It has been clear all along that this was the endgame. This was never about a disagreement about the language of the ballot question. It's an attempt to nullify the thousands of signatures from Minneapolis residents - myself included - who want to vote on this charter amendment.
This was always the intent: to prevent the people of Minneapolis from exercising our legal right to change our own Charter. Democracy be damned, equal process be damned - anything and everything to protect the status quo that murdered George Floyd.
It's amazing to see the interlocking pieces of the system all activating to protect itself from us, the people. The Charter Commission, the mayor, his PAC and big donors, the Samuels, Operation Safety Now, and now the courts. All going to the mat to defend this broken system.
If the Supreme Court does not strike down this absolute travesty of a decision, it will be very clear: the right of the people to change their Charter, by petition, is a dead letter. The precedent will be set that the powerful can keep the people from exercising this right.
The Charter Commission can put forward its anti-democratic nonsense. The Council can put forward questions (as long as they can overcome conservative mayoral vetoes). But the people? Sorry, folks.
This is now about more than just this amendment. This precedent must not stand.
Our democracy rests on the consent of the governed. We saw last year what it looks like when the government loses that consent: it looks like neighborhoods on fire.
Telling people that they can't access the ballot says that the street is the only option. That's what's at stake.
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I listened to this press conference, and heard a lot of calls from the mayor and his allies for "unity." It rings *very* hollow to call for unity at a presser you didn't invite people to attend, or even tell them about.
I can confirm: no one who was part of planning this presser/campaign stunt invited Cam, or let us know it was happening.
But to not include or even inform the two Black Council Members who represent the area where the presser was held? Yikes.
They did manage to invite and give time to one of the people actively suing the City right now, to try to use the minimum staffing provision in the Charter (led by the police union in the '60s) to force the City to hire more police. Wonder if they ran that by the City Attorney?
We’ve got a real “tale of two cities” situation with Brooklyn Center and Mpls. Both cities’ police departments wrongfully killed a Black man, both faced widespread protest that got national attention. Where Mpls has struggled, BC has made significant strides. Why?
The best way to understand the disparity is as a reflection of the two mayors’ very different responses.
In Brooklyn Center, Mike Elliott has led the fight, alongside his colleagues on the Council, to make transformative change, and to do it quickly.
In Mpls, the progressive Council majority’s work to make the SAME EXACT kinds of transformative change have been fought and hampered by the mayor, in ways subtle and overt. He has aligned himself with reactionaries like Operation Safety Now, against these kinds of changes.
This thread is a subtweet to a City Council Member from another city and a former candidate for Mpls City Council. It’s about the difference between healthy skepticism and unhealthy cynicism. 1/11
I think there’s a spectrum of trust for elected leaders. Like many spectra, when you get to one extreme or the other, it starts getting more toxic and destructive, and the extremes kind of reinforce each other. 2/11
On the one extreme, I don’t think hero worship is a healthy attitude towards elected leaders: they’re the best people, they’re going to make the best decisions, they have better judgment than the rest of us, we just need to back them up, no matter what. 3/11
I want to talk about the last time the police came to my house, because I think it can help illuminate what dismantling the police and replacing them with a more constructive way of providing public safety means, at least to me. 1/21
In April, my friend Jesse was leaving my house after a game of tennis. At this moment, a guy neither of us knew started coming into my house. He seemed quite out of it. 2/21
We stopped him from coming inside, and got him to sit on my front steps instead. I got him a glass of water, and then another. I’ll call him “L.” We asked him where he was staying, who we could call for him, what his last name was. He couldn’t tell us. 3/21
Taking the menthol restriction ordinance as just one example, there was a large coalition that came together to pressure the Council to take this action. Formal support (and opposition, because showing one's work is important) is here: lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/File/….
My problems with the Strib are usually with their center-right editorial stances. Most of the hard news reporting over the years has been pretty good. This story, not so much.
How is it appropriate to erase the people who demanded that the City take these actions?