According to Stairstep Foundation president\/CEO the Rev. Alfred Babington-Johnson, the organization seeks to clarify the historic values of the African American community and provoke behaviors consistent with those values. The Stairstep Initiative, said Babington-Johnson, creates a working model\u2026 According to Stairstep Foundation president\/CEO the Rev. Alfred Babington-Johnson, the organization seeks to clarify the historic values of the African American community and provoke behaviors consistent with those values. The Stairstep Initiative, said Babington-Johnson, creates a working model of community that brings a new sense of consciousness to all levels of the African American community. Siyeza, Inc. a frozen food manufacturing plant located in Minneapolis, brings industry and community to the North Minneapolis neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Babington-Johnson who was a guest at last week\u2019s Conversations with Al McFarlane advised that, in order for African Americans to get where they want to go as a people, “The whole idea of wealth [must] be put in a context. It is an instrument, not a goal in and of itself. If we think of ‘getting the money’ as if that’s ‘the deal’, we will have missed the whole transaction. ‘The deal’ is really that we connect with one another [to] increase the quality of life for all the people in our community.” He continued, “[It’s important that] our young people, as they attain wealth [are taught to] recognize their responsibility to try and make it better.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nichelle Shannon of First American Securities, Inc., offered what she believes people should know about their relationship to money. “Economic power gives us another voice. When we save and have financial goals, clear and concise objectives [are] key to building and sustaining wealth and stability in a comfortable way of life,\u201d she said. \u201cI’m not saying being rich; what I’m saying is having a comfortable way of living. We want our children to be better than we are. And it has to start with setting financial goals. We are not here to be poverty-stricken. We are a rich people within ourselves [who] spend a lot of money as consumers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shannon cautioned against making money for money’s sake, saying, “You don’t want to mistake that with greed.” She equated having comfort with “what I need in my family to sustain that, whether it’s college funding, putting away money for an estate in the future. We sometimes don’t even plan for our funerals.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shannon advocated for communal wealth as a community goal. “It is our obligation to enhance one another, to not harbor information to but to help one another to reach our goals,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Real estate agent Franklin McCrary, Edina Realty, discussed rectifying the disparity between the number of Black and White homeowners (a key indicator of financial well being), underscoring the importance of owning the roof over one’s head. “Home-ownership gives a sense of empowerment, of pride and enables you to have choices in your life, whether to sell or to buy. Owning is better, from a credit point-of-view, than it is to rent.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fred Easter, executive director of The City, Inc., said, “One of the things people fail to appreciate is that interest [on] a loan for home that you own is tax deductible; that’s a tremendous plus.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Babington-Johnson reflected, “It’s important for us put in place strategies to expand ownership for all the people of our community.” He further addressed the issue of Black autonomy, remarking that it ‘includes us taking responsibility and accountability, having a sense of responsibility to one another. Whether it’s home-ownership or having a job or business that you own, it isn’t just about ‘me’, but it’s about using whatever I have to connect with my brothers and my sisters.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Easter mentioned a vital consideration as regards self-empowerment, namely focussing on positives. “We need to not be crushed by the vision of [past] failures. If we focus on where we are not and on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to Stairstep Foundation president\/CEO the Rev. Alfred Babington-Johnson, the organization seeks to clarify the historic values of the African American community and provoke behaviors consistent with those values. The Stairstep Initiative, said Babington-Johnson, creates a working model\u2026 According to Stairstep Foundation president\/CEO the Rev. Alfred Babington-Johnson, the organization seeks to clarify the historic values […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[38,2246,2247],"class_list":["post-3269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-minneapolis","tag-rev-alfred-babington-johnson","tag-stairstep-foundation","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3270,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269\/revisions\/3270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}