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Collective Power Is Key

by Mikki Morrissette
in , ,

Mikki Morrissette at a recent People’s Potluck Party gathering in Aitkin County. Photo by Johnny Barber

The stories in this issue illuminate the extraordinary power of people acting together. There are insights in these pages about how collective solidarity builds far more for our health, prosperity, and happiness than any single government agency or corporate structure can provide.

Over the decades, I believe we have allowed ourselves to become increasingly fragmented and isolated. We have moved from campfires and villages — places where people depended on one another — to an industrialized society of employees, consumers, and increasingly polarized political rhetoric. Along the way, power and wealth have accumulated in too few hands, while too many of us have been taught to see one another as competitors rather than as neighbors with a shared stake in one another’s well-being.

With that fragmentation has come a troubling rise in bullying and abuse of power. Too often, our response is to retreat — to look away, to leave vulnerable people to fend for themselves, or to expect individual resistors to take on entrenched systems without the strength and protection that only collective action can provide.

But this year, across Minnesota, we have seen more people reach beyond their own homes and neighborhoods to stand together. They are discovering — or rediscovering — that organizing around shared values and responsibility can challenge forces that are difficult to confront alone.

What’s Next

I wish I could write definitively about the future of this print publication, but I cannot. The minimum of $25,000 that we need to create, print, and ship for statewide distribution is not easy to generate. The advertising that enabled us to develop this issue does not give us enough surplus to guarantee another print run in 2026.

Since we can no longer commit to staff salaries — only freelance contracts — the work going forward will be supported by special project funding. I am working toward more underwriting to enable us to print again in 2026. I am rejecting offers by outsiders to buy the magazine title.

We have ongoing funds from website and newsletter advertisers. We continue to receive incredibly helpful member support. This enables us to pay for freelance reporting and photography for our core online series. The young women on our Future Forward editorial board continue to generate stories that are a model for our transition to a member-supported co-op media outlet in 2027.

 

Table of Contents

Politics & Policy

Money & Business

Collective Health

Books & Art

Public Safety: Youth, Gun Violence, and Diversion

  • Part 1: Discussing Solutions in Bloomington
  • Part 2: Restorative Justice
  • Part 3: Community-Based Violence Intervention Programs
  • Part 4: A Conversation with Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty
  • Coming Part 5, from Saint Paul Project PEACE

Legal Rights

This Is US

Directory 

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