Sunday, March 29, 2009

Follow The Heckler, Follow The Money...

Contributed Photo

After my post identifying Lennie Chism as the person who disrupted the Ward 5 DFL Convention, repeatedly heckling City Councilman Don Samuels, information began flowing in my direction via cell phone, providing me enough facts about Chism to perform some very productive Google searches...

Chism is in charge of a charitable organization called Springboard Development Foundation. A search under that name turns up information rather quickly, and leads to the address of the organization at 1901 Glenwood Ave. N.

It's a very interesting address, indeed. Here's some things associated with that address:

First of all, the address is in foreclosure as of August, 2008. It turns up on an official list of foreclosures in Minneapolis. The mortgage is held by Capital Lending Group, Inc. The expiration of the redemption date was 2/19/2009. I guess it's beyond redemption.

The amount of money in question actually wasn't very large, considering the size of some mortgages: it was only $34,879.57.

This same Glenwood Ave. N. address was listed for the "Johnson Lee Campaign" as of 3/2/2005, when a $100 donation was made from that address to the campaign of Neighbors for Toni Carter, Ramsey County Commissioner, District 4. One presumes that is the NATALIE Johnson Lee campaign? Don Samuels' former opponent in the Ward 5 City Council Race? The plot thickens.

My source says Lennie Chism has, in fact, heckled Don Samuels before but doubts this was a planned and coordinated effort, describing Chism as a "train wreck."

If so, that's kind of tragic because the heckling made such a bad impression that it may have helped turned the tide of votes away from McKnight. A sense of cosmic justice would make one hope somebody in the McKnight campaign planned or at least encouraged the incident. The idea that it WASN'T planned, but probably BADLY HURT McKnight just seems kind of...well, one hates to be repetitive but returns to the word "tragic."

My source urges me to ask for a list of the board of directors of Springboard Development Foundation and says Lennie Chism is also the owner of Your Black Wall Street which is, once again, located at 1901 Glenwood Ave. N.

Your Black Wall Street lists itself as involved in marketing and public relations. In fact, "YBWS" has put out a number of videos with half decent production values, distributing this material on You Tube. (See, for example, the channel called "yourbw2" on YouTube) Chism is also the founder of "Twin Cities Black Pages," which sounds impressive...until you start Googling the phrase "Twin Cities Black Pages."

Not a lot turns up, actually. By "not a lot" I mean, as of today, 4 Google hits, one a MySpace page for "Deuce City S.W.A.G.," described as a 24-year-old female in St. Paul. Another thing that turns up is a very interesting RFP (Request For Proposal) which was apparently put forward to the Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund of the State of Minnesota. (This program is funded by the State Lottery)

The proposal is by Lennie Chism and asks for $95,540 to fund a Feasibility Study For Solar Manufacturing, Distribution and Installation Center. The money would go to "Glenwood Enterprises," which is DBA ("doing business as") Diverse Minnesota. These entities are both located at 1901 Glenwood Ave. N. The money would go for a lot of things, but would be spent in a period of time from July 1, 2009 to September 20, 2009. The point of the study is "to determine whether a solar panel manufacturing, distribution and installation will create jobs and will be profitable in the metro region."

One can't help but think that sentence makes more sense if it included the word "center." One also wonders how the fact the building at 1901 Glenwood Ave. N. is foreclosed and beyond redemption will play into these grand schemes and dreams.

Diverse Minnesota has a website at www.diverseminnesota.com, but it is a skeleton site, displaying only "sample content."

You might be asking yourself right about now, "Why, Lennie, pray tell what will this $95,000 and change go to fund?"

Here is what Lennie says the money will fund: Direct mail, telephone, and online surveys. Focus group sessions, which will include 10 groups of 5 respondents. Travel to Silicon Valley to determine plant size and cost. Travel to Portland, Oregon to determine quality control. Travel to Vermont to establish vendor relationships. There will also be meetings with "4 Minnesota Partners," which include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Minnesota DEED, EXCEL Energy, and some entity called "SBA."

There is, I should add, another rather interesting little entity (apparently) located at that building called "Urban Trends, LLC." According to an "e-democracy" chat, Urban Trends, LLC snatched up a rather interesting domain name on January 13, 2005? What is the domain? I'm glad you asked.

It is www.donsamuels.com. Since that is now an official Don Samuels website, I assume either Samuels managed to buy the name back or the registration expired and Samuels snatched it back. However, who the two names associated with Urban Trends, LLC are interesting: Rudy Rogers and Travis Lee.

Travis Lee is the husband of Natalie Johnson Lee.

So what conclusions does this lead us to? Well, it appears Lennie Chism has been affiliated with opponents of Don Samuels for quite a while and his rather grand schemes--which have a certain positive flair, certainly a sense of VISION if not the actual JUICE to back that vision up--are overextended, and falling apart like so many other things caught up in the mortgage meltdown.

There is some helpful information about Lennie Chism provided in the RFP document. He is described as a graduate of Ohio State and the "University of St. Thomas Mini-MBA program."

I feel like this is a good start on information about the guy who heckled Don Samuels--thank you, thank you, anonymous source--but if folks have info to add, remember what happens on Johnny Northside stays on Johnny Northside.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lennie is part of Al McFarlane's stable of crazies that he calls in when he needs something disrupted. He was brought in to several WHO meetings to shout down discussion, even though he doesn't live or work in the neighborhood.

Anonymous said...

Oh yes - Urban Trends LLC - Trav Lee had an 'urban trends newspaper' called Trendsetters. He used this newspaper during the whole campaign to smear Don Samuels - some real good smearing - in Jan 2005 when the Samuels/Johnson-Lee campaign was just barely getting started - he bought the donsamuels.com domain and he linked it to his own website for trendsetters. So when youwent to donsamuels.com what you saw was girls in daisy duke shorts with booty hanging out, guys all blinged-up with their hip-hop gear, advertisements for the hottest night clubs or strip clubs,etc.

He eventually un-linked the two websites but I think he had the .com domain that whole year. His newspaper has not survived. During one of the Samuels/Johnson-Lee debates, when Johnson-Lee said her and her husband are 'pillars of the community', Samuels held up a copy of the newspaper and asked something like 'if you are pillars of the community why does your husband publish a soft porn newspaper' - while he pointed to a picture of a woman in a thong. I think that might have been the only low-blow that Don threw, after getting beat up for months by Johnson-Lee's surogates.

Let's hope that some folks don't pull our community down in to the mud again. There is no need for that. But I suppose it's hard not to do when there is no substance to campaign upon.

Anonymous said...

"Let's hope that some folks don't pull our community down in to the mud again"

Amen. This happens when the goal is to distract the community from substantive discussion. Al McFarlane and Randy Staten fear Don in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons that old-style machine politicians like Trent Lott, Ted Stevens, and Rod Blagojevich fear Obama. Al and Randy's "vision" is to set up a political monopoly on the Northside where funds can be funneled through them to their cronies. Their argument is that because Al, Randy, and their cronies are African-American, that this set-up is somehow uplifting to African-Americans in general, regardless of the fact that the goal is (as with JACC) to prevent 90% of funds from being used for productive purposes. Don doesn't play that game. That's why so very much is riding on this election--and also, incidentally, why it is so sick-making to see Al and Randy invoking the name of Obama. Being an Obama-style politician means focusing on pragmatic accomplishments, dismantling fat-cat fiefdoms like the ones JACC, Al, and Randy are working so hard to create. There is only one Obama-style candidate in this race, and it isn't (or "wasn't", hopefully) Kenya McKnight.

Johnny Northside said...

Please note, the correct number for the RFP proposal is $95,000 and change, not $950,000. I caught that myself and corrected it.

Jeff Skrenes said...

In terms of the foreclosure, the reason the sheriff's sale amount may be so low is that some lenders are now coming in and bidding a low amount at sheriff's sales instead of bidding the total amount due on the mortgage. The hope is that someone will come along and redeem the amount before it goes on a market full of foreclosed/vacant properties. I don't know if it's common, however, to bid such an odd amount to the penny in such cases.

I'm also wondering if he bought the place from the sheriff's sale (since it was so cheap) and things just aren't showing up on public record. Or did he lose a property that belonged to him or to a business/organization he was affiliated with? Because if it's the latter, he has stayed beyond the redemption period. By state law, a renter has 60 days after the redemption period where they can stay in the house. So if it was foreclosed on, as of April 21, 2009, nobody can legally occupy the property without the permission of the mortgage company AND a rental license from the city.

It's also important to note how many of the green initiatives he wants money for are ALREADY happening. At best, he appears to be reinventing the wheel without doing his homework; flopping around like a fish out of water who's in over his head. (Sorry, when I mix one metaphors and colloquialisms, I just get carried away.) At worst...well I'll let others speculate on that.

Jeff Skrenes said...

Now I'm looking at his book, which was published in 2008 and lists an address of 1901 Glenwood. Presumably this means that he did not redeem it from foreclosure as I previously stated was a possibility.

Johnny Northside said...

Wait, mortgage geek, explain how you get from the publication date of the book to a tentative conclusion he did NOT redeem it from foreclosure?

Jeff Skrenes said...

Keyword: Presumably.

According to your information, the redemption period for the foreclosure expired in February of 2009. This means that the sheriff's sale occurred roughly in August of 2008. The book was published with him as an author and listed the foreclosed address in question.

It is entirely possible that he was somehow linked to the property before the foreclosure and then was the one to redeem the property from the sheriff's sale. But such a scenario is exceedingly rare, and it's far more likely that he lived in and owned the place that is now in the last days (literally) of the foreclosure process.

Elementary, my dear Watson.