No such thing as ‘Minnesota nice’ as St. Cloud mayor and council play dirty

10/25/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you that a St. Cloud, Minnesota councilman was planning to introduce a resolution on November 6th asking for a moratorium on refugee resettlement in order to understand better the economic impact of thousands of mostly Somali refugees being placed in the town over recent years by a Lutheran resettlement agency.

(Don’t miss yesterday’s post about Lutherans being paid directly by meatpacking companies to find and retain labor, here.)

So what happens the week before the planned debate on the moratorium resolution?

On Monday night (on the 23rd):

The Mayor and most of the council sprung a “welcoming” resolution, with no advanced warning, and allowed only a few minutes of discussion before voting in support in front of a large audience that was out of control.

Here Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily tells us what happened. Embedded in the story is a video of the meeting that was described by many as total chaos.

What happened at the St. Cloud, Minnesota, City Council on Monday night is being described as a well-organized “ambush” designed to shut down a citizen uprising or “pocket of resistance” against runaway refugee resettlement in the small city.

Screenshot (1005) — Councilman Jeff Goerger, who introduced the “Welcoming and Just City” resolution before his colleague’s resolution could be introduced and voted on.

College-age students filled the council chambers. Only five people were allowed to approach the podium and speak, all of them in favor of unlimited refugee resettlement with no accountability to the taxpayer.

A resolution was hastily introduced, read and voted on.

Mission accomplished.

The ambush was successful.

And the local Somali community is now celebrating.

It all started when several of the council members who support unlimited refugee resettlement with no financial accountability to the taxpayer were informed that one of their colleagues, Councilman Jeff Johnson, planned to introduce a resolution at their Nov. 6 meeting calling for a moratorium on all resettlements in St. Cloud until an economic impact study could be completed.

Johnson’s resolution would also require the city to verify that it is in full compliance with all facets of the federal Refugee Act of 1980 as signed by then-president Jimmy Carter.

But Johnson’s opponents, clearly having collaborated among themselves beforehand, sprung a new resolution on the public at the Monday, Oct. 23, meeting and passed it 5-1 after begrudgingly allowing only a few minutes of debate.

The efforts by Johnson to support financial accountability were undercut before they were even heard in a public forum.

Councilman Jeff Goerger made sure of it.

[….]

Councilman Jeff Goerger, who introduced the “Welcoming and Just City” resolution before his colleague’s resolution could be introduced and voted on.

Goerger stated, to a resounding applause, that the city has absorbed the thousands of Somalis “without an impact on the city budget or our quality of life.”

The families of the 10 people stabbed at the mall by Dahir Adan last year might disagree with that “quality of life” remark.

There is much, much more, continue reading here.

‘Minnesota nice’ is dead and gone!

Actions like this (playing dirty) are all the more reason for citizens to organize in towns with mayors and councils like this one in St. Cloud and campaign to elect your own people to local office. See what I said here.

You might not win the first time, or even the second time, but nothing beats the publicity you can get for your greatest concerns than having your own candidates voice them. What do you have to lose?

The other option is to move.

See my huge archive on St. Cloud that extends back to 2008 when I first reported on the beleaguered city forever changed by Lutheran Social Services of MN.

Lutherans on the offense in St. Cloud, plan propaganda webinar

10/22/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Readers, I do have news from elsewhere that needs to be posted, but the St. Cloud upcoming council vote is shaping up to be a pivotal event.

What I truly don’t understand is why Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota (a subcontractor of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service headquartered in Baltimore) is so hell bent to bring more third worlders, especially Somalis, to a town where they (Somalis AND LSS) face such a backlash.

You would almost think the Lutheran resettlement contractor is benefiting financially beyond its per head payment for the refugees they place in Minnesota communities.

Now they plan to put on a webinar in mid-November to supposedly tell the public that refugees don’t cost taxpayers a dime just when a member of the city council wants a REAL economic assessment of what resettlement is costing the community beyond the trouble in schools and neighborhoods and the general social and cultural upheaval that comes with cities being rapidly changed demographically.

When you look at their list of handpicked webinar speakers (below from the St. Cloud Times), see who is represented and who isn’t:

No one from the police department is listed

No one from the school system

No one to explain the costs for interpreters in the criminal justice system and in hospitals etc.

No one who can speak to the amount of remittances being sent out of St. Cloud and back to Africa

No one to address the issue of jobs that refugees take from low-skilled American workers….

And, how about they put a representative of the Minnesota Meatpacking industry on the panel to explain how they need the Lutherans to supply their cheap labor!

Of course they won’t do that, and they won’t do this ‘fact finding’ in a public meeting because here they can control the information, who registers and what questions are asked in this webinar format. (Ha! Ha! wouldn’t it be fun to have a counter webinar that same day and time!)

The presence of this panelist explains much. Teresa Bohnen is not only President of the St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce, but also Vice Chair of the state chamber and works closely with the US Chamber of Commerce that lobbies for amnesty for illegals and for more refugee laborers. If only they would all be truthful about their wish for a steady flow of migrant labor. Come on just say it! We work for the meat industry! http://www.sctimes.com/story/money/2016/02/05/bohnen-elected-state-chamber-board/79840982/

Here is the St. Cloud Times announcing the webinar:

A group hopes to distinguish between fact and myth about refugee resettlement with a public webinar in November.

Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota will have a webinar from 3-4:30 p.m., Nov. 14.

Panelists, including staff and state and local leaders, will talk about how resettlement works and the costs and benefits of the program in the St. Cloud area.

Panelists include:

Yusuf Abdi, director of refugee services, Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota.

Karin Blythe, resettlement supervisor, Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota.

Teresa Bohnen, president, St. Cloud Area Chamber of Commerce.

Melissa Huberty, human services administrator, Stearns County Human Services.

Mary Zelenak, health protection and promotion supervisor, Stearns County Public Health. [Be sure to ask her about TB rates in Minnesota immigrant population!—ed]

Rachele King, state refugee coordinator, Minnesota Department of Human Services.

The discussion over the cost of refugee resettlement in St. Cloud has been reignited recently, as a St. Cloud City Council member announced a plan to temporarily stop refugees from resettling in St. Cloud.

Jeff Johnson, who represents St. Cloud’s Fourth Ward, submitted a draft resolution this week calling for a moratorium on refugee resettlement in St. Cloud.

The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations also launched a petition Tuesday urging the St. Cloud City Council to vote no on the moratorium, which the organization called a “despicable, racist, Islamophobic, and ill-informed motion targeting refugees.”

More here.

There will be discussion at tomorrow’s council meeting and the vote on Johnson’s resolution could happen on November 6th.

For new readers, I have an archive on St. Cloud that goes back to 2008, click here to learn more.

Pay attention! Your town could become St. Cloud too!

10/20/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As St. Cloud goes, so goes the nation!

…..that is if you don’t do something now to stop it where you live.

I’ve been arguing that the national media is doing a great disservice by not showing the true picture of a city and a state undergoing a dramatic demographic change thanks to forces arrayed against us—against regular folks, American citizens.

Most Americans would be stunned if they had any idea of what is happening in Minnesota!

dayton — Mogadishu first! Minnesota governor Dayton said earlier this week that he would light the governor’s mansion blue (Somali flag color) because of the terrorist attack there recently that killed hundreds. Did he light the governor’s mansion in any color when the Somali refugee terrorist attempted to kill shoppers at the St. Cloud mall a year ago?

Topping the list of those changing America by changing the people are the global corporations seeking cheap compliant labor, and cheered on by the Chamber of Commerce, Democratic political activists looking for voters, ‘non-profit’ groups paid by taxpayers to place the third world in unsuspecting towns, Islamic supremacist groups like CAIR advancing the hijra and enabled by bleeding hearts in the media and the clearly frightened local elected officials.

The St. Cloud, Minnesota story will tell your community’s story next year, or ten years from now!

(See also, my St. Cloud post yesterday, here)

Here Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily pulls the threads together about St. Cloud. This is your future too!

A small city in the Midwest is becoming “ground-zero” for a long-simmering battle over refugee resettlement that could have a ripple effect across the United States.

“The long-term future of literally every city and town in America will be affected by who wins in St. Cloud and Stearns County, Minnesota,” says Ann Corcoran, one of America’s foremost experts on the resettlement industry through her website Refugee Resettlement Watch.

St. Cloud and the surrounding small cities of Central Minnesota have been the drop-off points for thousands of refugees coming from United Nations camps over the past 15 years.

[….]

If St. Cloud is successful in carving out a local role in determining refugee numbers flowing into its community, that will spread quickly to other cities, says Corcoran, who has followed the resettlement industry across all 50 states for the past decade.

But it’s an uphill fight.

One council member, Jeff Johnson, has decided to champion the cause and is expected to introduce a resolution on Nov. 6 calling for a moratorium on refugee arrivals until a study can be completed on the economic impact of the resettlements.

So far Johnson says he has only one other councilman who is willing to listen to his argument that economics matter, but he is hoping to convince others that they will be better able to make decision affecting the taxpayer if they have empirical data on refugee costs.

Citizens like Ron Branstner have become experts on the meat industry:

Branstner sees lots of winners when it comes to refugee resettlement. The meat-processing companies – Hormel, JBS Swift, Pilgrim’s Pride – all benefit from the cheap labor. The transportation industry makes money shuttling the refugees to and from work.

But the biggest loser is the taxpayer.

So-called “Big Meat” – with most of the companies foreign-owned – has plants scattered throughout the Midwest in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, the Dakotas, Kansas and Colorado. [States throughout the south are also affected. Big Meat/Big Poultry is in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and more—ed]

“These corporations, in cooperation with chambers of commerce, nonprofits like the Blandin Foundation, Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities, have transformed town after town throughout southern Minnesota since 1990,” Branstner says.

He believes the taxpayer is subsidizing the meat industry’s addiction to cheap refugee labor.

So please don’t let anyone tell you this is about humanitarianism and thus any criticism by you means you are a mean, racist boob! That is just what they do to silence you!

There is much, much more, continue reading here.

See also my huge archive on ‘Meatpackers’ by clicking here.

Endnote: One of my great frustrations is that I will get readers/commenters on this post who will say—what should I do? Where is an easy petition to sign or an easy fax to send?

I understand that some of you might be new and this is the first time you are seeing RRW, but geez, for the rest of you, I tell you almost daily what to do and even have a category now entitled ‘What you can do.‘ Please have a look!

Sorry this isn’t going to be easy or fast!

Don’t miss my recent step by step prescription for some thing you can do, here. The gist of that post is that you must get involved locally as the people of St. Cloud are doing and ultimately get rid of mayors and councils who are operating in secrecy and facilitating the destructive demographic change we see here in the city that is the canary in a coal mine.

(Twin Falls, Idaho, as I have mentioned often, is right up there with St. Cloud as a lesson for what will happen to your town next!)

St. Cloud controversy over refugees draws CAIR’s attention; CAIR draws media attention

10/19/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, of course, as I look around this morning I see that CAIR’s arrival on the scene draws the national media! A local Fox affiliate is reporting on the controversy surrounding one city councilman’s proposed moratorium on refugee resettlement and even the Washington Post is now reporting. I expect to see the spinners and liars from the New York Times arriving soon! LOL! the new ambulance chasing—CAIR chasing!

It looks like the showdown will be Monday, October 23rd when Councilman Jeff Johnson will propose that the mayor and council ask the federal government and its agent in Minnesota—Lutheran Social Services of MN—to give them a break until more is known about the economic impact of resettlement on the city and until there can be some assurances that the process going forward is transparent. Federal law does give a role to local governments to weigh in with their suggestions.

If this is the first time you are learning about the latest uprising in St. Cloud, see my posts here, here and here recently.

The moral of this story is if you can draw out CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) you can get some national attention for your efforts!

As I said in my previous post, CAIR must fight to keep Muslim refugees coming in to the US in order to continue to build their political power base. It is that simple!

Here is CAIR!

Screenshot (995)

How did St. Cloud get here?

Rather than go back over the resolution and what it could possibly do (or what might happen on Monday night at city hall), I think my best contribution to this story is to supply readers with background on how a small Minnesota city became ground zero for a battle, the results of which, will in fact help determine the future of literally every town and city in America in the decades ahead.

It’s the Lutherans in the case of St. Cloud.

We know that Somali refugees have been placed in Minnesota by the US State Department since the late 1980’s. By the early 1990’s the flood gates were opening as three major federal contractors: Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services of MN (whose ‘mothership’ is Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service where, by the way, rumor has it that some scandal is brewing), and World Relief saw Minnesota’s generous welfare as a real plus for the destitute Somalis. See my 2011 post here.

Not only was the generous welfare a draw, but big companies needed cheap labor (a window company in Owatona for example, or meat packing plants all over the state, including in St. Cloud!).

LSS as employment agency?

jodi harpstead — CEO Harpstead pulls down a salary and benefits package of over $300,000 annually to head the $91 million a year operation

Initially there was no direct resettlement of refugees in St. Cloud, that didn’t come until 2011. But, the so-called secondary migrants were moving to the city helped by an EMPLOYMENT OFFICE run by none other than Lutheran Social Services of MN. WTH!

Why was a non-profit ‘religious’ charity running an employment office to benefit large corporations? Was someone paying them to find refugee laborers for St. Cloud area businesses? Who? Taxpayers?

Here is an August 2010 story from Minnesota Public Radio announcing that in the coming year LSS of MN would be bringing 300 refugees directly to St. Cloud over the next 3 years.

But, we learn that since 2002 (right after 9/11), LSS was running an “employment office” there:

Kim Dettmer, Director of Refugee Services at Lutheran Social Services, said no one has an exact figure for the total number of refugees living in the St. Cloud area. Many community and nonprofit leaders estimate that the African population in St. Cloud is between 8,000 and 10,000–this figure includes people who came to the United States as refugees and who have since become naturalized citizen and no longer have refugee status. Lutheran Social Services learned that St. Cloud had a large and growing Somali population, so it opened an employment office in St. Cloud in 2002 to provide extra support.

Continue reading here.

One of those companies looking for cheap (Lutheran-supplied) labor was apparently Gold n’ Plump a St. Cloud-based chicken processing plant which found out that maybe cheap Somali Muslim labor isn’t cheap after all. It had to pay out an undisclosed cash settlement to Somali workers in a legal dispute discussed here in the Star Tribune.

In a landmark settlement that could change the way Muslims are treated in the workplace, St. Cloud-based Gold’n Plump Inc. has agreed to allow Somali workers short prayer breaks and the right to refuse handling pork at its poultry processing facilities.

The federally mediated agreement is among the first in the nation that requires employers to accommodate the Islamic prayer schedule and the belief, held by many strict Muslims, that the Qur’an prohibits the touching and eating of pork products.

Community organizers form Red-Green axis:

One of those involved in the settlement was community activist Mahmoud Mohamed. I told you about him and his ‘ethnic community based organization’ here in early 2010 and here again in December of that year where he claims to be part of the “we” who brought the first refugees directly from camps to St. Cloud. I don’t know if he is still active, or if SASSO is still calling shots in St. Cloud. And I don’t know if Mohamed is still working with the hard Left community organizer Luke Tripp. Someone needs to do a little research.

The controversy surrounding the resolution vote on Monday (and hopefully there will be a vote so that citizens there can see exactly how each council person votes) did not happen in a vacuum or come out of the blue. In addition to those events I just mentioned, a lot has gone down in St. Cloud over the years, including but not limited to:

A controversy about Somalis harassing an assistance dog, here. (my first introduction to St. Cloud)

Controversies in the high school, one of many posts here.

A huge zoning battle over the construction of a mosque in the middle of a neighborhood, here.

The knife attack by a Somali at the local mall, here.

Somali teen murders African American, here.

Muslim arrested for mosque vandalism blamed on citizens (Islamophobes!) originally, here.

Local paper did not like me visiting St. Cloud, here.

Go here for many more stories in my archive about St. Cloud.

Update! How could I forget this! MN Governor Dayton said in St. Cloud 2015: anyone who doesn’t like immigrants can get out of Minnesota, here.

Bottomline, Lutheran Social Services of MN is responsible for the exploding Somali population in St. Cloud and the chaos and controversy that has followed.

Not in my name!

What you can do: If you are of the Lutheran denomination, you need to let your ministers know exactly how you feel about changing America by changing the people in the name of your faith group (and for Caesar’s money)!

Comment worth noting from St. Cloud, MN

10/14/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor: From time to time I post comments more prominently that I think are important but would get little notice otherwise. This is a comment I received about my post two days ago, here.

Update October 19th: Don’t miss all the breaking news on St. Cloud today, here.

From St. Cloud Guy:

I have lived in St Cloud for a long time and I can’t believe how fast the city is going down. The housing market in St. Cloud is falling way behind all the surrounding cities because of the excessive refugee population. Also the schools have become some of the worst ones in the entire state of Minnesota. The Star Tribune estimated over 30% of St Cloud Apollo High School is Somalian now and the other high school St. Cloud Tech has a larger refugee population in its area. They have only been coming to St. Cloud in large numbers the last decade and a half. What will happen in another 10 years? Plus all the extra kids they have? 80%?

St_Cloud_Somalis

It’s very upsetting and frustrating that St. Cloud was a nice normal town that we could raise families here and go to decent schools. Now that is all gone and we have to take huge losses to sell our houses to get out of here. I really wish we would have a say in this since tax money is used for it. We almost have to move out of state, because any decent size city in Minnesota has or is starting to have problems with excessive refugees and poverty.

I don’t care if people want to migrate here but we need to stop paying for it with our tax money and let them get over here on their own and take care of themselves. That’s what all our ancestors did and that’s what made America so strong. At least that way the people that do migrate here on their own will be hard working and motivated to live the American dream not just sit at home collecting welfare checks and having babies.

See more comments worth noting and guest posts, here.