Minnesota Ethnic Providers Network

Standing Up, Speaking Clearly

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SPEAKER_03:

Welcome to the Ethnic Providers Podcast with Fartune Welly. Empowering diverse communities. Elevating service delivery. Where diversity drives success.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, it's Fortune Welly from this time my title really doesn't matter. I am Somali American. Have been in Minnesota since 2000 March. And I am sending messages to all ethnic provider networks, business owners, fellow Minnesotans, state legislators, whoever. And I am sending this message to the Minnesota Ethnic Provider Network that we've started two years ago, but just getting off the ground. And I am sending this message to uh about all the fraud messages and news that are coming out in Minnesota. And how wanted to express how that has been really a stressful situation that uh it's causing me a lot of health issues. I am suffering insomnia and I had a heart palpitation lately. Anytime I see fraud in the Somali community in the news, there's a piece of me that goes too numb. And so this message is for everyone. Not every Somali person is a fraudie. Uh not every Somali is there too corrupt. Uh 99% of us are good people, great people. Mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles, grandparents, daughters, son, nephews. Uh we are Uber drivers, we're truck drivers, we're business owners, over 700 small business owners in Minnesota, and great contributors of our state. Uh so I want to make sure that we're not going to be generalizations of victims of being all of us being labeled like as someone who's stealing state money and um dehumanize us.

SPEAKER_02:

You're listening to the Ethnic Provider Network Podcast, empowering diverse communities, elevating service delivery.

SPEAKER_00:

Um the other message that I want to send out is majority of um uh my all my friends have been saying, why are you guys quiet? Uh silence equals guiltliness. And I'm like, no, it's not. Um majority of us don't know what to do. Don't know how to address this. It's it's beyond the smaller things that we've ever dealt with. And so now we're speaking up. Uh I'm starting it. So many of us we've met, uh, have been meeting the last three months to say how do we address these issues, what kind of uh activities we need to do as a community to uh prevent our families or our community members falling into victims for this fraud. Uh we know when people come from scarcity or they're in poverty or they're looking for a quick way out of poverty, they will find loopholes and take advantage of. How do we move away from the crisis, the despair that many of our families are in? And also, how do we address these seasonal hustlers who are organizing and putting people into a difficult space? And so we have work to do as a community. As many, many communities before us have done, frauds are happening from left to right. That's the state's work, that's attorney general's work, that's everybody who wants to protect the state. But what my message today is we're not the enemy, not majority of us, are fraudies. Uh, we don't want our nonprofits to suffer. We don't want our businesses to suffer because that would not be a fair. And also I call out anyone who wants to sit down and say what are the preventive measures that we can do to prevent uh more fraud happening in the community, other communities as well. Um, I'm here to both listen, uh prevention, intervention, and also make sure that our businesses don't suffer as well. We do a great job, uh, and we will do a great job with or without the approval of the majority. That's a commitment of ours that we want to support our families out of poverty, out of becoming the victims of these um seasonal hustlers, or we call it people who are making taking advantage of thinking they're gonna get rich quickly when we know we really have to take step by step to develop outward mobility that is sustainable. Again, I want to thank you for all of you who have called, who had asked us to speak up. Uh, it's not easy to speak up on these things. There are no models to follow. Um, and so I want to um send an appreciation and gratitude to all of my friends, um, all of my fans, also the folks who all they want to do is drag us to the month, which they're not going to succeed. So reach out if you want to have a conversation, if you have any ideas of what to do, um, previous stories, all those things. Um, we're willing to listen, to work together and uh both protect our community from the generalization and the dehumanization that right now everywhere um Israel website is getting a lot of dirty uh messages as well. And so we're not gonna tolerate racism, uh, we're not gonna tolerate our families feeling unsafe. Uh, we're not gonna tolerate uh people breaking the law on behalf of our names. That's why we have laws. So let's balance, let's make sure that we prevent what makes people fall into a ditch first and uh collaborate and protect our state and our families. Uh salam alaikum, and you can have us our contact, come say hi and come talk to us. Bye.

SPEAKER_01:

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