Minneapolis Needs a Second DFL Party

As elections get ever closer, the level of vitriol keeps escalating.  The crisis du jour happens to be a set of mailings that have gone out from Minneapolis Works! that have been in support of some of the less liberal candidates for city council.  The hints of big, downtown money swaying the election has even brought out the most dreaded word imaginable in Minneapolis elections.

Republicans.

Now realistically we don't have Republicans as a political force in Minneapolis.  Sure, we had one run for mayor in 2013, but to borrow from the legend of Keyser Soze, and like that he was gone.  Underground.  Nobody has seen him since.  He becomes a myth, a spook story that DFLers tell their kids at night.  Run against a more liberal candidate, and the Republicans will get you.  And no one ever really believes.

So this mailer comes out, and to be honest, the real story ought to be that these really rich political action groups had to crib campaign photos without permission and used poorly cropped Getty image photoshops.  With that much money, if you want to be progressive with an actual 'p' then hire a northside photographer from a minority-owned business or a local arts group to take actual photos, and then get another such business to design the postcard.  Instead, the uproar is that the less liberal candidates were called "progressive," when the new crop of left-wing candidates thinks that word belongs to them.

And the problem with that is that the DFL in Minneapolis is essentially the only path to political legitimacy (Sorry, Cam Gordon, but until we get more Green Party representation, I stand by the assessment).  So ascendancy within the DFL party, and the DFL endorsement at conventions is not a consensus by Democrats of who represents their values.  It is instead a tool to be used to gain the appearance of credibility.

Contrast that with statewide DFL conventions and endorsements...

The Abolish the MPD Poll is Full of Terrible Ideas

Post by Jeff Skrenes, photo is from my front porch.

This post has been edited from its initial publication.  A list of candidates who voted "yes," "yes then no" or "did not respond" has been added, those candidates have been added to the "labels" section, and language was adjusted at the hyperlink to better reflect a narrative flow.

Recently a group called Pollen put out a survey and candidate questionnaire for the upcoming Minneapolis municipal elections.  The questions are pretty standard fare, if a bit left-leaning even for Minneapolis, with two notable exceptions.  "Do you believe we could ever have a city without police?" and the follow-up to that, "What would you do, as an elected official, to bring us closer to police abolition?"  What is exceptional, and not in a good way, is that two DFL-endorsed incumbents and two of the leading mayoral candidates answered the first question in a way that at a different time or place would be considered political suicide.

"Yes."  (With a caveat:  Mayoral candidate Jacob Frey initially answered "yes," and has now retracted that.  His answers now state "no," with an explanation that the initial questions differed from those on the submission form.)

The other candidates that answered yes, as of this posting are:  Ray Dehn (mayor), Ginger Jentzen (Ward 3), Phillipe Cunningham (Ward 4), Jeremiah Ellison (Ward 5), Janne Flisrand (Ward 7), Alondra Cano (Ward 9 incumbent), Lisa Bender (Ward 10 incumbent), and Jeremy Schroeder (Ward 11).

Mohamud Noor (Ward 6) answered the follow-up question about what would be done to abolish the police department, but did not answer the initial yes/no question.

There is a guy running for mayor under the political banner "Rainbows Butterflies Unicorns" and EVEN HE said abolishing the police department is unworkable.

Whether this is an indictment of how much work must be done to reform many aspects of our police force, or it's demonstrative of how far to the left at least some are trying to take our city, this question is not normal or healthy.

I suppose reasonable people - or maybe we don't see each other as reasonable right now - may disagree on the value judgment above, but let's not sugarcoat these two questions.  In many a Facebook comment thread I've seen or participated in, defenders of posing such queries state that the vision is merely aspirational, and asks candidates to envision a city where police are not necessary because everything else is so great.

No.  That is not what the questionnaire is getting at.  One of its authors, Ashley Fairbanks, is quoted in the Star Tribune as stating that the police force is so rooted in white supremacy that it is irredeemable.  Whether that's true or not isn't my immediate point, but rather we need to acknowledge that the people behind this question are very much in favor of dissolving the police force.  Not radically reforming it, but "abolition."  The very next question asks for specific actions that would bring us there.  That should make it crystal clear that the questionnaire is not leading candidates or voters to sing John Lennon's "Imagine" while casting ballots in hopes of a world with no religion, wars, or greed.  The survey and its authors unapologetically advocate for the abolition of a police department, and anyone who answered yes is tacitly supporting that view.

There are more than a few other problems here...

The Conscience of a Moderate

Post by Jeff Skrenes, photo is stock photo from my Facebook profile.


Minneapolis politics have taken a sharp turn to the left and I'm not sure I recognize my own city anymore.

I don't make that statement lightly, and I don't base that sentiment solely on the political positions that seem to have the wind in their sails for the time being.  There is an undercurrent to this shift that feels different than other political differences and disagreements I've seen in the past.  And to be honest, it's the shift in tone that concerns me more than a potential shift in policy.  Politics do make leftward and rightward shifts over time, and in the long arc of history I like to think the push and pull of those tides helps us to get it right.

I still consider myself a liberal and a progressive, certainly a Democrat.  On a national scale I probably favor government regulations and spending more than most, but locally I would be to the right of many of my compatriots in that regard.  Still, this sentiment of a political sea change for the worse does come from an understanding of left-wing activism and tactics.

My first job out of college was working for Minnesota ACORN, the predecessor to Neighborhoods Organizing for Change.  I've been on my share of marches, most recently to protest the Philando Castile verdict.  I've organized a direct action that once got my organization sued - a badge of honor of sorts in that world.  Which is to say I've been in the far-left activist sphere before and I understand its philosophy and methods perhaps more than others who would self-identify as moderates.

I'm not sure exactly when the left-wing meanness started to manifest itself, but I first noticed it during...

"Appointergate" Wakes up NXNS

*post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, stock image from GIFsme.  I was going for a stock photo of "tempest in a teapot," but a shot glass seems a whole lot better.

It's been almost a year since my last blog post, and my writing has been sporadic before that.  I've made several statements that I was returning to regular writing, although this time I can't say if that will be the case.  But I tend to write about things in my neighborhood and city that I want to see changed and that I think may be impacted by writing.  Recent current events have caused me to dust off the blogspot and see what we've got under the hood.

There are two posts in the hopper.  Part One is "What the Hell was the police chief thinking?  No, really, I am honestly baffled because there seems to be no part of 'appointergate' that was handled with any degree of forethought."  Part Two is something of a "I am a political moderate in a city that doesn't seem to have a voice of moderation" manifesto.

Chief Harteau, you're up first...