- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(upbeat music) - "R-Town", the show about Rochester, learns more about the Rochester branch of the NAACP's Love Wins Community Empowerment Initiative.

And we head over to RCTC and learn more about their women's basketball team and a new photography exhibition on view.

All that, and so much more coming up next on "R-Town", the show about Rochester.

(upbeat music) Coming to you from 125 live in Rochester, Minnesota, "R-Town".

The Rochester branch of the NAACP and the Mayo Clinic African Descendants Mayo Employee Resource Group, recently announced the launch of a pilot program called Love Wins Community Empowerment Initiative.

Here to tell us more about this program is Wale Elegbede, president of the Rochester Branch of the NAACP.

Welcome back to "R-Town".

- Thanks for having me.

- So, we had you earlier this year after some really unfortunate incidents that happened here in our community, and I'd love for you to share a little bit about the motivation, the inspiration behind the Loved Ones campaign and that initiative, this current initiative, but sort of the history from earlier this year.

- Yeah.

So, just to, first of all, thanks for having me and I really appreciate all the great work that you all do.

Just to take a step back, so earlier in the year, we've had several incidences, you know, in Rochester.

We had the bridge incident where, you know, the N word was displayed close to Century High School that impacted, you know, targeted Black and brown communities.

Obviously, it impacted the larger Rochester community, but again, it was really focused more on Black and brown with just the words.

We've also had additional incidents as we had the situation with unrepresented HECSA home where, you know, swastikas, KKK was targeted on her home and property.

We've had situations with the synagogue, we've had situations where a Black family are trying to sell land and then they have an effigy, you know, with a news anchor.

So, there's been a lot of stuff going on in Rochester.

And so, when all of those were happening at the NAACP in Rochester, we wanted to have a campaign that said that not in our town or our children gonna feel unsafe, not in our town are we gonna let racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism be tolerated, and in our town love wins.

We wanted to end with a love wins, because at the end of the day, love is what's gonna really carry us through.

So, that was sort of, you know, how this started.

And obviously, we've had campaigns, we've had, you know, town halls, you know, we brought in Keith Ellison, you know, Attorney General Ellison.

He knew that this was really important and we also had an anti-hate speaker.

But these are more educational interventions, you know, in terms of like a rapid response.

But there has to be something more proactive in terms of how do we address some of those underlining systemic issues.

And so, that's basically how this collaboration with Mayo Clinic AD MERG came.

And what AD MERG, they're an affinity group within Mayo Clinic.

They're really focused on supporting employees, staff, and patients of African descent, but they also are, you know, involved in, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion and also the broader impact to the community.

So, it made sense for AD MERG and the Rochester branch of the NAACP to collaborate on this.

And with the Love Wins Initiative, when we were doing this proposal, and this is part of the whole Mayo Clinic commitment against racism, we wanted a way to how do we tackle some of these underlying issues?

So, when you look at our African American community, number one, we know that we have education disparities, we know we have housing issues.

And you know, I mean we tell people that, you know, we haven't seen these race since, you know, segregation and you know, but people, unless you look at the data, you're like, wow, you know, things are looking good.

Well, yes, things are looking good for a segment of the population, but not all of the segment.

And so, we looked at also financial literacy.

And so, at the NAACP we wanted to come up with four areas.

One was things that were focused more on the Black and African American community in terms of uplifting and empowerment.

And then the other was really what can we do as a community?

What role does the community have to play?

So, the first three, you know, we're gonna be working on adult education.

So, we've had at NAACP a lot of educational initiatives.

For example, the Rise for Youth program that is an educational initiative that we're partnering with Mayo Clinic on, right?

And that targets the youth, but we don't have anything from an adult education perspective.

And so we said, how do we focus on adult education in terms of getting people to go back to school, you know?

What are some of the steps that they need to take?

Again, trying to overcome that cycle of poverty.

So, that was one.

We also looked at housing.

You know, we have a lot of housing disparities in Rochester.

And so, how do people are, you know, how do people understand the steps to home ownership?

What are the things they need to do in terms of personal credit, things of that nature.

And so, housing is another initiative.

And then also the last was more on the financial education, literacy, personal finance, just, you know, leadership in general.

And so, those are three things that we did.

But then from a community perspective, the community has to play a role in being upstanders.

If we had a community saying in our town, this is not what we're gonna do, then we're not gonna have situations like what happened in the bridge.

So again, those were the four key areas.

And this collaboration, yes, it is a pilot till the end of the year, but the need is there.

And what we are trying, you know, AD MERG and Rochester branch NAACP is doing is basically having workshops where we're teaching, you know, the Black and African American community about home ownership.

These are the steps, you know, personal finances.

Things that you need to sort of be aware of.

And then also adult education, these are the ways to go back to school.

And so, we've also identified, you know, speakers, you know, sometimes from our community, sometimes not from the community that are able to really tell the story.

So, you know, we're collaborating with Lee Green.

He does a lot of graphic stuff, but also personal finance, Tarana Burke Alisina, you know?

And then my business in terms of what we do just from a leadership and coaching perspective and personal finance.

And then we're also collaborating with RCTC with Winona State.

And also students, you know, that are going, that have gone back to school, adult students that have gone back to school and are actually, able to share their own story, their own journey as a way of empowering others.

So, those are a lot of some of the things that we have going on.

- Yeah, that's quite a bit.

And you have till the end of the year 2024 for this pilot program.

- [Wale] Yes.

- And you know, I think it's really interesting, because there's, you know, you can have these incidents and oftentimes, I think the community response, rightly so is very reactive, right?

And so, you had sort of- - [Wale] Yeah.

- that initial, you know, we have to react to the moment and what happened, and now, it's sort of thinking, well, what are sort of the long-term kind of implications, but then what are some of the long-term empowerment and healing and sort of educational things that can happen?

- Absolutely, and I see this as part of a whole process and a framework, because to your point, yes, you can react, but when you're always reacting, you're not defining your plan.

You're reacting to somebody else's plan.

And so, we need to have our plan.

And our plan is we're gonna make sure that our community is resilient, that our community we're able to build people that we provide our community members with the opportunities for critical reflection, right?

And so, that upstander town hall that we're gonna do, we're gonna have two.

Tom Thibodeau, he's a professor, distinguished professor of servant leadership, great colleague and mentor.

He's gonna be doing one of those community town halls and to provide people with an opportunity to really reflect.

So, those are some of the things that we're sort of excited about.

And I think if we do this, and we are able to tool or equip our community with, you know, the knowledge, which how to be upstanders, then, you know, that information will be passed down and hopefully, we will have less incidents like this.

- And to go back to those incidents, I do remember when we spoke earlier this year, there was a lot of conversation about accountability and sort of, I would just love to revisit that question with you about accountability and moving forward as we think about all of these incidences that have been going on and the climate and what accountability looks like.

- Yeah, well, you know, from an NAACP perspective, accountability, we don't think there was accountability.

Ultimately, you know, now I think there were, the police department did a great job of doing an investigation and you know, we identified that these were three young white individuals, I think 17 year old, if I recall.

We understand the constraint that Olmsted County's attorney mentioned, and he assured this publicly that, you know, they didn't feel they could get a conviction, but you know, for me it sends a dangerous message when there's no community service, there's nothing, there's no restorative justice, you know, we are sending the message that it's okay.

Even though we may be saying it's not okay, but our action is saying something else.

And so, I think there has to be accountability in terms of really holding people accountable for the actions of what they do, you know?

Just like we should hold leaders accountable for what they say.

So, that's one aspect, but there's also another part of accountability, which is as a community, what are we gonna do?

And so, that's where we're trying to focus on the things that we can control.

And so, we can control educating our community about just how to be better community members, how to, you know, for people to understand the whole history, you know, of racism.

You know, the challenges that Black and African Americans are going through.

Providing that opportunity for reflection, because I believe we have good people and if people can reflect, we need to provide that space for reflection, you know?

Then it goes to, okay, now what are we gonna do?

And that's where that action comes into play.

So, this is something that, you know, we are looking at as a critical step.

And then when we get to some of the action part, then we can be more successful.

- As we're wrapping up here, Wale, can you tell us how community members can learn more and get involved and if there's any upcoming events in this series?

- Yeah, so community members can follow us on our website, you know, and on our social media pages.

We have, you know, we're gonna be starting the financial literacy workshop in a couple weeks.

The Upstander Town hall, that's gonna be happening in November.

We're also gonna have another one in December.

So basically, if they just follow us on our website and social media pages, you know, they'll be able to get looped in.

We are also very appreciative of the support through Mayo Clinic and AD MERG in this collaboration.

And we need our community members to engage with us.

- Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Wale, and we hope to see you again soon.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat bright music) - Hi, I am Danielle Teal with "R-Town Spotlight".

I'm here at LTS Brewing with Stacy.

Stacy, what is your role here at LTS?

- So, I do a couple things here at LTS.

I handle some of the marketing work as well as running our social media events.

And then I also host our bingo and trivia every Tuesday night here at LTS.

So, I'm in and out pretty frequently.

- [Danielle] I love that you have Bingo.

That's such the rage right now.

- [Stacy] Yes.

- [Danielle] Can you share a little bit more about that?

- The really fun thing, it's customer patron driven, but we have lots of fun call outs.

So, you've heard of like the before and after, but we have a lot of really fun patrons here who come out and we've got some singing call outs, we get some Abba, some "Sound of Music" songs.

So, people are really creative and it makes it a really, really fun event.

Semi-recently installed singles mixers, and so, what we are hearing from the community is that people wanted spaces to meet other singles or like-minded people, maybe even just a friend.

And they weren't finding the events to be able to do that at.

Lately, I've been bringing out games during our singles mixers, so it takes on a speed dating type vibe.

- Because you know, if somebody flips a table over Monopoly, you don't wanna date 'em.

- Fair enough.

Yes.

I mean, honestly, you can really decide, if you be good with somebody.

- Absolutely.

- We also do monthly movie nights, which sometimes are more kid-oriented movies.

Especially, like around the fall we had several Halloween movies.

We have some kid holiday movies coming up as well.

Then we have monthly, or excuse me, a weekly game night on Mondays that alternates.

So, we do a monthly Cribbage, a monthly poker, that's kind of a newer one.

We're a poker night.

- Cribbage is also rising back up.

- Yes, yes.

Another one that's been really popular lately is our puzzle night.

So, we have kind of competitive puzzling.

We have one coming up this month where people will actually get to take home the puzzle.

So, everyone's doing the same puzzle this month, whereas normally it's just a 500-piece puzzle, so it's not always the same one.

But this month everyone's gonna be competing with the same puzzle and if you finish the puzzle in certain increments, then you win some prizes.

We hear a lot of positive feedback about live music and so, something that we're been starting this fall into winter is kind of in our slower season.

Bringing people out with what they like, which we're bringing out some smaller groups of live music.

So, we have every Friday or several Fridays coming up, we're trying to book more and more.

We have several Fridays filled with small groups of live music.

So, like three people, one person maybe.

We can't have huge bands in here during the off season, but we have small singers or bands coming out to perform here in the brewery.

Again, our operations manager is just awesome about kind of coming up with new ideas.

And so, this fall we started an event every Sunday, no matter what games are being hosted, whenever we're open here, we're playing football games on our big screen as well as all the screens in the tap room, and all day long on Sunday it's $10 pizzas.

People don't realize that we actually, make our own soda here, which is cool.

- Wait a second.

- Yeah.

- Okay, let's dive into that just a little bit.

So, you make your own soda?

- Yeah.

- What's the best flavor?

- Oh, I really love our butter beer, but it's a non-alcoholic soda.

The kids can have it.

It's really good, it's my favorite soda.

Usually, we have that one here.

Root beer is usually here and then we rotate.

So, we've got like all kinds of fruit flavors that come and go.

We had an apple soda here recently, so we'll make all kinds of stuff.

It's really fun.

- This sounds so good.

- [Stacy] Yeah.

Yeah.

- Where can people find out about the events, the menu, all that good stuff?

- The best place to stay up to date with all of our events is right on our Facebook page.

So, on social media we share out all of our events as like calendar events, but then we also update via like posting and stories and things.

So, following us in social media is by far the best way.

We do put out information about what beers we have on tap and that sort of stuff on our website too, but I would highly recommend following us on social media.

- All right, anything else you'd like to add?

- Ooh, we just hope you come out to LTS.

We love seeing new faces and it's been fun to see who becomes regulars here I think.

We tend to keep people once they find us here.

- It's kind of what they say about Minnesota.

Once you go there, you can never get out, because of the snow.

- Yes, or the people, right?

- Or the people.

- We're great.

- I mean, we are great.

We are great.

That is awesome.

Share a little bit more about the movie nights.

What does all that entail?

- Yeah, so the movie nights are inside currently.

We will sometimes do them outside whenever the weather is nice, but right now as it's getting colder, they're inside.

So, we've got a big screen right here in the tap room and we will sometimes partner and maybe have like popcorn or something from like a local nonprofit.

Recently, we did that with a local nonprofit and that was really fun.

But yeah, we'll host a movie night here.

We alternate between kind of popular movies.

- All right, we have a patron here at LTS and you come here and visit, but there's a really cool story about it.

So, share your name and what is the connection.

- So, I'm John Teskey and the owners, the original founders here are people I used to work with.

- So, what is your favorite thing about coming to LTS?

- So, I like the atmosphere here and the people that I'm hanging out with.

We have our happy hours here and it's just a fun group, right?

Once you know a lot of people, it makes it even more fun.

- Thank you so much, John.

- You're bet.

- This is Danielle Teal with "R-Town Spotlight".

We're gonna go check out the sodas and get some pizza.

- For more information about this story and other "R-Town" features, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter at KSMQ #RTown or ksmq.org/rtown.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - Today, we are at RCTC's atrium and we are going to ask students why they are voting.

Why are you voting in this year's presidential election?

- I think that we live in a country that has free and fair elections and it is our privilege and our right as Americans to participate in democracy.

There are a lot of people in this world who don't have that privilege, so those of us who do should exercise that.

- Why are you voting in this year's presidential election?

- I think it's a very important election this year.

The last few have been pretty important though this one especially, is pretty important, and I wanna make sure I get my vote in there to make sure the right people get into office.

- This is my first election and I believe very strongly in both my right to vote and the right to protect my rights and the things that protect my body, and I want to protect my right to choose.

- Because I think it's important for people to voice their opinion.

- Because I'm 18 and older now, this is the first year I can vote.

- Well, the prices are very high, gasoline, food, clothing, and I feel that we need a change.

- I'm voting this year, 'cause it's my first year.

As an African, when you're back home, you think about, oh, when I go to America there's so many things I wanna do.

I wanna go to school, I wanna do this.

So, as my first year voting when I turned 18, it's like, check off the list of things I wanna accomplish in America.

First, it was go to school and then graduate from high school.

Now, it's like voting for my first time.

I can call people my friend back home and be like, "I voted, I voted for somebody in this country."

I got the opportunity to actually.

like vote in a country that I once didn't see as, oh, I probably wouldn't be able to do that in America.

And now, I get the opportunity.

So, that's why I'm voting.

- RCTC has a new exhibition in the art gallery called "Photo Matter 1.0" featuring regional and local photographers.

- This exhibit features the work of Minnesota photographers and lens-based artists who are all part of a group that is called Photo Matter Collective.

Artists represented in the show, I'm standing in front of the work of Javier Taverna, who is a professor at Carlton College.

He's a Minneapolis-based photographer.

The work over to my right is by Chris Selleck, who is also a Minneapolis based.

He had a show at the MIA last year, which is awesome.

The work in the Alcove here is by Paul Wegner, who is a professor at Inver Hills Community College, which is awesome to know.

Melissa Borman's work is in the back gallery here also.

She is a professor at Century College.

You can tell there's a lot of photo teachers in this show.

The work on the far wall there is by Anthony Marchetti, who is a professor at Anoka-Ramsey Community College.

- This is a little bit of blurry.

Just for the most part.

- I think just looking at the scenery just helps me form ideas, like gives me what ifs to think about.

Like what if I decide to go into Digital Art One, what would this be like?

What would it be like?

What would the current workload be like?

Would I be interested in it?

What about photography?

How would that go?

Because I've never really experienced it.

(people chatting indistinctly) - [Jessica] The exhibition, which can be found on the college center's second floor runs through December.

(upbeat music) - I vote, because I hear so many people who are, you know, complaining about the state of affairs, what's going on in the world, what's going on in their communities, and really there can be no change unless you vote.

Whether you're Republican or Democratic, it's important to vote.

- I vote, because there's been a lot of men and women before me that have fought for my right to vote.

And I think it's important to let your voice be heard.

- When I was, you know, out of college and have my own house, own place, a friend a little bit older than me said, "If you don't," and I never voted before in my life, he said, "If you don't vote, you cannot complain."

And that resonated.

So, now I vote and I can complain, if I want to.

- Well, I am 63 years old and I always vote.

I'm originally from Georgia, so I take voting very personally.

There was a time when African Americans could not vote.

So, I think of it as my obligation as a citizen to vote.

- You really only have this, you know, enterprise to inherit and to pass on to children and future generations and to get right.

So, you know, it's not like going to a store where there's one store and another store.

You only have one country.

- No matter who wins or loses, they have an agenda.

If it works, it works, if it doesn't, vote 'em out next time.

That's what the country's made on.

We were lucky to get our independence and we have free voting.

- One of the best ways to give voice to what I'm feeling is to vote.

Everyone has a voice.

Everyone should want to express themselves.

One of the best ways to do that, is to vote.

(upbeat music) - Thank you for joining us today.

I hope you learned as much as I did about all that's going on in our city and the wonderful people making it happen.

For more content produced right here in Rochester, please be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter at #RTown.

I'm Nicole Nfonoyim- Hara, host of "R-Town" the show about Rochester.

We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.