Want me to send a hundred bucks to your favorite charity? Read on.
This is about the March 26 meeting of the Minneapolis City Council. You know which one I mean. The one characterized by decorum, civil discourse, the Rules of Queensbury. Oh wait, that was Roller Derby. This one was the same except not as nice.
About 53 minutes of a three-hours-plus meeting was devoted to foreign policy. Seems about right; this Council seems to view itself as heirs to Kissinger or Sadat. In discussing what to do about Cuba, CMs Wonsley and Chugtai justified passing a resolution to normalize relations with this island country by saying they had passed similar measures before. They castigated their critics by saying it was “absurd” that smaller-minded council members did not see the power and influence of the city to adjudicate international affairs. CM Wonsley, in her role as a committee chair, even introduced her topic by saying, “Let the revolution in Cuba proceed.”
When another resolution came up for debate, to support a delegation traveling to Europe to urge financial institutions there to divest investments from companies whose business may involve providing goods and services that can be used by ICE, recently-elected CM Pearll Warren reminded the Chugleys (the Socialist voting bloc of the Minneapolis City Council) that, as a Black woman, she still has to fight, daily, institutional racism in her own community. You know, that community that she and her 12 colleagues were elected to represent.
While potholes need to be filled and city budgets need to be balanced, the council also cast its gaze over to the University of Minnesota, and decided to “help” the Board of Regents there manage a labor dispute with graduate students. CM Chowdhury, justifying this foray into the realm of another jurisdiction’s business, said “we have the opportunity” to support graduate students, “especially if it’s the right thing to do.” So, Ms. Aurin, would you be less inclined to wade in if it was not “the right thing to do?” Where is the line and where do you draw it? And who elected you to prioritize meddling with other jurisdictions over taking care of the significant problems being faced by the City of Minneapolis?
Council President Elliot Payne chimed in with Chowdhury: “I am to do everything in my power to address the issues we are facing.” Slight problem here, Mr. Payne: the decisions of other public bodies are not “within your power,” and a labor dispute at the University is an issue the University is facing, not the city of Minneapolis.
Here’s where my hundred bucks comes in.
Our current city council majority seems quite comfortable in telling other jurisdictions what to do, whether across town or across an ocean or two. It does so in the name of us Minneapolis residents. So can anyone find a single piece of campaign literature since the election of 2017 (when we began electing DSA members with no governing experience), can anyone find documentation of a single campaign speech, when the Chugleys presented to their voters evidence of their competence in international affairs. Can anyone find any evidence that the Chugleys ever asked for voter support of them conducting foreign policy?
If anyone can provide any evidence that any member of the current City Council majority ever asked for voter consent to wade into international affairs or even the affairs of an independent jurisdiction across town, I’ll send $100 to the human-services nonprofit of their choice.
I’ll wait.
Another day another rant. The suggestion that the Council isn’t tending to filling potholes and balancing a budget as it tends to matters that Davy prefers it not, is b.s. Potholes are being filled rather quickly and budget balancing is on-going. A likely reason the Council spent, Davy says, a third of its time on what Davy feels are extraneous matters is because some Members take up gobs of clock criticizing other Members. Just vote and be done with it; skip the “righteous” rants. Too, if elected and re-elected Members prefer to take up a topic that Davy doesn’t like, the Members must be representing folks and their ideas who elected them to the Council, right?
Ron, perhaps you should consider addressing the thesis of my post.
Not a single one of the Foggy Bottom wannabes has ever presented to the voters their qualifications to conduct foreign policy. Nor has any one of them campaigned on the promise that they would spend valuable City time and dollars conducting foreign policy. I’ve bet every reader of Minneapolis Times a hundred bucks that they could not demonstrate otherwise. I still have my hundred bucks.
There are about 435,000 residents in Minneapolis and not one of them has given consent to these seven people to speak in their name about Cuba, Gaza, all of the EU, or even how the U of M should handle disputes with graduate student teaching assistants.
btw, who’s Davy?
On qualifications: anyone with a brain has an opinion on public issues including (especially today) foreign policy. And it’s always true in American democratic governance that those elected are “qualified” to do and say and vote as they see fit, without condition. If voters agree they’ll be re-elected, as are most Council Members. The Mpls Council Members are not in office to conduct themselves as Davy Therk thinks they should. Thank you, and have a nice day.
I rest my case. Indeed, anyone (and these days, brain may be optional) has an opinion on issues including foreign policy. In these matters, my opinion is no better than yours. Yours is no better than mine. My next door neighbor’s opinion is no more qualified than any member of the city council. And vice versa.
Thus, these 7 people have no business claiming to speak for 435,000 of us just because they hold an election certificate.
As to why the DSA folks keep getting elected, as has been noted elsewhere, they pretend to be DFLers in order to get elected; they are smart people and know they would not get elected as DSA. But once elected, they govern as DSA. Minneapolis voters started to figure this out last election, but regrettably, they fell one seat short of ending the charade.
There is a sad truth in what you say about anyone elected being “qualified” to do and say and vote as they see fit, without condition. History’s greatest example currently lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when not in southern Florida. Are you saying the rest of us should not speak up when we see our elected officials do things they should not be doing?
OK, I’ll bite. Who is Davy Therk?
So, Davy Therk thinks an election certificate means elected Council Members have “no business” to speak for all city residents??? Perhaps a Civics 101 refresher is in order here, with urgency before he scribbles much more in the Times.
And Therk says some on the Council were elected by posing as DFLers to hide their DSA leanings. DSA is NOT a political party, but candidates ran with DFL endorsement. But to suggest these Members donned camo to fool voters is absurd. Discerning voters know full well who their reps are, in part because their full ideology is revealed by the Times and downtown business interests at every opportunity. Then, too, many of the DSA positions are part of the DFL platform. Look it up… Thank you for your time.
I’m not sure who this Davy Therk is or what he thinks. His name is similar to mine, so maybe our great-grandfathers were cousins. I myself never said CMs’ election certificate does not give them the right to speak for all city residents. They certainly can and do, on the dais at City Hall, at the Legislature, wherever CITY business is being discussed. The certificate, however, does not give them the right to speak for the rest of the city as to what happens in Cuba or Gaza or Iran or Afghanistan, or even at the University of Minnesota. On these matters, they can speak all they want as citizens, but their opinions are no more or less valid than yours or mine, and they have no more right than any other 7 citizens to claim to speak for all of Minneapolis.
Having been a poli sci major and active civically since 1972, I’ll spare you the trouble of preparing the civics refresher.
No camo? I’ve written about this before and plan to again soon. But DSA is indeed a political party. That’s where we find the camo. They organized themselves as a nonprofit for precisely the reasons I stated: so they could run as Democrats and get elected. But then govern as DSA.
I’m quite familiar with the DFL platform and of course there is overlap. Heck, I’m sure you or I might agree with the average MAGA member on a few things. But while we’re looking things up, you might want to take a look at the DSA platform, in which they declare themselves as rivals of both Democrats and Republicans, and in which they take positions that the ordinary DFLer would not share – no police, no prisons, no private corporations, to name a few. It’s all easy to find.
“Thus, these 7 people have no business claiming to speak for 435,000 of us just because they hold an election certificate.” By Therk. No conditions.
DSA says it is NOT a political party.
Ron, don’t be obtuse. Here is my complete quote:
In these matters, my opinion is no better than yours. Yours is no better than mine. My next door neighbor’s opinion is no more qualified than any member of the city council. And vice versa.
Thus, these 7 people have no business claiming to speak for 435,000 of us just because they hold an election certificate.
Indeed, no conditions. Just context. Context matters in discourse. You know this.
And of course DSA says it is not a political party. Its strategy depends on this. As I noted, they organized as a nonprofit because they knew they could not get elected otherwise. But read their platform. Easy to find. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck. It’s a duck.
I’m done trying to follow circular discussions… Have a good day and be well.
Ron, wishing you a good day and a good life as well. I will miss your penetrating analysis, and your intellectual integrity that is so unbending that you’d never indulge in name-calling or in blatantly taking quotes out of context.
I’m not going to try to defend every action and statment of every city council member, but I am quite uncomfortable with the tone of this article and the vitriolic comments, Many of the newer council members are people of color, and have not had a lot of previous government experience. I think that’s great because underrepresented people are getting a voice. But for that very reason they come from a culture that has its own modes of communication and conflict resolution. Some may find those modes embarassing, but embarassment is not a justification for vitriolic attack. If you read carefully, I think you will see that things are getting done and problems are being addressed, if not solved.
It will be better for the city if criticism is focussed on substantive policy differences and not on peoples’ embarassment at other peoples’ styles of discourse.
Woods Halley
Dear Mr. Halley,
I have seen other writings of yours over the years, and have found wisdom in them. Including this one.
But in the main, I can’t agree with you. In my view, the problem is not so much that the council majority members lack previous government experience; actually several have had staff or low-level policy jobs in city government. But none of them – not one – has ever held high-level experience in any large and complex enterprise. Yet they now have governance of a $2 billion enterprise, with 4,000 employees. And they are NOT getting the important things done, they have NOT been addressing the critical problems.
I’ve also been critical of the fact that DSA in Minneapolis has elected positions far out of proportion of their numbers within the city population as a whole. I don’t blame them for this, indeed I admire their organizing skills and wish they were matched by the city’s DFLers. But they can’t be said to represent the city as a whole. The population as a whole is not anti-police and anti-business. The current majority is both.
If you look at all of my writings about the DSA emergence since the 2017 election, in the Strib as well as Minneapolis Times, you will see that I have often disagreed with the council majority on substantive policy grounds. I have written that they have no plan to minimize residential property tax increases while commercial property values decline; indeed they seem untroubled by falling commercial values – it’s just evil capitalism after all. I have written about the council majority standing in the way of building MPD back to full-strength; in fact once the city began to have success in recruiting candidates for police training – candidates of color, candidates who live in the city, the very people we want on the police force – the council majority cut the recruitment budget. I have written that the council majority has actually favored symbolic acts over actions that truly improve the lives of city residents. Read my story about the renaming of Edmund Boulevard, when they have utterly failed to create housing that people can actually purchase and thus start building generational wealth. I have written about the council majority attempting to create a labor policy board, the design of which was blatantly anti-business. They don’t get a free pass on these substantive policy matters because several are people of color.
Undertaking foreign policy instead of working on the very real problems of the City of Minneapolis earns them great plaudits from the ideological base of DSA, but it does not do anything to make the city better for the people who actually live here.
We’re not likely to agree on these matters, but as one night owl to another thanks for writing.
David, we all wait with bated breath for your inevitable run for city council to fix all your personal grievances.
Wade, though I have indeed held elected office (was a city council member in a suburb) I am now 77 and that’s not in my plans.
My commentaries are not personal grievances. My writings aim to give voice to the majority of Minneapolis residents who want much better governance than they are getting, and who are poorer and less safe as a result of living in a city currently led by ideologues instead of disciplined problem solvers.
A person doesn’t need to run for city council in order to speak out against bad governance. In fact it’s encouraged. It’s called Democracy.
So feel free to unbate your breath.
Wade, while I have indeed held elective office (a looong time ago) it is even more pertinent to point out that I have held both management and governance roles in large, complex organizations. Something no one in the current city council majority can say. I know what it takes , in excruciating detail, what is necessary for large and complex organizations to deliver on their missions. Not a single member of the current council majority has this understanding.
May I add, since you suggested my “grievances” are personal, that it is almost the opposite. Pretty much none of the current absurdities affect me personally. I live in a very secure environment. If my city property taxes even doubled,it would bother me a lot but it wouldn’t change my life one bit, it would only slightly reduce my children’s inheritance sometime down the road.
(Yes, I have lived a life of privilege, and am the first to acknowledge this.)
My one and only motivation in all of this is that Minneapolis is and has been for a long time a great city – not for everyone, as I will fully acknowledge. But its greatness is at risk and the quality of governance will matter fundamentally. We’re not getting such quality in the current moment.
It just seems like all you do is write manifestos from your “secure environment.” And submit them to a curated website that tilts conservative. At the end of the day, I think you speak for wealthy people and corporations which are a minority in the city. And you speak to an ideology that wants decisions made with those groups in mind above all else.
My dear Mr. Wade,
Your position seems to be that people like me, who have the good fortune to have some wealth, should not comment on civic affairs. What, we should all move to Wayzata or Woodbury, taking our tax revenue and our civic involvement with us? That will make things better in the city?
And you say I speak for wealthy people and corporations who are a minority in the city. Fact is, DSA is a minority in the city. Not people like me.
But Mr. Wade, when I write in MinneapolisTimes to criticize the emerging (since 2017 election ) DSA majority to call out their performative name change of Edmund Blvd to Lena Smith Blvd – a good thing, but makes no difference in the lives of anyone – while in the very same meeting they add more rental units to the 95% of rental units that have been built in our city since 2019 , am I speaking for wealthy people and corporations? No! I am telling our entirely inexperienced city governance leadership that they are failing to serve the very people they purport to represent. Edmund Wilson redlined Blacks out of homes, but the current council majority has prevented even more poor people and people of color from owning homes, by not providing any homes for them to buy. Wade, this is not speaking for wealthy people and organizations, it is asking the current city council majority to do its job!
And how dare you call Minneapolis Times conservative-leaning! Can you cite a single article since it was founded, advocating for conservative principles: smaller government. Government kept out of our lives. Less taxation. (Don’t challenge me on this one, Wade: I’ve criticized how we are taxed; the council majority’s blithe willingness to let residential taxpayers pay what commercial taxpayers used to pay. That’s very different than advocating for lower taxes.)
I’ll double down on my last post: if you can find a single Minneapolis Times post espousing conservative principles (not that true conservative principles are bad; we just hold different ones) then I will send $100 to the human services nonprofit of your choice.
The DSA crowd has tried to appropriate the “progressive” label, but in fact pretty much all DFLers in Minneapolis hold progressive values. It’s just that some of us realize that effective governance requires maturity and judgment, not just applause lines from Bernie Sanders speeches. (I admire Bernie, btw, and think history will judge him well.)
Potholes
Parks
Police
Knock those issues out efficiently and the city will master livability, quality of life and safety with business and social prosperity to follow. The city council should be focusing on liveable, enjoyable and safety concerns for the 95%. Not pet issues on the margins.
I believe Dave’s point is that he cares about making the city liveable and safe for others since he himself is secure; that in itself is progressive. Focusing on matters the city cannot control detracts from its seriousness of the issues it can.
The thing is
Even if we had Kissinger or Sadat on the city council their roles would be to deal with City issues. Not international ones.
Although I’m pretty sure they would do that much MUCH better dealing with City issues than our current DSA Representatives….
All quite embarrassing and sad for our city, as we are forced to watch so many ill suited, unqualified people in these roles…
https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-city-council-acrimony/601664704?utm_source=gift
Minneapolis has lots of issues, and it drives me crazy when the Council wastes their/our time on issues that have nothing to do with governing the City.
James, of course I agree with you, but think also of all the city staff time that is also being spent on this silliness!
Exactly…
“So can anyone find a single piece of campaign literature since the election of 2017 (when we began electing DSA members with no governing experience), can anyone find documentation of a single campaign speech, when the Chugleys presented to their voters evidence of their competence in international affairs. Can anyone find any evidence that the Chugleys ever asked for voter support of them conducting foreign policy?”
Not only did these city council candidates not comment on their expertise in international relations, their supporters accused people of racism and xenophobia who asked their positions on international relations. Aurin Chowdhury was asked what her position was the October 3rd incident in Israel. Her supporters claimed it was racism and xenophobia to ask her that question because the Minneapolis City Council had nothing to do with the Arab Israeli conflict. Weeks later, she took office and signed on to a Gaza resolution! When her supporters were called out on this, they of course deflected. You can’t make this stuff up.
October 7. Not Oct 3. Agree with everything else you say.
Would add that the local Jewish community mobilized in opposition to that resolution, arguing that it would have no impact on events 5000 miles away, but would adversely affect Jewish safety right here in Mpls. They ignored us at best and libeled us at worst. Now, looking back 2.5 years, we very much were correct.
They not only do not care, they relish their “leadership” in hating on Jews, which they try to mask by hating on Israel. We are not fooled. We are an ancient people and we have seen this movie before. Short term, it ends very badly for Jews; long term, it ends much worse for the society that indulges and promotes it.
A warning for Mpls, and for the MN DFL.
Yiscah, as you recall, the resolution was the very first action of the city council that was seated in January 2024. Crowd attending council meeting was loud and rowdy, and there were numerous signs that were anti-semitic in the crudest forms imaginable. Although all this was in a public meeting in a public building, newly-named Council President Elliot Payne did nothing to stop these hateful displays. Other than George Floyd murder, I can’t think of a more shameful moment in my 50 years of Minneapolis home ownership.
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