“The United States has come a long way from the past. This … has compelled generation after generation to overlook the present.” — from an essay in “The 1619 Project”
“Women naturally function more as a collective. There is power in numbers. When it is transactional, people who want to succeed think that dividing and conquering is how you do it. That is actually a colonized way of leading.”
American culture relies on a myth of prosperity that justifies income inequality — we assume anyone can get ahead equally, which is not true if you look at cost of living and pay gaps.
Minnesota’s policymakers had an opportunity during this legislative session to take action to gain a portion of that $6.6 billion of annual GDP, and they failed. Instead, efforts to close racial equity gaps fell victim to polarized and antiquated views of economic growth and competitiveness.
How do we reimagine the work of reducing poverty, supporting mental health services, and dealing with trauma to minimize substance abuse and violence, in order to diminish the need for police to step in as an end to those consequences?