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Nearly 40 businesses involved in 3rd annual Twin Cities Toy Drive
So far, more than 6,000 kids have received donated toys collected at businesses metro-wide.
MINNEAPOLIS — His beard’s turning gray; his spirit’s Santa-like, too. Adrian Wilson is founder of Twin Cities Toy Drive, an initiative known for its decorative donation boxes.
“I made this one,” said Wilson, pointing to a cardboard box adorned with streamers that, when moved, reveal a tinselly Santa Claus. “It’s still a work in progress but it’s going to be something beautiful.”
The drive is also known for the fact that all toys dropped into each box will go to BIPOC kids. So far, the toy drive has supported more than 6,000 kids.
“Why not BIPOC kids? The reason why I wanted to do this for the BIPOC kids is because I am a BIPOC person,” Wilson said. “Most importantly, I want to show our people in my skin complexion, or whoever the case may be, just to say like we are taking care of our communities. We’re taking care of you. You’re not forgotten.”
“And my son is BIPOC and I just want to show my little boy that, hey look, we can do a lot of cool things for our community. It doesn’t have to massive. Even though the toy drive really got big.”
Now in its third year, dozens of businesses are committing to host a box on site.
“The first year … I pitched it to like 5 businesses and then that 5 became 15, and then 20, and it was just me and my wife and like 2 other people,” Wilson said. “Right now, we are at 38 businesses at the official launch, and I’m pretty sure when it picks up traction we’re going to probably bring in another 10 so I’m gearing up for that right now and having some extra boxes.”
Those confirmed include big brands like the new Wilson sports gear store at Mall of America.
“I remember as a kid, because my last name is Wilson, I always said like ‘That’s my company one day,'” Wilson said, “and now to actually work with them?”
Wilson says they’ll do a toy drive event together at Wilson December 16. Hotel Emery will host an event in its Grinch’s Lair sometime in mid December as well.
Until then, a few professional artists are decorating boxes for the various businesses, but businesses like Bi Worldwide are opting to design their own.
“It made me real emotional,” Wilson said. “How happy they were to say like, ‘Look what we did, we really dove into this thing.'”
All boxes will be distributed by the end of November, and all locations will be listed online. Then, just before Christmas, partner organizations will distribute the toys.
“We’re partnered again with the Sanneh Foundation for the second year,” Wilson said. “We’re in the talks with Sanneh Foundation just to kind of, how do we wrap this Toy Drive up, right? Should we do like a big shopathon? So we’re working on that at the moment.”
New this year, Impact100 Twin Cities is also partnering with the Twin Cities Toy Drive.
“Having them [both] apart of it has already catapulted the toy drive for it to be seen at a bigger scale,” Wilson said. “Big partner, small ones, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just like hey we’re doing something together and we’d love for you to join regardless of who you are.”
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Jerry McAfee, founder of 21 Days of Peace, said many of these kids are committing crimes for recreation and don’t understand the consequences of their actions.
MINNEAPOLIS — Community leaders say they were disheartened to see the latest string of youth crime, but they’re not shocked.
“The youth that age and younger have been participating in criminal activity long before you guys just found out,” said KG Wilson, a retired peace activist.
Wilson said the perception of kids committing crimes is hard for people to imagine.
“Nobody wanted to believe that these children this young would be doing this type of criminal activity in the community,” he said. “Instead of them listening to the few of us that we’re trying to tell them about this before it gets worse, it got worse. And then you got the taps on the hands because a lot of these kids have been doing this for years.”
Jerry McAfee has seen the same things. He’s the founder of 21 Days of Peace and works with dozens of kids to keep them on the right path.
“This behavior is not new. What is new is we are yet to be alarmed to the point that the necessary synergy is created to get ahead of that stuff and to try and stop it,” McAfee said.
He believes it’s time for a new approach.
“What we were doing three or four years ago and have been doing the last few years isn’t working. It’s getting worse. So, if it’s getting worse just stop, admit it’s not working, and let’s put something together,” he said.
McAfee said many of these kids are committing crimes for recreation and don’t understand the consequences of their actions.
“That’s the message they got to get. This is not games. This is real-life,” he said. “I don’t think there is many repercussions, and what kids deem now as fun is dangerous.”
Wilson agrees the problem is getting worse each year, and kids and teenagers need to be held accountable.
“There’s going to have to be some consequences to their actions and they’re going to have know, these children are going have to know if you do this, this is what’s going to happen to you,” Wilson said. “If that doesn’t happen, they’re going to say and think in their mind, we can do anything we want and we’re just going to get a pat on the hand.”
He said it’s not all on the parents. He said some of them have tried to get their child help, but nothing seems to work.
“A lot of times these kids have gotten so out of control that some of the parents fear them. The parents fear them,” he said.
Wilson believes people need to become neighbors again and look out for kids on their block.
“We got to start getting back to community meetings,” he said. “It’s about tough love. It’s going to have to be about tough love. You’re going to have to get tough. It’s either you’re going to let them go, let the streets have them, or you’re going to take them back yourself.”
McAfee said it might be time to air public service announcements explaining the consequences of committing crimes.
The boy had been last seen on the 2500 block of 14th Ave S.
MINNEAPOLIS — Police in Minneapolis say a 4-year-old who was reported missing has been found safe.
According to the Minneapolis Police Department, Jacob Gonzalez Orbe had been last seen around 3:40 p.m. Wednesday on the 2500 block of 14th Ave S.
In an update Monday evening, police said he was found and is safe.
This story has been updated from a previous version.
Record warming in the Gulf of Mexico led to rapid intensification that even alarmed experts.
MINNEAPOLIS — The size and scope of Hurricane Milton is now so obvious that it can be seen from space, but the speed that it grew is what has been truly breathtaking.
John Morales, a veteran hurricane specialist for NBC 6 South Florida, verbally gasped and grew emotional while watching the storm rapidly intensify.
“It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours,” Morales said on the station’s live stream. “I apologize. This is just horrific.”
That video has now gone viral not just because of Morales’ emotional reaction, but also because of his frank explanation for it.
“The seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot, record hot, as you might imagine,” Morales said. “You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you. Global warming. Climate change.”
John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences at the University of St Thomas, has been saying the same for years now.
“The warming that we’re seeing is entirely human driven,” said Abraham, who has worked with oceanographers to study and track the explosive warming of the ocean. “Think about the energy of a Hiroshima atomic bomb that ended World War II -six times that – every second for the entire year. That’s how much heat is going into the ocean.”
He says record heat in the Gulf of Mexico is exactly what’s fueling Milton.
“When we think about global warming, it’s really an energy balance problem,” Abraham said. “Ninety percent of the global warming heat ends up in the oceans, and as the ocean waters heat up, that’s what gives fuel to these storms. It increases their size, their wind speed, the rainfall and the storm surge. Parts of Florida are expected to get 18 inches of rain as Milton comes ashore.”
He sais there’s no sign of that trend slowing down. Amid all the warming in the gulf over the past 10 years, this year hit another new high. He said the implications are clear.
“We’re not going to get more storms, but the big storms are going to be bigger,” Abraham said. “We are seeing more of those big, really destructive storms because of climate change. That, along with that rapid intensification, is what scientists are really focused on.”
John Morales shared that exact concern in the wake of Hurricane Helene, he just didn’t expect his warning to be realized so soon.
“Climate change is here,” Abraham said. “We are well past the point of being able to stop climate change. But there is good news actually. We’re not past the point of being able to do something good about it. If we think about climate change, it’s going up like a rocket like this. We want to bring the curve down. We have the power to pick a more sustainable path, we just need the political will to do so.”
