I have worked within my community over the last 35 years. Some of the accomplishments I have had include helping to open the Pierre Bottineau library on Broadway. As part of this I helped create a teen zone for kids in our neighborhood to have access to a computer and the internet. I took initiative to get the EPA here to test the land at BF Nelson park to let us know what needed to be done to make the space into a park. I helped preserve the Ritz Theater in the ward’s arts district to preserve the arts in our ward.

Public Safety

How will you keep young Black and brown kids safe — those who are simultaneously the most at risk from gun violence but also most at risk during interactions with the police? What do you believe are best practices for solving these issues in tandem, and how will you involve the communities most affected in problem solving and determining next steps?

Let’s help by investing in more community drop-in centers, after-school programs, and mentors for our young people. It is vitally important that we invest in our kids’ futures to ensure we are giving them an opportunity to succeed. I am encouraged by what I have seen of the Newark, NJ police reforms. After implementing its reforms, the Newark Police Department fired not a single shot in 2020. I will work with my fellow City Council members, the mayor, and Chief Arradondo to implement similar reforms here in Minneapolis. No one should ever suffer at the hands of the police

People of color in Minneapolis are killed or otherwise harmed by law enforcement at disproportionately high rates, despite many attempts at reform over several election cycles. How do you intend to reshape a policing system that has been resistant to change, and slow to show meaningful strides toward equitable community outcomes?

I will work to build a relationship with Chief Arradondo as well as the community to ensure the police have ongoing training in implicit bias, de-escalation, and use of force policy. I will use my position to bring everyone to the table to work through the gridlock to create meaningful changes that ensure people of color are being treated equally by our police.

What are your stances on memorializing public spaces when our community is grieving, and/or demanding action through constitutionally-protected protests? What policies would you put in place or what organizations would you engage to ensure residents can do these things safely?

I will work with the community to ensure there is a space for the community to grieve and demand action that centers around the needs and desires of the affected community.

Housing

Rental assistance from the federal government has helped keep people in their homes through the pandemic. This funding is not permanent, however, and inability to pay is the leading cause of evictions. What is your stance on more permanent rental assistance, rent stabilization, and/or rent control measures in Minneapolis?

I want to look at the ways Minneapolis, Hennepin County and the State and Federal government can increase the availability of affordable housing, including utilizing existing infrastructure to create deeply affordable housing throughout the city. More research needs to be done to understand whether Minneapolis can institute rent stabilization without affecting the long term availability of affordable housing.

Gentrification results in cultural loss for communities and major economic impacts for those priced out of their longtime neighborhoods. As our city grows, what plans do you have to combat gentrification and increase the amount of affordable housing available in Minneapolis?

I will work with all levels of government to ensure Minneapolis is investing in affordable housing throughout our city. I will also work to ensure first generation home buyers are given assistance to buy their homes and create generational wealth in an inclusive way. There is money available from the Federal government to ensure this happens

In the last few years, Minneapolis has experienced a spike in encampments of unhoused people on public land — a high percentage of whom are Black and/or Indigenous. Many of our unhoused neighbors see this as their best housing option over shelters (for reasons of personal safety, pet ownership, or having to abandon property). What will you do to protect these neighbors and connect them with safe and stable housing?

I will work to expand on the work of places like Avivo village that provides a secure, private place for our unhoused brothers and sisters, and make sure families can stay together. I will also work to ensure the unhoused have access to services to address issues of addiction, as well as mental health.

Jobs and Economy

Black, Indigenous, and Minneapolis residents of color pay local taxes and contribute to our local economy, but often do not receive the same shared economic benefits as their white counterparts. Through generations of oppression via policy and unequal systems, wealth has been chronically and systematically extracted from BIPOC communities—how do you envision addressing this legacy of economic harm, in both the short term and the long term?

I think the city can and should make an intentional effort to invest in and develop communities of color the way we have in the rest of the city. We must work to ensure people of color have the same opportunity to own a business as anyone else.

The power dynamics of work are heavily tilted against low-wage workers, especially immigrant workers. What actions have you taken or what plans do you have to protect and support these workers?

I have been fortunate enough to be a member of a great union throughout my 35 year career as a city employee. I will work to ensure all workers have the same opportunity to have a good paying, union job with access to benefits like health care and paid time off.

Racial Justice

Explain your understanding of systemic racism, and how—or whether—you believe it affects Minneapolis’s education systems & outcomes, our housing market, our environment, public safety, healthcare, or other major systems.

There have been policies at all levels of government to exclude people of color from having equal access to a quality education and access to good paying jobs. I will work to create policy to address this wherever there is an opportunity.

Our community suffers from some of the greatest racial disparities in the country across many social, educational, and economic metrics—and has for some time. If you’re in government now, what have you done to address this, and do you feel your efforts have been enough despite the lack of change? And if you’re seeking office for the first time, what ideas are you going to put forward that haven’t already failed?

I will use my position on the City Council to make sure we are being intentional about what communities we are investing in, and make sure that the community has a seat at the table to make the investment community focused.

Climate

Climate change is already upon us, and its causes are on such a large scale that we can’t expect everyday Minneapolitans to recycle or LED bulb our way to a solution. How would you encourage businesses in our city to adopt practices to mitigate climate change, and/or hold them accountable for practices that worsen it?

I will work with all levels of government to make sure we are providing incentives to go green. We should be working with businesses to make new developments environmentally conscious. I will also work to ensure the city is leading by example and invests in renewable energy at all city facilities

Voters’ Rights

What have you done or what will you do to protect and expand voter access in your ward/Minneapolis?

I will work to ensure that we continue to make voting as accessible as possible through early vote and vote by mail.

Governance

Who are the people and/or organizations that would be part of your decision-making process in office?

I will work tirelessly to make sure I am a voice for my constituents. I will make sure I am accessible to anyone in my ward whether they agree with me on a particular issue or not.

Last Word

What’s one thing you think Minneapolis does well that you’d like to build upon if elected?

I think Minneapolis has done a great job creating green space throughout the city, and I want to continue to ensure everyone has easy access to parks in their community with recreational opportunities available to everyone.

One of the experiences that really shaped my politics was being a worker and a member of a union that went on strike when our employer tried to take away our union contract. Voting to put your livelihood on the line to support your colleagues is an act of love, of courage, of solidarity. I remember what it felt like to have community members from the neighborhood around my workplace, and to have elected officials join us on our picket line, and I make a habit of returning the favor whenever the opportunity arises. Whenever workers are organizing together, I have consistently added my voice to their chants, and walked the picket line. As a Council Member, my opportunities to play a supporting role have increased; I dropped by a janitorial workers’ late-night bargaining session to offer some encouragement on a tough night, and I backed out of a ceremonial role handing out medals at the X Games when I heard IATSE workers were picketing the event. Most people never see this kind of solidarity action, but it’s deeply meaningful to me to get to use my voice, and to use whatever platform I have to support workers in Minneapolis.

Public Safety

How will you keep young Black and brown kids safe — those who are simultaneously the most at risk from gun violence but also most at risk during interactions with the police? What do you believe are best practices for solving these issues in tandem, and how will you involve the communities most affected in problem solving and determining next steps?

Every single person in our city deserves to feel safe, and deserves to feel comfortable calling the city for help. MPD’s pattern of racially unjust outcomes and avoidable escalations to use of force and arrest has left many in our community feeling threatened by the city, rather than protected. I’ve led and will continue to lead the creation of non-police responses to 911 calls where we can safely respond with care rather than armed law enforcement, and I’ve fought to fund the Office of Violence Prevention, which invests in community partnerships in the most impacted communities to make culturally specific interventions to disrupt violence before it happens and help people make safer choices. Additionally, I’ve supported and believe we must further increase funding for youth programming and education opportunities to create more positive outlets for Minneapolis kids. These investments, along with a reformed, smaller, and more focused armed law enforcement that can respond effectively to incidents where people are at risk of real harm from violence, add up to a system of public safety I believe can earn the public’s trust and help everyone feel protected and valued.

People of color in Minneapolis are killed or otherwise harmed by law enforcement at disproportionately high rates, despite many attempts at reform over several election cycles. How do you intend to reshape a policing system that has been resistant to change, and slow to show meaningful strides toward equitable community outcomes?

I envision a public safety future in which MInneapolis responds to each crisis with compassion and care, sending the right trained people and resources to the right call to produce the best possible outcome for each call. That means expanding our capacity as a city to meet social crises with social workers, mental and behavioral health crises with trained mental health professionals, community crisis with community organizations, and reserve armed law enforcement for the situations where active violence creates a legitimate need for the authorized use of force and threat of arrest. We must work towards a future in which Minneapolis has the capacity and skill to proactively intervene where people are likely to commit and/or be victimized by violence and harm, not to punish, but to prevent the harm from happening in the first place. Minneapolis should have a much smaller, more focused law enforcement capacity that is dispatched only to emergencies that require the authorization of force. Our current, entrenched system will continue to resist meaningful reforms until we show – at the ballot box and in our budget – that the public has the political will to transform our approach to public safety.

What are your stances on memorializing public spaces when our community is grieving, and/or demanding action through constitutionally-protected protests? What policies would you put in place or what organizations would you engage to ensure residents can do these things safely?

Minneapolis used to have a reputation nationally as a city that responded to protests with (relative) restraint and care. That approach was cheaper, safer, and more effective at bringing protests to safe conclusions. The escalatory tactics of the last year have been counterproductive, and the “less-lethal” crowd control tools and mass arrests caused real harm. This is a key area of policy I believe the Council should take up if voters approve the Public Safety Charter amendment. It’s also an area where community has a lot of the answers, and people have stepped up to create safety for demonstrators. As a city, we should learn from those experiences, formalize the informal protest safety tactics that are working, and make sure we have appropriate capacity to facilitate safe expression of grief and outrage. Escalatory crowd control tactics and the constant threat of eviction where community members memorialized public space created avoidable tension and prolonged occupation and conflict. We can do a lot better as a city to listen, to improve transparency and accountability, and to earn trust. We also need to continue our focus on preventing the incidents of police violence that are necessitating these protests in the first place.

Housing

Rental assistance from the federal government has helped keep people in their homes through the pandemic. This funding is not permanent, however, and inability to pay is the leading cause of evictions. What is your stance on more permanent rental assistance, rent stabilization, and/or rent control measures in Minneapolis?

I support rent stabilization, just cause eviction protection, notice of eviction, and a right to counsel in housing court. Every Minneapolis resident should have the security of knowing their housing and housing cost won’t unexpectedly change in a way that disrupts their lives. The thing that’s harder to protect people from at the scale of our city budget is loss of income. We passed a notice of eviction that gives tenants time to apply for County rental assistance programs, to help people access County dollars. We’ve also funded a limited rental assistance pilot in partnership with the Minneapolis Public Schools called “Stable Homes, Stable Schools” which seems like a promising way to stretch limited city resources to help youth and their families achieve greater housing stability. I support continued investment and experimentation in rental assistance, even as we continue to focus the bulk of the city’s housing budget, appropriately, on building and preserving as many affordable housing units as possible.

Gentrification results in cultural loss for communities and major economic impacts for those priced out of their longtime neighborhoods. As our city grows, what plans do you have to combat gentrification and increase the amount of affordable housing available in Minneapolis?

The best ways to protect against displacement are to stabilize tenant rights to prevent displacement by eviction, to lock in affordable rental housing to ensure that the economic diversity of a neighborhood is sustained, and to create home ownership opportunities for BIPOC residents to ensure that people from the neighborhood are sharing in whatever economic growth a neighborhood might experience. I was proud to support inclusionary zoning, as one mechanism for maintaining economic diversity even within new buildings, and I’m an author on Tenant Opportunity to Purchase, which I believe will further prevent displacement. We’re applying an equity lens to infrastructure investments, to make sure all residents have high quality public resources in their neighborhood. Stabilizing housing is key to making sure the current residents are able to stay and enjoy transit investments, green space, and more.

In the last few years, Minneapolis has experienced a spike in encampments of unhoused people on public land — a high percentage of whom are Black and/or Indigenous. Many of our unhoused neighbors see this as their best housing option over shelters (for reasons of personal safety, pet ownership, or having to abandon property). What will you do to protect these neighbors and connect them with safe and stable housing?

I am a believer in a housing first model generally, and the first and most obvious answer is to build more affordable housing – public housing, private housing, any kind of housing we can credibly make happen. If we’re going to be serious about preventing large encampments in the future, and as a matter of housing policy and public health policy we should be, we absolutely have to have meaningful options we can point to as alternatives. Our existing shelter options simply are not meeting our community’s needs, and we need more housing options. I also know there are people who will be challenged to succeed in housing without social and emotional support structures to go with it. Working in partnership with community organizations, the County and the State, we are developing a much broader range of options to meet the huge array of needs represented in the encampments of the last couple years, from hotel rooms we’re repurposing as transitional housing, to culturally specific shelters, to the innovative low-barrier tiny homes village.

Jobs and Economy

Black, Indigenous, and Minneapolis residents of color pay local taxes and contribute to our local economy, but often do not receive the same shared economic benefits as their white counterparts. Through generations of oppression via policy and unequal systems, wealth has been chronically and systematically extracted from BIPOC communities—how do you envision addressing this legacy of economic harm, in both the short term and the long term?

We’re working to improve economic opportunity for BIPOC residents in a variety of ways. We’re starting with our own procurement practices, working to create rules and processes that favor small, local businesses and require equity commitments from contractors for city work. We’re investing in jobs training programs in industries that have abundant opportunities, including green technology and construction. I’ve authored new labor protections including wage theft protection and a right to recall for workers laid off during the pandemic, all of which disproportionately impact BIPOC workers who are most likely to be impacted. We’ve also increased investment in small business supports, offering technical support, grants, and low-interest loans to people who might not otherwise be able to start a business. We envision a future where BIPOC residents are respected, protected, and able to own a piece of the Minneapolis economy.

The power dynamics of work are heavily tilted against low-wage workers, especially immigrant workers. What actions have you taken or what plans do you have to protect and support these workers?

I have a background in labor activism and that work is one of the main experiences that shaped my approach to politics. I co-authored, and the city council passed a Wage Theft Prevention ordinance that has helped low-wage workers recover money they were owed.. I was the lead author on the ordinance to extend wage theft protections to Freelance Workers, making Minneapolis just the third city in the country to do so. I authored Right to Recall, which ensured hospitality industry workers could return to their jobs when they re-opened post-COVID, and I facilitated the formation of the Downtown Workers’ Council, to make sure workers had a voice in our plans to reopen for business downtown. I believe we have opportunities to increase enforcement capacity in our Civil Rights Department, as well as through collaborative enforcement work that enlists partner organizations to do proactive outreach to workers on job sites. I’ll continue to advocate for fair and dignified treatment for everyone working in Minneapolis.

Racial Justice

Explain your understanding of systemic racism, and how—or whether—you believe it affects Minneapolis’s education systems & outcomes, our housing market, our environment, public safety, healthcare, or other major systems.

Systemic racism describes the ways that our institutions and social structures reflect, inflict, and amplify white supremacy. Our systems, including our city government are defined by past and present racial injustice in a way that requires no active or interpersonal bias to produce unequal outcomes. It impacts every facet of our society, and often frustrates attempts to achieve equity in one area. For example, educational achievement is strongly correlated with housing stability, which is disproportionately attained by white families for a variety of reasons, including that many white families received subsidies to become homeowners at a time when many BIPOC families were excluded from homeownership altogether. The complex web of privilege and disadvantage experienced by Minneapolis residents across most aspects of our lives presents the policy challenge of our generation, and requires constant focus across all areas of policy.

Our community suffers from some of the greatest racial disparities in the country across many social, educational, and economic metrics—and has for some time. If you’re in government now, what have you done to address this, and do you feel your efforts have been enough despite the lack of change? And if you’re seeking office for the first time, what ideas are you going to put forward that haven’t already failed?

We declared racism a public health emergency this term, and have enacted significant policies aimed at eliminating racial disparities. We’ve implemented (and continually work to improve the use of) race equity impact statements for every police we debate, to make sure racial impact is at the forefront of policy debate. We’ve passed the Renter First framework for housing inspections, and passed renter protections to limit the use of credit scores and criminal background for screening tenants. We banned facial recognition software that often misidentifies darker-skinned faces, and we worked to close gaps in our “Sanctuary City” status to limit residents’ exposure to harmful immigration policies. Is it enough? No. We’re still producing racially disparate outcomes in a variety of areas, from homeownership to education, police use of force to procurement contracts. Racism is, in fact, a public health emergency, and needs to continue to be front and center in the next Council as we continue to implement new policy, measure its impact, and improve. We are making progress, and we need to do more.

Climate

Climate change is already upon us, and its causes are on such a large scale that we can’t expect everyday Minneapolitans to recycle or LED bulb our way to a solution. How would you encourage businesses in our city to adopt practices to mitigate climate change, and/or hold them accountable for practices that worsen it?

The areas where we can make the most improvement are reducing vehicle miles travelled, improving energy efficiency, and increasing local renewable energy production. Our Green Cost Share program is successfully incentivizing businesses to add solar to their commercial buildings, and is something we should expand. By adding density and creating walkable neighborhoods, we’ve successfully reduced vehicle miles travelled even as we’ve grown in population, and we’ve passed policies to disincentivize or even prevent the construction of new parking to induce additional car travel. I supported the adherence to city policy, for example, when we blocked the Federal Reserve’s proposed parking ramp, which would have been an inappropriate use of riverfront land and induced car travel at one of the most transit-dense worksites in the city. I’ll continue to support policy that encourages transit, discourages investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, and incentivizes energy-efficiency. I’ll also continue to advocate at the state for the right to require a higher level of energy-efficiency in new buildings.

Voters’ Rights

What have you done or what will you do to protect and expand voter access in your ward/Minneapolis?

As a Council Member,I supported increased funding for our city election services to expand mail balloting and increase the number of polling places, including splitting the Dinkytown precinct, which was consistently overwhelmed with high student turnout, into two precincts to reduce wait times. Prior to joining the Council, I did extensive work as a community organizer to register voters and advocate for voting rights, including a leadership role in the successful campaign to stop Voter ID requirements when that was on the ballot in 2012.

Governance

Who are the people and/or organizations that would be part of your decision-making process in office?

First and foremost, it is my job and my honor to represent the residents of Ward 3, and I work especially proactively to be in relationship to Ward 3 residents who have not been historically privileged with access to government. In this role, I also really appreciate the work of neighborhood and community organizations that organize Ward 3 constituents around issues. I have a background in coalitional community organizing with groups like TakeAction, OutFront, CTUL, ISAIAH and more, and I really appreciate opportunities to collaborate with community groups to turn issue-driven organizing into policy.I’ve had some really successful examples of that kind of collaboration this term, like partnering with the ACLU and eventually the POST-ME coalition on the facial recognition ban, or working with MSA to get student housing added to inclusionary zoning, and partnering with UNITE-HERE and other unions to pass Right to Recall. I valued those collaborations not only because they resulted in good policy, but also because they centered the people impacted by the policy, and engaged a broad range of Ward 3 constituents in leadership roles that shaped the final outcome.

Last Word

What’s one thing you think Minneapolis does well that you’d like to build upon if elected?

Minneapolis has so much going for it that it’s hard to pick one thing. We’re a city of talented, passionate people making great things happen in a beautiful natural environment. Whatever challenges we may face, we’re very lucky. For my one thing, I’ll focus on green space. Ward 3 is the central riverfront, and we have a gorgeous abundance of public green space for recreation, exercise and relaxation. We can continue to build on that strength, to expand our green space to make sure everyone lives close to a park, and to use our green space better to grow pollenators, to capture stormwater, to expand our tree canopy. We should continue to lean into this strength and celebrate our city’s natural beauty in a way that benefits every resident’s health and wellness.