Part 1: Talking About Restoring Community Health With Four Minnesota Senators

 

 

At a conversation held at St. Catherine’s University by Twin Cities Nonviolent in September, four legislative leaders talked about how to reduce violence in our communities. The panelists included current Minnesota senators Heather Gustafson, Zaynab Mohamed, Erin Murphy, and former senator Patricia Torres Ray. Following is an excerpt of their remarks.

Specific comments about gun violence will be featured in the November magazine issue of Minnesota Women’s Press.

 

---

A Long-Term Study

A 2017 study of 264 cities over two decades, conducted by sociologists at New York University and Princeton University, found that every 10 additional community nonprofits per 100,000 residents was associated with a 12 percent reduction in the long-term homicide rate. For year-to-year changes, the same increase was linked to a 9 percent decline in the murder rate. The nonprofits’ work was focused on neighborhood improvement, crime prevention, job training and workforce development, youth programs, and substance abuse prevention.

Rather than focusing on changes to the justice system, the organizations involved addressed the underlying problems stemming from chronic poverty and worked to:

• Strengthen social bonds and increase a sense of belonging and protection
• Provide vital resources, which enables people with limited economic resources to address root causes of crime, such as lack of opportunity
• Implement community-based violence intervention programs, which have shown significant success in reducing gun violence and homicides. 
• Improve the environment with neighborhood-led projects that transform vacant spaces and abandoned homes 

 

QUESTION: Why is it so difficult for communities to invest in methods that have proven to reduce homicide rates?

Heather Gustafson: It’s fear, politics, and short-term thinking. We sometimes undervalue prevention, because the payoff isn’t immediate — because it takes time to change hearts and minds, right? Policing and law enforcement strategies might be short-sighted solutions, but might get the most immediate perceived results.

Zaynab Mohammed: In this moment, we are in a world that is full of corporate greed. It doesn’t matter how many police officers you put in your neighborhood, if people don’t have affordable housing, food at the table, ways to take care of their kids and their families, you’re never going to have safety. 

Erin Murphy: We are tribal, and we’re looking for ways to blame the other side, and they’re looking for ways to blame us. In doing that, they categorize the work that we’ve done as wasteful. We know that if we want to live in a world that is abundant and peaceful, people need a safe place to live. Their kids need a good education. We need access to health care and a decent job. Minnesota’s way has been to look out for the next generation, and we did something remarkable with that in 2023 with the budget that we passed. While it is characterized by some as a waste, I know it was a real investment in our future.

 

QUESTION: The basic components of a plan that would address violence includes:

Erin Murphy: Addressing the radicalization of people who are spending their time in the dark corners of the internet. I think that is what happened to [the person who assassinated] Melissa Hortman. I think there are a lot of people engaging in extremism that can become radicalized. Perhaps we also need to address the epidemic of loneliness.

Heather Gustafson: It is a public safety need to put money into our schools, because a lot of those kids can fall through the cracks when we overcrowd the classrooms, when we don’t give teachers the support that they need, when we’re not involving the parents. Sometimes our teachers are the first ones to see what is happening [in the cross-section of their community] and they don’t have the resources and the support they need to help. Prevention and public safety is in public education.

Patricia Torres Ray: I think where we need to work the hardest is how we empower young women to understand their circumstances — how they see themselves, how they understand themselves. It’s a fundamental issue that is new to me, and goes beyond gun control, addressing poverty, and education — how we empower our young women to be powerful. 

---

QUESTION: Is there something that we’ve lost in this country that we need to regain?

 

Zaynab Mohammed: I think what we’ve lost in this country is the idea of talking to your neighbors, whether you agree with them or not. We have far more in common than we have differences. 

Patricia Torres Ray: Really understanding how inequality is working in this country — how we have given political, social and economic power to an elite that is only the 1 percent, and is largely white and male. I think we lost track of what that means for the rest of us and what we are facing as a consequence. It is devastating. Guns are used to defend that [white, male elite]. We are oppressing women, and faith communities, racial communities — it is all about maintaining that power.

Erin Murphy: When we were coming to the 2018 election, the pendulum had swung in a big way and we were talking about it in the public square. We were talking about gender, gender equality, nonbinary people, trans people. We were talking about diversity and equity. We were talking about the racial gaps, not just in education, but in health, earning power, and incarceration rates. We were talking about it out loud — it felt so powerful and liberating, because it felt like we were telling the truth about who we are. Now, the backlash against that has been fierce. It started with banning books, but now corporations like Target are stepping away from their policies and support for communities.

We were on the right track. We were talking about America, its roots, and America in the future. In 2022, we were talking about Roe v Wade and what that repeal meant for us — and it’s all gone silent. That’s the backlash, and it is unnerving, because it is not the future of our country, nor is it really a reflection of who we are as people.

It is trying to slip us back, as Patricia is indicating, into a patriarchy that prioritizes wealthy white people, white men in particular, over the rest of us. That is no way to build a country. 

Heather Gustafson: We’ve lost the ability to argue in a way that’s respectful. Several years ago, at the end of one of the Presidential debates, candidates were asked to name something they don’t like about their opponents. There were four or five people, Republicans and Democrats, and none of them would say anything bad about the others. They said, ‘That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to talk about policy.’ We don’t do that now. 

I was a social studies teacher. We used to watch 10 minutes of CNN while the kids were coming in. Can teachers even do that today? Now, kids think it’s normal for leaders to talk [with disrespect]. But I’ll add a glimmer of hope. My [second] husband is an independent. He was conservative until he started to hear from my daughters and reply, ‘I never saw it that way.’ We have to peel away at people who might be radicalized now, and maybe not ready to hear the truth about what’s going on, but I hope that we can stand up for our values and tell them wrong is wrong — but also in a way that maybe lets them back into a normal viewpoint that isn’t so divisive, violent, and hurtful. 

---

QUESTION: We’re sitting in a time in which sectors of our society are taking power and control and running with it. When we want active nonviolence, how do we best address those who want to take power and control?

Heather Gustafson: I was talking with constituents about federal budget cuts — it feels overwhelming. We’re never going to be able to backfill what the federal government is taking from us. There is so much despair, and people don’t know how they’re supposed to keep going. What I have been telling people is to find one or two things you really care deeply about, and go all in on those things. It might be guns, domestic abuse, funding for schools. Go all in on that and do whatever good you can on those areas, knowing that other people are tackling other things. Maybe your neighbor can focus on the environment and saving democracy and access to early voting and making sure our voter rolls don’t get turned over, and all of the other things that are scary, too. If we try to do all of it, we’ll burn out and there will be no one left in the fight.

We have to resist and show up where we can and point out that this isn’t right, this isn’t okay, this isn’t normal, this isn’t what anybody needs or wants. They’re testing the boundaries, right? It’s like watching Jurassic Park, testing the fences to find out where the weaknesses are. Don’t let them find those weaknesses. Dig in and know that collectively, we’ll all try to do what we can and take care of each other and hold tight for the next three years. 

Patricia Torres Ray: The Trump administration has strategically terminated grants that support violence reduction, victims services, juvenile justice, child protection, substance abuse and mental health treatment, corrections and reentry, justice systems, enhancements, research and evaluation. They are not cutting policing and intervention. They are going after prevention programs that are so important to our families. 

We have to be strategic too. We’re not going to be able to replace that money. It’s impossible. We don’t have that kind of budget. Almost 67 percent of every program funded in Minnesota comes from the federal government in these areas. We need a greater majority, and I don’t think we’re organizing enough. I cannot imagine us losing one of our Senate seats, and losing some of our House seats in Washington. Get involved in those races, as well as elevate the voices of the local races we need to retain and increase. 

To support more stories that center Minnesota women’s voices: