“The Minnesota State Fair profits millions of dollars every year, and every year continues to deny black and other minority business owners the opportunity of being a vendor at the fair,” Black Lives Matter said in a statement released on Thursday. “Both the Minnesota State Fair and St. Paul Police Department are driven by money over people and white supremacy, which made it easy to choose the location for #BlackFair.”
Protest organizer Rashad Turner told Pioneer Press the State Fair has a history of denying people of color the opportunity to be vendors.
“When I look around the Fair, I don’t see an equitable amount of businesses owned by people of color,” Turner said. “Yet, if you look at what people call the ‘help,’ you see plenty of people of color picking up trash and taking tickets, etc., but very few black-owned businesses as vendors.”
“The first Saturday of the Fair is one of their money-making days. We just hope to slow that down and continue to bring attention to the injustices that plague our community,” he said.
State Fair general manager Jerry Hammer said the selection process is not based on ethnicity.
“The truth is, there’s all kinds of exhibitors of every ethnicity involved at the State Fair. Everybody’s there,” Hammer said.
“I guarantee them that if they wanted exhibit space at the Fair, they could have it. We would find them space, which would be a far more effective way of communicating — they’d reach a much wider audience that way. We are a forum for ideas; that’s what the Fair is about.”
all lives matter!!!
BLM sounds like a terrorist group to me!
Get a life,and a job!! NOBODY Is Listening to such ridiculous c**p!! And c**p is exactly what it is.. I hope the WONDERFUL, AMAZING POLICE arrest. Each and every one of you.. and I urge the public to help them!!!
ALL LIVES MATTER!!!!
They did not protest when a little black girl was shot dead in her family’s home when she was doing homework by a stray bullit from a drive by shooting. They protested because a thug was shot instead. If black lives matter, then they missed their calling on this one.
IT is not the white mans fault that their aren’t more black owned business we choose to go to school and get a degree instead of robbing 7 elevens and carjacking people and selling dope on the street corner and then blaming everyone else for their shortcomings if u want more black run business stop modeling your lives after grand theft auto or saints row and start doing more positive and productive things with your lives like actually going to school or finishing school and getting a degree just a thought!!!
Black lives matter show us that they love been racist. You need God he does not care what color you are,God created you.