The timing of this $500,000 grant announcement from the Office of Refugee Resettlementto a local non-profit group for refugees from the DR Congo is so interesting—days before North Carolina could choose the next President of the US. (See yesterday’s post about North Carolina, here.) Raleigh Immigrant Community Inc. Motto: Unity, Justice, Work (for special people, but not Americans). Community organizers have received a $500,000 federal grant. http://ricinc.org/
It has been awhile since I’ve written about ETHNIC COMMUNITY SELF-HELP GRANTS.
Think about this, besides the fact that the federal grant encourages ethnic separation and non-assimilation by being geared, in this case in NC, to refugees from the DR Congo, your money is used to give special refugees (make work!) jobs and if this one operates as others have in the past, it encourages political involvement for their ethnic group.
I look at these non-profits as little ACORNS (remember ACORN). They purport to be helping the poor (in special ethnic groups) and then they help them vote and become politically active for ‘their community.’ If you have ethnic community organizers working where you live, find out if they are being funded by you.
There is absolutely no need for this grant program from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. And, I wonder under what legal authority the feds have to pass out your money in this discriminatory fashion.
They already hire the nine major contractors and their hundreds of subcontractors to get the refugees settled. There is no need for spin-off non-profits being run with your money! Imagine the firestorm (!) if we wanted federal bucks (community organizing money) to organize a European-American ethnic support group! Or, how about North Carolina Trailer Park Redneck Residents for Justice! (I love rednecks and ‘deplorables’, why not organizing bucks for them/us?)
Before I get to this one from North Carolina, see this list of $millions in grant money for special groups of people (no wonder African Americans notice that immigrants are getting more stuff than they are).
Here is the news about the Raleigh Immigrant Community (LOL! timing of grant announcement is amusing!) from the Daily Tarheel:
The Raleigh Immigrant Community (RIC) started a program to help immigrants in the Triangle area after receiving a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The RIC began as a community adjustment support group for refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congothat met through the UNC Refugee Mental Health and Wellness Initiative. They started meeting in January 2015 and became an official nonprofit in April 2016.
The RIC received the ethnic community self-help grant from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. The grant will give them half a million dollars over three years. [get that federal money out now before a possible Trump Admin comes in!—ed]
For more go to our category ‘Ethnic Community Based Organizations.’ They were previously called ECBOs. I haven’t written much about them in recent years, but when you hear about the over a billion in tax dollars that ORR wants to run their programs, know that grants like this (for special people) are why it is so costly.
So what, you may ask? ***Update January 26th*** Reader Momodoom reports that someone must have tipped off SACSO to get their registration with the State of Minnesota’s Sec. of State office back in compliance after readers here pointed out that the organization was legally defunct.
Ha ha! SOMEone from SACSO “just” filed for “Annual Reinstatement – Nonprofit Corporation (Domestic)” on 1/25/2016… perhaps they were alerted to their questionable status by a blog story..??
And apparently their “renewal due date” is now 12/31/2017,
This is a prime example of why I don’t always get a lot posted on my blogs (or even the most important news posted!). Some news story catches my eye and I spend way too much time looking into it. This story from OWATONNA, MN about the United Way of Steele County giving its annual ‘Live United Award’ to Somali Ibrahim Hussein is one such story.
Hussein is the founder of theSomali American Cultural Society of Owatonna (SACSO), a “non-profit organization” we are told.
For years, I’ve been interested in the mushrooming so-called ‘ethnic community self-help’ organizations that grow up in cities where large numbers of refugees are seeded. The organizations are often launched with the help of federal money through the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
I find them objectionable because their very obvious goal is to advance (“empower”) THEIR people, their ethnic group, as separate and distinct, rather than all low-income, low-skilled people being granted help together. I believe the practice actually discourages assimilation.
The story that caught my eye this morning is here at Southernminn.com(emphasis is mine):
With applause, Schaufenbuel (Kim Schaufenbuel, United Way Executive Director) took to the podium to present the organization’s annual Live United Award.
Learn more by writing to Kim Schaufenbuel, Executive Director of the Steele County United Way and ask for their financials. All non-profits must make their financial information available to anyone who asks.
“Ibrahim Hussein is a remarkable young man,” she started. “If you have any doubts about that spend five minutes with him and ask him only one question and that question is: ‘What did you do today?’ You have no idea what can be accomplished by an average human in any given day until you do that really.”
Hussein is the founder and director of Somali American Cultural Society of Owatonna, also known as SACSO, a nonprofit organization “that’s mission is to empower Somali Americans so they can have an active role within the Owatonna community as business leaders, volunteers, public employees, educators and neighborhood participants and representatives.”
“They do that primarily by making sure children of newly arrived Somali immigrants have the tools they need to be successful and receive an education,” Schaufenbuel said. “Himself, an immigrant, coming from Kenya in 2007, Ibrahim became a Somali liaison in the school system seeing firsthand the needs of kids struggling with a new language and a new classroom experience.”
Ibrahim Hussein is required to give you the financial information for SACSO.
Hussein then founded SACSO in 2011 to address those needs, and he also owns his own translation and interpretation business, serves as a Human Rights Commissioner, attends Minnesota State University, Mankato as a full-time student, and is a husband and father of three children.
“The Live United Award is given each year to an agency that embodies the Live United philosophy of give, advocate and volunteer,” Schaufenbuel said. “SACSO is surely the embodiment of this philosophy.”
So, here I am (while some major refugee story could be exploding), searching for more information on SACSO and although I don’t claim to be the greatest researcher, I can usually find incorporation papers for NON-PROFIT organizations and their federal Form 990 tax returns. I can find neither for SACSO. Incorporation papers are generally filed at a state’s Secretary of State office. I suppose it is possible SACSO was incorporated as another entity, but I find nothing under its full name or its abbreviation. (If any reader finds those docs, please send them my way.)
There is no Form 990 available either (that I can find). SACSO’s website lists no board members.
In order for the donors they have listed on their website to contribute, surely they asked for proper incorporation documents and financial records including proof that the organization is an IRS approved 501(c)3 organization and is filing a Form 990. ***Update***Reader Corinne is reporting that SACSO is defunct because it missed filing deadlines here: https://mblsportal.sos.state.mn.us/Business/SearchDetails?filingGuid=e5b78bc6-97d4-e011-a886-001ec94ffe7f
Sure hope their donors listed below are doing their due diligence. Hereare the donors to SACSO (including the United Way giving the award):
Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation
McKnight Foundation
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Lutheran Social Service: Foster Grandparent Program
Pearson Inc
Owatonna Workforce Center
Otto Bremer Foundation
United Way Of Steele County
I’m guessing they are getting some sort of grants from the State of Minnesota as well.
By the way I thought I recognized Owatonna and Somalis and sure enough I wrote about the high school there having conflicts between Somalis and American kids here in 2011. CAIR got involved. And, herewe see that Owatonna is a refugee resettlement target community.
Photo: More on Hussein here.
Follow the money!
You may not find anything fishy, but you are entitled to financial information from “non-profit” organizations. Write a letter to the United Way of Steele County, other non-profits donating to SACSO, and especially write to Ibrahim Hussein and ask for SACSO’s incorporation papers, its 501(c)3 Determination Letter from the IRS and its financial reports for the last few years (including IRS Form 990s).
This is the sort of thing citizen activists should be doing wherever you live!
Find anything fishy that taxpayers should be concerned about? Make sure what you learn is spread far and wide or else your research is a waste of time! Update: Forgot to mention this morning as I was dashing out to cope with what the storm dumped on the farm, I forgot to mention that I used this story in a post at American Resistance 2016! to urge grassroots folks to dig for documents on ‘non-profit’ groups operating in your towns and cities.
Editor’s note: I am still out of the country and trying to post when I get a minute. I see I have a boatload of e-mails and will try to get to those as soon as possible. I apologize for not responding sooner.
It was only a few weeks ago that WDAY-6 Newswas reporting that the number of refugees expected in North Dakota this fall was going to jump, but now following controversy that those statements generated, it seems that Lutheran Social Services North Dakota is moving quickly to say, oh, no!, the numbers will be ‘normal.’ Gotta keep the refugees flowing into North Dakota because LSS has a fancy new building to pay for. LSS is paid by the head to resettle refugees AND they receive other federal grants for all sorts of additional “programs” for their special charges. From a recent FORM990 we learned they received over $10 million in government grants.
In this article at Inforum, a spokeswoman for LSS says that people (citizens, taxpayers) don’t understand how this all works and that is how they/we get confused. But, here is the deal, the reason people can get confused is that these agencies have been for 35 years(!) working in SECRECY, so is it any surprise there could be confusion.
There should be a least one public meeting a year in each refugee receiving community where the resettlement agency, the feds and city and state elected officials explain to the community who and how many they will be expected to “welcome” to town in the coming year. How about a public meeting in Fargo or Grand Forks where LSS does explain how the whole program works!
Here is Inforum:
GRAND FORKS – Refugee resettlements in Grand Forks are expected to remain the same as in previous years, according to Lutheran Social Services.
The city can expect four to 12 refugees to arrive here by October, said Katie Dachtler, resettlement services supervisor. The total number expected is on par with previous years, she said.
Varied reports on the expected number of refugees to arrive this fall in the Fargo area led to the perception by some that the cities would have more refugees than each could handle by October, sparking harsh online comments and a Change.org petition asking LSS to stop further placement unless it’s approved by a vote from Cass County residents. As of Friday afternoon, the petition had gained 3,037 signatures.
Read the whole thing and follow links.
Be sure to see the section on the ‘Somali Community of Grand Forks’ which is what previously was called an ECBO (Ethnic Community Based Organization) ‘non-profits’ funded largely with tax dollars. ECBO’s help THEIR people get a start, help them find “resources,” help them get registered to vote, and then act as political spokespersons if some problem arises with THEIR people.
Now they are called Ethnic Community Self Helpgroups. Here is one recent list of grantees at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Grand Forks Somali ECBO is not listed here, but has certainly received start-up money from some federal or state agency. I could not find any financials on the group. Concerned citizens in North Dakota need to do some research on this group and others like it.
The big question is why should taxpayers fund groups that seek to promote special treatment for THEIR ethnic “community.”
We have a category on ECBOs here, but haven’t had much news archived there lately.
This post is also filed in our new ‘Pockets of Resistance’category,here.
Of course one wonders why they need a special bar association for their community, never-the-less if they are teaching Somalis that they must not use their clan system for meting out justice in America and must follow the US Constitution maybe that is a good thing. However, there is no mention in this article at MinnPost about sharia law—maybe the next public meeting will tell Somalis they can’t use that in America either!
How many special ethnic-oriented bar associations do we have in America? I would like to know!
Attendees at the launch of the North American Somali Bar Association. Photo: Ibrahim Hirsi
On a recent cold winter night, Maya Sheikh-Salah, assistant Hennepin County attorney, stood tall before nearly 100 Somali-Americans at Safari Restaurant and Event Center in Minneapolis, passionately addressing the community about a little known topic: The U.S. criminal justice system.
[….]
The assembly last Thursday marked the launch of The North American Somali Bar Association (NASBA), birthed by Minnesota Somali legal professionals as a way to address their community’s legal needs,to inspire young African immigrants, and to provide mentoring services to current law students.
Even though the gathering was the association’s first meet-and-greet event, it presented some important lessons for many in attendance: Sheikh-Salah, a founding member of NASBA, explained what it means to have a justice system, a constitution and the many parallel branches of the justice system, among other things.
Criminal justice system is a system that’s key to the law, it’s key to the peaceful society and it’s key to a government to function well,” she said.
There is a lengthy discussion about how the clan-system of justice works and an example of why not to practice it here. Then this:
The audience even received a brief introduction to the U.S. Constitution: “This document is the oldest and shortest constitution in the world,” Sheikh-Salah said as she held the constitution high.
She continued: “And as a matter of fact, I’m going to add, the most contemporary document. It has 7 articles, 27 amendments, 4,400 words. The United States constitution gives rights to individuals. And the presumption of innocence preserves the dignity of the individual. You’re not guilty, until proven guilty.”
For new readers who are wondering how we got so many Somalis in Minnesota, visit our 2011 post. Minneapolis was targeted as a “welcoming” site by the US State Department and its contractors Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services of MN, and World Relief MN which has recently changed its name to Arrive Ministries resettled them there where the welfare was generous.
Just a quick story in our favorite “welcoming” state of Vermont. Clearly a former refugee herself, it’s alleged that Ms. Mbayu stole from other refugees.
If convicted Mbayu could get ten years in the slammer.
A former caseworker at the Association of Africans Living in Vermont is facing a charge of embezzlement for pocketing $34,000 in tax refunds of two of her clients in recent years, Burlington Police said Friday.
Francine Mbayu, 43, of Burlington is due in Vermont Superior Court on Oct. 30 for arraignment on the felony embezzlement count, police said.
Detective Cpl. Michael Hemond said Mbayu diverted the tax refunds of the two victims between 2011 and 2014 into her bank account and illegally retained all or a portion of each refund.
I would love to dig into the financials for the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, but no time today. If you are a Vermonter reading this, remember it’s important to research the refugee organizations and operatives in your state (a message for readers in every state!).
See some of our recent postson Vermont (the green card state!) which touts itself as a state welcoming diversity, but surprise! gets very few refugees.
