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Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, image from the spot.us website for this story.  Prince, by the way, did NOT graduate from North High.

A correction in progress:  links provided by Don Allen indicate Prince may have attended North High for as long as one year, although Prince graduated elsewhere.  This post has been amended to reflect that, with further verification requested.

The Johnny Northside blog broke the story about Don Allen and his $15,000 contract with the Minneapolis Public Schools more than two weeks before the Star Tribune wrote about the topic.  One of the intrepid reporters for the Twin Cities Daily Planet, Sheila Regan, has taken it upon herself to dig even deeper into the murky world of no-bid contracts at the MPS.  Sheila has been threatened by Don Allen in relation to her investigation and reporting on him and his contract.

Instead of being cowed into submission, Regan redoubled her efforts to get to the bottom of the story, and has filed a request with the MPS for information related to Don Allen's contract.  To be fair, she also requested information in regards to Al Flowers, as Allen has made frequent allegations that Flowers has received funding from MPS as well.  Her account of MPS's response can be found here.  It's telling that she was initially told such a request would cost her thousands of dollars, even though Minnesota statute 13.03 2010 states:

"(a) Upon request to a responsible authority or designee, a person shall be permitted to inspect and copy public government data at reasonable times and places, and, upon request, shall be informed of the data's meaning. If a person requests access for the purpose of inspection, the responsible authority may not assess a charge or require the requesting person to pay a fee to inspect data." (emphasis added)

Through the spot.us site, Regan is requesting funding that will support this story.  Readers can fund through direct contributions or by simply creating an account and taking a survey.  Five minutes of your time can help support local investigative journalism and hold our public school system accountable.

Don Allen, ibnn.org, and the Way Back Machine

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, image is a screen shot from searching ibnn.org posts on the Way Back Machine website, and has been edited only to crop off unrelated images/data.

For people following the Jerry Moore v. John Hoff court case, one of the dramatic twists was that Don Allen was once a co-defendant with Hoff, and then he later settled with Moore and took the stand against his former collaborator.  I was curious about what Don Allen had written on this topic, and I also remember repeated posts on his former blog about calling for various people to either be fired or step down from their positions.  The Way Back Machine isn't comprehensive, so not much from those posts are available.  But on the new site Allen has made similar attempts at various people within the Minneapolis Civil Rights department.

Reconciling these two opposing views (calls for people to be fired vs. celebrating the current Moore/Hoff verdict of interference with a contract; switching positions within the same trial) demonstrates an impressive capacity for doublethink.  How does Don Allen manage this?  The answer may be below, but first, the post written about Jerry Moore...

More on Don Allen

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, screenshot image from an ibnnnews post dated 9/13/10.

As the tempest in a teacup over NoMi blog wars builds up, I felt that my own experience should be part of the discussion.  In the fall of last year, the Irving Inquisition did a series of posts about what he alleged as Don Allen's criminal background.  (Don Allen has disputed much of that content.)  The day after one of those blog entries, which did not involve me in any personal or professional manner, Don Allen made numerous calls to the Hawthorne office and threatened to sue me in relation to one or more posts on that site.  He also threatened to sue Eric Johnson, John Hoff, and Michael "Kip" Browne.

The day after that, I saw the post above on Don Allen's website.  In the opening paragraph, he claims:  "...The Hawthorne Neighborhood Group's housing director who once told a fellow blogger, 'I wouldn't give a house to a Black person if my life depended on it.'"

That statement is of course categorically untrue, and so laughably fabricated that I felt no need to respond at the time.  But as the veracity of some of Mr. Allen's blog posts and comments regarding north Minneapolis bloggers is called into question, this incident has to be added to the mix.

One final note:  Given the propensity lately for identities of well-known NoMi-ites to be "borrowed" for blog comments, I will only publish comments here from people who use verifiable email addresses and/or internet profiles.  If you want to comment anonymously, there are plenty of other sites discussing this topic where that can happen.