The Revolt of the Cities
During the past 20 years, immigrants and young people have transformed the demographics of urban America. Now, they’re transforming its politics and mapping the future of liberalism.
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Minneapolis is a city with a richer history of progressive activism than Pittsburgh. In 1948, Mayor Hubert Humphrey presented that year’s Democratic National Convention with its first civil-rights platform plank. For decades, Minnesota came closer to an American version of Scandinavian social democracy than any other state.
In recent decades, however, both the city’s and state’s demographics and economy have been transformed. The white share of the city’s population declined from 86 percent in the 1980 census to 64 percent in 2010. Minneapolis is home to the largest Somali community of any city except Mogadishu and the largest Hmong community outside Laos. “We’re ahead of any other state in equitable income and health—if you’re white,” says Dan McGrath, who heads TakeAction Minnesota, a progressive political organization of 45,000 members, which, like New York’s Working Families Party, functions chiefly as an electoral organization. “Minnesota’s way down the list when you include people of color. Four out of ten Minneapolis residents are people of color. We won’t have an economy 30 years from now if only half our minority students graduate high school.”
