building Black wealth in Minnesota during a Town Talks forum offered by Westminster Presbyterian Church through its Westminster Town Hall Forum last week.
For her talk last week at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, author and journalist Michele Norris gathered prominent Minnesotans — including the state’s lieutenant governor — to take turns sharing various people’s six words on race.
Raquel Willis, a transgender woman who wrote “The Risk it Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation,” quoted for a crowd recently gathered online and in person for the Westminster Town Hall Forum this snippet from Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”: “I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.”
Raquel Willis, a transgender woman who wrote “The Risk it Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation,” quoted for a crowd gathered online and in person for the Westminster Town Hall Forum last week this snippet from Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”: “I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.”
Declaring himself to be “a small product of a great tradition who believes we should never be surprised by evil or paralyzed by fear,” Dr. Cornel West joined Ifeoma Ike, an advocate, writer and policy advisor, at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis Saturday for Westminster Town Hall Forum’s Arc Toward Justice series.
