Saint Paul, MN – Members of the Welfare Rights Committee (WRC) ‘huddled’ in front of Governor Mark Dayton’s mansion Sept. 25. After a rally and speeches, low-income people hurled footballs over the locked fence. Written on streamers attached to the footballs were messages such as, “Help poor kids, not millionaires,” and “Raise the grants now!” Before they left, the protesters taped signs to the outside of the fence to hammer home the message.

Last legislative session, Governor Dayton found $24 million to give to Vikings football team owner Zygi Wilf for 2013, but no money for poor kids on welfare. The monthly amount of cash MFIP – the state’s welfare program for poor children and their parents – has not increased since 1986 – 27 years ago. Had the cash welfare grants kept up with the cost of living, they would be double. A family of two gets a cash grant of $437 per month. According to the WRC, “That $437 has to cover rent, clothing, transportation, utilities etc. The current welfare grants all but guarantee homelessness.”

According to the Welfare Rights Committee statement, “Governor Dayton could call for increasing the welfare grants. He could make helping the poor his priority. Instead he gives millions of dollars to millionaires like Vikings Football team owner Zygi Wilf.” Wilf was recently found guilty in New Jersey courts for defrauding his past partners and ordered to pay damages of over $80 million.

This fall, the Welfare Rights Committee will also be fighting cuts to the Food Stamp/SNAP program. Last week, Congress voted to cut millions from the program, passing, in the words of WRC, “an irrational provision saying that adults can’t get food stamps unless they are working, even though in much of the country there are no jobs to be found.”

For info, check out the Welfare Rights Committee at welfarerightsmn.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/groups/104618039626888.

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St Paul, MN – It was a big day for Vikings owner and New Jersey real estate developer Zygi Wilf at the State Capitol, Jan. 12, when plans were submitted by the City of Minneapolis, Ramsey County and others for a new Vikings football stadium. Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton set Jan. 12 as a deadline for Vikings stadium plans to be considered at the upcoming legislative session. Wilf insists that the public pick up most of the tab for a new stadium

Linden Gawboy, of the Welfare Rights Committee and the Minnesota Coalition for a People Bailout, blasted the plans for a publicly financed stadium, saying, “If the rich want stadiums they should pay for them. There is no good reason why poor and working people should pay Wilf’s bill.”

She also urged people to attend a Jan. 24 rally at the State Capitol that coincides with the opening of the legislative session. The noon protest will demand more taxes on the rich, a moratorium on home foreclosures and no cuts to programs that serve working and low-income Minnesotans.

#SaintPaulMN #PoorPeoplesMovements #WelfareRightsCommittee #MinnesotaCoalitionForAPeoplesBailout #Stadium #Vikings #ZygiWilf #subsidies

St. Paul, MN – “There should be no public funds used, from any source, to pay for a rich man’s stadium,” said the Minnesota Coalition for a People’s Bailout’s Linden Gawboy, testifying at a Dec. 6 state Senate committee hearing. The off-session hearing looked at financial options for building a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings football team.

The funding options up for discussion that day included taxing revenues from proposed expansions of gambling, raiding the Legacy Fund (money from a statewide sales tax that is supposed to go to arts, the environment and hunting habitat) and diverting current taxes paid by the Vikings franchise – from the state general fund to a stadium fund.

“We are here to talk about an option that we don’t see on this list. The private funding option,” Gawboy testified. She emphasized how the team owner, Zygi Wilf, is a wealthy New Jersey real-estate developer who has plenty of experience arranging private financing deals for his various projects. “The Minnesota Coalition for a People’s Bailout came together in 2008 under the slogan, ‘Bail out poor and working people, not banks and billionaires.’”

There were many groups and individuals at the five and half hour hearing. Testifiers included people against public financing and against using the legacy money for a stadium, fans who wanted a stadium, those who wanted an expansion of gambling and saw the stadium as an opportunity to push their plans, gambling opponents, building trades people and elected officials who advocated public financing. Spokespeople from Minnesota Native American tribes and bands pointed out that the current casinos were a critical component of the economy for their nations and the communities surrounding them, and that expanded gambling would hurt these rural economies.

The Welfare Rights Committee’s testimony read like a resolution: “With the rate of poverty rates going up in Minnesota because of the economic crisis... With many people and families being thrown out of their apartments because of the landlords’ foreclosures...With many people and families in need of shelter, the homeless shelters are at capacity...With many poor families of Minnesota who can’t share the pain anymore because of continuous unemployment and cuts in social programs...This is no time to use any public money, creating new taxing, adding onto existing taxes to build a new stadium.”

It was pointed out that the Vikings management wants hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding for their stadium but refuse to open their financial records for public inspection. Another issue is the refusal to allow the people in Ramsey County to have a chance to vote on a Ramsey County sales tax for one of the stadium proposals.

Mehmet Berker testified as an individual, “For 30-odd years a new norm has developed in this country, where sports teams have discovered that they can get the public to pay for investments that they, the owners, will benefit from.”

Tom D. Goldstein, a community activist, lawyer and former school board member from Saint Paul, states, “The Vikings could have built a private partnership with local corporations during the last decade to solve their stadium woes, but instead did little other than wait for the legislature to create a solution for them.”

“To tax people struggling just to keep a roof over their head is immoral,” said Janet Nye, of Minneapolis, who wore an OccupyMN patch reading “People before profits.” She noted that prior to the two hearings, all discussions were behind closed doors. “I just point out that those who are occupying in every state in the nation, even in other countries; we are very tired of a sham democracy.”

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