Hennepin County to hold a “crime prevention” meeting with Soros-backed group
Scheduled for mid-May, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that the state’s largest county will be holding a “crime prevention summit” to find “new solutions.”
With a budget of up to $500,000 of taxpayer money, the county board is set to approve the idea at tomorrow’s regular board meeting.
According to the meeting agenda, the summit will be conducted by a group named Cities United. The agenda reports,
Cities United works directly with government, local representatives, young leaders, and community-based partners, to build capacity to:
- Interrupt the cycle of community violence,
- Dismantle systems of inequity and;
- Invest in the sustainability of new equitable administrative and operational activities.
How?
Cities United supports the development and implementation of collaboratively developed and owned written comprehensive plans that employ the public health approach to address the root causes of community violence to identify goals, actions and performance measures across multiple protective and risk factors, centering those most impacted by community violence.
All one sentence.
The Summit aims to accomplish the following:
· Celebrate the progress communities are making
· Highlight Safe Communities
· Identify opportunities to enhance current community violence interrupter ecosystems
· Reaffirm partnerships & gain new connections
· Amplify youth voices
· Change narratives
· Increase engagement from key partners
And all of that in a mere three days.
Who is Cities United? The Star Tribune describes the group as a “Louisville, KY, nonprofit.” Strictly speaking, that’s not true.
As the Cities United website explains (in a tiny footnote at the very bottom if its home page),
Cities United is not a separate entity, in Kentucky or anywhere else.
Who is “Tides”? Tides is a San Franciso-based nonprofit that exists to funnel money from wealthy individuals, foundations, and corporations into left-wing political causes.
Here is the Tides webpage dedicated to the Cities United project.
In 2021, the Tides organization reported total revenue across its five corporate entities of $1.3 billion (with a “b”). The consolidated organization’s net assets (net worth) exceed $1 billion.
So why are county taxpayers being asked to kick in a half million? That question goes unanswered.
One prominent donor to the Tides empire is New York City-based financier George Soros, who gives regularly and generously through his Open Society Foundation.
In Tides’ banner year of 2021, Open Society donated more than $25 million. Just a drop in the bucker for either organization, to be sure. Soros’ group tossed in another $7 million in 2022.
Cities United gives the game away by the prominent placement of the anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety on its list of partner organizations. Everytown is a nonprofit founded by yet another New York City-based billionaire, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Cities United published a guide to “Reimagining Public Safety” in 2020. In the guide’s 35 pages, the words “gun” or “firearm” appear 21 times. The word “crime” appears only 12 times. The words “safe” or “safety” appear 100 times.
And what do they mean by a “public health approach”? Page 8 of the guide explains,
Street outreach programs employ a public health approach to violence intervention,
beginning with the premise that gun violence is a contagious disease, the spread
of which can be interrupted.
I hope to attend the summit in person in May. I’ll keep you updated.