State of the City and Questionnaire

Questionnaire on leadership, vision and principles for candidates for Minneapolis Mayor and Minneapolis City Council

Extreme poverty is on the rise, along with hunger in America, including right here in Minneapolis. The extremely poor suffer even more, and at the same time, the middle class is shrinking, the wealth and income gap is growing, and a generation of youth is losing hope in its future. The disparity in unemployment rates by race in Minneapolis is astronomical, and the income gap between those living in extreme poverty and those who are doing well has gotten wider in our city as it has nationally. This shows itself in the achievement gap in schools, the foreclosure rate, the rise in homelessness and the difficulty of low income entrepreneurs to find investment capital.

Minneapolis is suffering from a multitude of housing issues. Like the rest of the country and large parts of the world, Minneapolis has had a catastrophic hit to values of housing stock, and yet the banks that hold the mortgages on these homes have been protected from any responsibility. Meanwhile, innocent citizens are not only losing their homes, or losing out to negative equity, but are even being demonized as somehow having caused at least their own part of the crisis. Renters, including those who have lost homes they owned, face an insanely out of balance rental market. Landlords are squeezed, rents are too high and yet vacancies are high as well. When people face homelessness, their condition is increasingly criminalized. On a personal level, the suffering is huge, and there is no clear solution to the problem that is supported by those in power, even at the City level. Given that housing is a major part of not only the city’s revenue base, but of its very viability as a political entity, this is shocking.

Public Safety is important and essential to a livable city. In order for a police force to be effective in this mission, it is necessary for the Police, in their attitudes and actions, to be seen as trusting and supporting the citizenry it serves. It is also important for the citizens to trust and support its police departments, but this trust needs to be earned and deserved. Currently in Minneapolis, for much of the community, the Minneapolis Police, as well as the Park and Transit Police, are perceived, and act, as a part of the problem rather than a part of a solution to safety and livability. The recent dismantling of the Civilian Review Authority, as weak as it was, is a step in the wrong direction. Since 9/11 and the establishment of Homeland Security, the City of Minneapolis has acquired a stockpile of materiel far beyond the need for any civilian purpose. The use of the Police to serve banks in foreclosure and evictions, the stopping of young black, immigrant and native people for no lawful reasons, and the militarization and use of the police against citizens engaged in lawful exercise of free speech creates more distrust and fear in the city. Thus, the citizenry is unwilling to share information with the Police or support policing. The Minneapolis Police Federation is a bad actor in this process, having political influence far in excess of its voting constituency, and serves as a barrier to constructive and creative change. The string of settlements for brutality and other misconduct exacerbate this problem and deplete the city’s financial resources.

Minneapolis has significant fiscal issues. The tax base has shrunk as a result of the mortgage crisis and continuing foreclosures, while legislative activity and the stadium expenditures, along with previously mentioned police misconduct settlements, continue to make the situation worse. Xcel’s and Centerpoint’s franchises with the city of Minneapolis both expire in the coming two years. This gives us a rare opportunity to make changes for the better. It comes at a time when everyone is rightly concerned about scarcity and the cost of energy, the damage to the environment of ever more desperate measures to mine coal and extract oil and gas and the pollution and carbon footprint of producing energy.

There is hunger in Minneapolis, hunger caused by extreme poverty, and hunger caused by lack of access to good nutritious food. There are still some neighborhoods that are virtual food deserts. Some small change in farmers’ markets and urban gardening and farming are happening, but we need to do more, and faster. These are just the high points of the challenges and opportunities facing Minneapolis in the coming few years. One thing we don’t need, in fact, one thing we refuse to accept, is business as usual. This city needs leadership. It needs leaders with principles and heart, courage and vision. The following questions are your chance to demonstrate yours.  


The questions will be scored according to a scale devised by the Steering Committee of the Minneapolis Farmer-Labor Association. Although space may not permit the entire answer to be published for all questions, they may be published in part. You may decline to answer a question if you wish. You may refer to your past actions to demonstrate your points. Your entire answer to question 15 will be published in the Southside Pride as part of a Voters’ Guide if you are able to limit that answer to between 25 and 50 words. (Blog editor's note: this proved to be unfeasible in terms of the economics of publishing the free newspaper. We hope to make up for this lack by publishing the entire responses here.)

1. What are your thoughts on the current and escalating levels of criminalization of homelessness? What if anything would you do to reverse this trend and to provide real meaningful aid to people suffering from homelessness?

2. Would you put items on the city’s legislative agenda to work for :
a. increasing the amount of the MFIP (welfare) grant,  
b. working towards a Guaranteed Annual Income at either Federal or State level
c. support for universal single payer health care?

3. What measures do you think the city of Minneapolis can and should take to combat the foreclosure crisis and the resulting losses to residents of their homes and property? Would you consider exploring the use of eminent domain to acquire homes and then use an affordable scheme to return title back to foreclosed homeowners? And/or to provide foreclosed, abandoned or otherwise unused homes as affordable rental housing?

4. Would you support and work for honoring the Charter provisions to have the required referendum before expending any city money on the new sports stadium?

5. Will you seek an endorsement from the Minneapolis Federation of Police? If not, would you accept the endorsement if they offered it?

6. What is your position on the use of City police resources and other resources to aid banks in the eviction of residents from their homes, resulting directly or indirectly from foreclosures?

7. Do you support the program and efforts of Minneapolis Energy Options to place a question on the ballot about exploring options for municipalizing the energy utilities? Will you campaign for a Yes vote when the ballot question comes up?

8. What is your position on requesting a Federal investigation of Minneapolis Police Dept. for its history of racism and acts of brutality against citizens?

9. Can you envision any events which would warrant the use of the heavy military-style arms and equipment the Minneapolis Police Dept. has acquired since the advent of Homeland Security? If not, what steps would you take to reduce the militarization of the police department and return it to a civilian mode of operations?

10. Do you support the resolution introduced by the Committee for Professional Policing to pass laws requiring Minneapolis Police officers to carry their own liability insurance against damages for any acts of unnecessary force or biased law enforcement that they might commit?

11. Are their any circumstances in which you would support making any city or park owned property available for private development?

12. Are you In favor of enacting ordinances to encourage urban food gardening and urban farming, including
    a. use of vacant lots and other land use
    b. use of city water and provision of hydrant
    c. allowing urban farms to raise chickens
    d. easing rules for marketing produce of urban farms and gardens?
Please include your position on each item plus any additional ideas of your own.

13. What ideas do you favor and would you pursue in office to improve livability for homeowners, renters and the currently homeless in Minneapolis? Please comment on your position on such alternatives as
   a. co-housing or intentional communities
   b. housing cooperatives
   c. easing laws to allow more SRO (single room occupancy) living spaces for the very low-      income at risk of homelessness
   d. easing current laws about use of space for homeless shelters e. means for deploying empty houses as either “low-cost homesteads”, affordable rental homes or public-support shelters

14. For this question, you may indicate any ideas of your own to solve any of the problems enumerated in the introduction, or problems that we have not highlighted here but that you think are vital to the health and livability of our city.

15. Please tell us your vision for Minneapolis and how you would provide leadership toward reaching that vision as a reality.