Our Black News: Who Gets to Define Black Political Power?

Four Minnesota voices take on party loyalty, Lisa Demuth, public fraud, community leadership—and whether Black political power can be built without stronger institutions of its own.

An hour with Our Black News does not always travel in a straight line.

This episode opens with Dr. Don Allen joking about running the production from his basement and selecting the program’s “party music.” Within minutes, the conversation has moved through Jake Lang’s latest Minneapolis appearance, the Timberwolves ownership deal and Minnesota’s handling of public money. Then the panel arrives at the question that occupies most of the hour: What would it mean for Black Minnesotans to exercise political power without automatically following either major party?

Allen is joined by Rev. Tim Christopher, Anthony Walsh and Jay Reeves, an independent candidate for Minnesota state auditor. Their conversation is loose, blunt and occasionally contentious. People interrupt. Subjects overlap. A joke can become a political argument before everyone realizes the turn has been made.

That informality works in the program’s favor. This is not four people reading prepared answers at a candidate forum. They are testing one another’s assumptions in real time.

House Speaker Lisa Demuth’s campaign for governor becomes the biggest test. Several participants object to the idea that Demuth’s Republican affiliation makes her somehow less authentically Black. They argue that Black voters should be willing to consider candidates outside the DFL and judge them by competence, values and results.

Christopher agrees that party loyalty should not decide the matter, but he adds a harder requirement. Candidates should show up, listen and explain what they will actually do for the community. “If you don’t put time in the community, I don’t have time for you,” he says.

That challenge keeps the Demuth discussion from becoming a simple argument for changing parties. The panel is really debating what should come first: representation, political independence, a record of community involvement or a specific commitment to deliver results. They do not completely agree, which gives viewers something more interesting than a campaign endorsement disguised as a conversation.

Reeves approaches the same problem through the office he is seeking. He argues that voters should treat elections as job interviews instead of choosing candidates by habit, name recognition or party label. When the discussion turns to fraud and public assistance, Reeves draws on his own experience. He recalls relying on social services when his family needed help and argues that fraud prevention is necessary to keep those services available for legitimate recipients.

His case for an independent state auditor comes down to a memorable line: taxpayer money is “the green”—not red or blue. Reeves wants the office to use data analysis more aggressively, identify suspicious patterns earlier and judge financial conduct without protecting either party.

The conversation grows more personal when Allen and the others discuss Black political infrastructure in Minnesota. They talk about community leadership, voter-education funding, organizations that seem to announce the same initiatives every few years and the difficulty of turning access to politicians into visible improvements for residents.

Then Our Black News itself becomes part of the subject.

Allen talks openly about the program’s operating costs, its struggle to attract financial support and his frustration that thoughtful community discussions often fail to build a large audience. He wonders whether his time might be better spent working directly on education. Walsh pushes back against giving up. His proposal is practical: build the show into a stronger nonprofit news operation, interview people on the street, bring candidates from different parties onto the program and ask what they intend to do.

The exchange gets at something elections alone cannot provide. A community that wants political influence also needs places where its members can argue, gather information, question candidates and decide what they expect from the people asking for their votes.

Viewers will not agree with everything said here. Some claims are sweeping. Some political judgments are delivered with more certainty than evidence. The conversation also wanders, as real conversations do.

But it rarely feels rehearsed. And when the participants challenge one another—especially over the difference between symbolic representation and work that produces results—the program becomes difficult to dismiss.

Watch the full episode below.

Our Black News is part of the Independent Business News Network and supports—and is supported by—the Minneapolis Times.