In the News
TakeAction Minnesota draws attention for political victories
When Minnesotans last fall rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have required voters to present photo identification at the polls, it represented a huge victory for liberal groups that had fought to oppose it.
On the front lines of that effort was TakeAction Minnesota, which over the last decade has become a powerful advocate for liberal causes. Since then, the group has played crucial role in several state and local campaigns, including the race for mayor in Minneapolis.
Take Action Minnesota emerged from the 2006 merger of two other groups — Progressive Minnesota and the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action.
The group’s supporters are “movement builders” — ready to spring to action during petition drives and elections, said Dan McGrath, executive director of TakeAction Minnesota.
“At any given moment we’re in the streets protesting something,” McGrath said. “We’re a people’s organization. Every day we are knocking on doors, making phone calls, talking to people in the community — people who are often low-income, people who are on the margins, people of color, the elderly, students.”
McGrath said those communities set TakeAction Minnesota’s agenda, which has a lot to do with improving conditions for minorities in Minnesota. With an annual budget of more than $3 million, 31 full-time employees and an email list of more than 40,000 supporters, the group can devote considerable energy to its work.
“We decided we wanted to take on the most urgent issues that the state was facing, and that’s really the issues around racial disparity,” McGrath said. “Whether it’s in health, employment or voting, there is just a vast difference between how white people and people of color experience Minnesota.”
St. Paul’s First Hmong city council member, Dai Thao, sworn in
Dai Thao, St. Paul’s first Hmong city council member, vowed to represent all residents of Ward 1, one of the city’s most diverse.
Thao, an information technology manager and community organizer, was sworn in Thursday in front of a city council chamber crowd that reflected that diversity. Surrounded by his family, he gave an emotional speech about his struggles with poverty, his vision of St. Paul as a livable city and his determination to protect “the weak from the strong, the vulnerable from the powerful.”
And although he and the city leaders gathered to usher him onto the council spoke of his election as a historic moment for the Hmong community, Thao stressed he would look out for all constituents.
“I want to make it clear I am here for all communities,” he said, adding, “Our diversity is our strength.”
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Thao, the father of three, has worked on the legislative election campaigns of Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidates. He was also active with efforts to defeat the state’s voter-ID and marriage amendments. He has organized for TakeAction Minnesota, the liberal advocacy group, and ISAIAH, a faith-based social justice coalition.
Minnesota’s expungement laws targeted
From fair-housing advocates to felons, dozens of people lined up Tuesday to tell lawmakers that laws designed to give reformed offenders a second chance are failing and should be overhauled.
“If you or someone you know has a criminal record, please raise your hand,” Justin Terrell, a program manager for Justice 4 All, asked the crowded room at a legislative hearing Tuesday on state expungement laws designed to give deserving lower-level offenders a clean slate. Nearly every hand shot up, including those of some lawmakers on both sides.
Among the witnesses were Emily Souther, a 30-year-old mother from Spicer who can’t complete her nursing studies because of her juvenile record, and James Cannon, a counselor who said he found work only because an assault conviction stemming from a fight in college was successfully sealed.
The emerging theme: Despite their best efforts, offenders find it difficult to move on unless their records are sealed.
David beats Goliath!: How the little guy beat the mega-corporation
With all the Republican obstructionism and Democratic spinelessness in Washington, not to mention the distractions of the Obamacare website, it can be hard to feel good about politics at all — let alone tap into the sort of optimism that inspires and motivates many of us in the first place. Here, then, is a story of a small statewide organization that brought a multi-billion-dollar, multinational corporation to heel.
Minnesota has the worst-in-the-nation racial jobs gap. In 2011, for instance, 18 percent of African Americans in the Twin Cities were unemployed — more than three times the unemployment rate for whites in the city. This stems from broader problems in the criminal justice system in which Minnesota has historically had one of most disproportionate rates of incarceration for African Americans as compared with whites. While, thanks to criminal justice reform, that rate has fallen — from 23:1 in the 1980s and 90s to 9:1 in 2005, that still means a lot of African Americans in Minnesota have a criminal record stemming not just from their past wrongdoings but from a skewed criminal justice system that convicted and sentenced African Americans more frequently and harshly than whites.
One step in unraveling these dynamics and helping close the racial jobs gap in Minnesota would be gaining equal access to jobs for those with criminal records. The statewide community organization TakeAction Minnesota wanted to pass a state law to “ban the box” on job applications that asks whether potential employees have a criminal history. Since the whole idea of prison supposedly incorporates our belief in redemption and a shot at a second chance, then discriminating against a disproportionately African American ex-convict population in employment opportunities is counterproductive in terms of criminal justice policy as well as economic development. And a group of TakeAction members with criminal records were passionate about making this change.
But, says TakeAction’s executive director Dan McGrath,“the problem with trying to change state policy is that when you walk into the state capitol, the lines on the playing field are already drawn.” So TakeAction worked outside of the capitol to try and open up some political space for change. And Target was the perfect, well, target.
Can this reality — work very hard, don’t get very far — be ended?
Rep. Ryan Winkler may be a Harvard- and Minnesota-educated lawyer and four-term DFL legislator from Golden Valley, but he’s also a guy from Bemidji who watched his hometown friends and extended family struggle as real median household income in Minnesota dropped 9.5 percent between 2001 and 2011.
That background has something to do with Winkler’s decision to take his House Select Committee on Living Wage Jobs on the road this fall. It summoned local pols and businessfolk to hearings in eight Minnesota cities, Bemidji among them, to consider how best to make work pay more.
There’s this, too: Winkler is historian enough to understand that growing income inequality is one of the biggest problems facing the state and nation, and idealistic (and ambitious) enough to believe that he and the Minnesota Legislature can do something about it.
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The emergence of a potent minimum wage coalition in recent months makes those ideas seem more politically plausible than they were a few years ago. So does the rise of TakeAction Minnesota, which crowed last week about its role in Betsy Hodges’ successful mayoral bid in the Nov. 5 Minneapolis election.
Calling itself a “people’s network,” TakeAction is sometimes tagged as socialist. But it stands for some pretty basic American ideas: People who want to work should be able to do so. People who work ought to be able to support themselves and their families. They ought to be able to afford health insurance. They ought to be able to vote without impediment.
TakeAction earns its liberal stripes when it makes clear that it means all people — ex-felons, single parents, country folk, inner-city dwellers, immigrants and people of color. And it maintains that where there are systemic barriers to work (and to work’s just rewards), government has a duty to knock them down.
In seven years, TakeAction has grown from 1,000 to 14,000 individual members, 26 member organizations and an e-network of 45,000. Executive director Dan McGrath says that growth springs from a sense that the American dream escalator out of poverty is no longer reliably working. “Whether we are knocking on doors in the suburbs or in Duluth or Grand Rapids, the question of income inequality is at the center of what people want to talk about,” McGrath said.
The Progressive Electoral Wave of 2013
The political and media elites obsessed only with Washington intrigue and the next presidential race thought New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s predictable re-election was the big story of the 2013 season. It wasn’t. The big story was a cross-country rejection of austerity and an endorsement of the progressive populism that Democrats must embrace if they hope to prevail in 2014. Bill de Blasio’s 73 percent landslide in the New York mayoral race, in which he ran on a platform of building a more inclusive city by addressing income inequality and taxing the wealthy, was just the topline measure of a national trend. The new public advocate of New York is Letitia James, a progressive populist first elected to the City Council on the labor-backed Working Families Party line. The City Council will have twenty-one new members, many of them elected with WFP backing. WFP executive director Dan Cantor said, in reference to de Blasio’s presence at the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests, “We are living in the world Occupy made. We are the beneficiaries of what they did in terms of making this [about] inequality, which is from our point of view the core issue of our time.” What OWS did, yes—along with the organizing and electoral infrastructure patiently built by labor and community groups.
In Boston, Marty Walsh was attacked by conservatives who argued that because of his background as a building trades union leader, he might be too sympathetic to public sector unions and working families. Critics circulated a video of Walsh at a 2011 rally in solidarity with protests against Wisconsin’s right-wing Governor Scott Walker. Instead of backing down, Walsh declared, “I will wear my record of fighting for working people as a badge of honor.” Surfing a wave of union backing, Walsh won.
In Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges, a City Council member long associated with the economic equity group TakeAction Minnesota, was elected mayor after declaring that “it is time to free ourselves from the fear that keeps us locked into patterns of inequality.”
Dai Thao is first Hmong-American elected to St. Paul City Council
Dai Thao, an information technology manager who moved to St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood from the North End two years ago, has defeated six other candidates to become the first Hmong-American elected to the city council.
He will represent Ward 1, which spans Frogtown, Summit-University and corners of surrounding neighborhoods, one of the most racially diverse areas of Minnesota.
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Dai Thao, who in 2008 became a recruiter and political organizer for Hmong members of the liberal activist group TakeAction Minnesota, ran with the support of TakeAction and the St. Paul firefighters union, IAF Local 21. He previously worked on the campaigns of state Rep. Rena Moran, DFL-St. Paul, and state Sen. Foung Hawj, DFL-St. Paul, and was a staff organizer with ISAIAH, a faith-based social justice advocacy group.
Rosenblum: TakeAction Minnesota helped Target ban the box
Target Corp.’s decision to Ban the Box is a victory for many ex-offenders, and a wise and moral move for the wildly popular discounter.
But it would be a shame to ignore the impressive back story that undoubtedly influenced Target’s evolution.
Minnesota is the third state to implement Ban the Box, which goes into effect Jan. 1. The law mandates that employers wait until a prospective employee is being interviewed to ask about a criminal past.
For nearly three years, a grass-roots effort has been building on Minneapolis’ North Side in support of the change. The effort began in April 2011 when leaders from TakeAction Minnesota, a network of people working for social justice, held a series of meetings asking North Siders to share personal stories and ideas for strengthening community and families.
Betsy Hodges prepares to put vision, record to work
She’s a fan of NASCAR who wears Wonder Woman T-shirts beneath blazers, a progressive activist with a penchant for wading into messy political issues at City Hall, and a DFLer whose bid for mayor was opposed by the establishment of her party.
Betsy Hodges, the presumptive next mayor of Minneapolis, is a hard-nosed budget wonk driven by her concern for the less fortunate. She is sharp and witty in private, but careful and restrained in the public eye.
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Hodges’ apparent victory comes after a political career spent in the trenches of progressive fights. She cut her teeth in local politics in the late 1990s as an activist for Progressive Minnesota, now TakeAction Minnesota, working on education referendums and opposing stadium subsidies. She later worked as an aide to Hennepin County Commissioner Gail Dorfman — now a supporter — and as development director at a nonprofit.
Target initiates ban the box nationwide
In an overflow meeting at the Capri Theater, executives with Target Corporation engaged in a dialog about how corporate hiring policies prevent people with criminal arrest – disproportionately people of color – from securing a job.
The community meeting was organized by TakeAction Minnesota through its Justice 4 All, fair hiring campaign.
Jim Rowader, Target’s vice president of employee and labor relations, announced during the meeting that the company would institute a nationwide ban on the checkbox included on employment applications that screens for an applicant’s past criminal history. Officials with TakeAction said the move is a significant step in removing a key employment barrier for those with arrest records from one of the nation’s largest employers.
“Ending racism in employment demands the leadership of Minneapolis’ Northside community,” said TakeAction Minnesota’s executive director, Dan McGrath. “No matter their credentials and work ethic, the fact is that there are structural barriers in place that stop people from getting jobs. Our Justice 4 All campaign was launched by leaders from this community so that no one who has been locked up is locked out of a job and a positive future.”
McGrath said TakeAction Minnesota has worked for more than two years to build a base of leadership on the Northside to address inequities in employment…
Target To Drop Criminal Background Question In Job Applications
Target plans to stop asking prospective employees about their criminal records in initial job applications at all of its U.S. stores, a company spokesperson confirmed to The Huffington Post on Tuesday.
The Minneapolis-based company had been facing pressure to do so from grassroots advocacy group TakeAction Minnesota. Target nevertheless reserved the right to ask about criminal backgrounds after the completion of an applicant’s first interview.
Click here to read the full article.
Target Bans the Box
Sanctions that make it more difficult for ex-offenders to obtain jobs, housing and even basic documents like drivers’ licenses only serve to drive them back to jail. With that in mind, a growing number of states and municipalities now prohibit public agencies — and in some cases private employers — from asking about a job applicant’s criminal history until the applicant reaches the interview stage or gets a conditional job offer. These eminently sensible “ban the box” laws are intended to let ex-offenders prove their qualifications before criminal history issues enter the equation.
Earlier this year Minnesota extended its existing law to cover private employers. Now, the Minneapolis-based Target Corporation, one of the nation’s largest employers, has announced that it will remove questions about criminal history from its job applications throughout the country. The announcement represents an important victory for the grassroots community group TakeAction Minnesota, which had been pressuring the company to change.
Target to ban criminal history box on job applications
Target Corp. will roll out a national program early next year that will eliminate the box on employment applications that asks job seekers whether they have a criminal record.
The initiative, part of a budding “Ban the Box” movement across the country, calls for employers to wait until a prospective employee is being interviewed or has a provisional job offer before inquiring whether he or she has a criminal past. The idea is that ex-offenders will have a better chance at getting a job if they’re not eliminated at the very beginning of their job search.
“It’s a big deal in the sense that people with criminal records are going to be given a better chance at employment,” said Dan Oberdorfer, an employment lawyer with the Minneapolis law firm Leonard Street and Deinard. “So earlier in the process employers will have a completely open mind.”
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Greta Bergstrom, communications director for TakeAction Minnesota, said Target’s recent actions are in response to a two-year campaign the group organized involving a 200-person public action in the lobby of Target’s headquarters, a hundred individuals with past records filing job applications at Target and being rejected, a visit to Target’s shareholder meeting and numerous meetings, e-mails and phone calls with Target executives. “That’s why they decided to make this change.”
At Target, criminal history check box ends for job applicants
Minnesota-based Target Corp. says it’s eliminating, nationally, the box on forms that asks if job applicants have criminal histories.
A new Minnesota law requires private employers in the state to take the criminal history box off applications by the end of the year. Target Vice President Jim Rowader says the company is voluntarily expanding that approach for all U.S. applicants, while at the same time trying to make sure that only the most serious crimes show up on the background reports that hiring managers see.
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Rowader made the comments to a north Minneapolis audience of hundreds as part of a panel to address unemployment among ex-offenders that was organized by the advocacy group Take Action Minnesota.
For two years, the group has been urging Target to hire more ex-offenders.
How Criminal Records Worsen the Jobs Gap
The Twin Cities region has one of the country’s widest racial gaps in employment, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The advocacy group Take Action Minnesota says one reason for that gap is the reluctance of employers to hire people with criminal records, who are disproportionately likely to be African-Americans.
The group has been working with Target Corp., one of the largest employers in Minnesota, to address the issue. The two organizations will engage in a public meeting tonight to discuss Target’s practices regarding job applicants with criminal records…
‘We Are All Criminals’ is a Hard Look at Those Not Caught
Jeana Raines got her life back on Tuesday, as the Minnesota Board of Pardons wisely forgave and erased long-ago transgressions. The mother of three has since paid restitution for check forgery and earned two college degrees.
The story of Raines and six other Minnesotans, also pardoned, couldn’t come at a more fitting hour. Because also this week, hundreds of other Minnesotans will humbly recall past criminal acts.
We need only look in the mirror to see them.
Like Raines, these Minnesotans broke the law, some by selling drugs, others by arson or indecent exposure. Unlike Raines, they never got caught, thus granted the freedom to mature and move into full adult lives to test their infinite potential…
Joint religious coalition organizes to support increase in state’s minimum wage
Monday, Oct. 21 saw a community forum at Grand Rapids’ Community Presbyterian Church on raising Minnesota’s hourly minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9.50 by 2015.
The forum was presented by representatives of the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition (JRLC), a Minnesota religious lobby for social justice that is managed by the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the Minnesota Council of Churches, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, and the Islamic Center of Minnesota.
Representatives from JRLC included Brian Rusche, executive director, and Reverend Alison Killeen, director of organizing and practical theology.
Kathleen Blake was first to speak on the proposed minimum wage increase. Blake is a Grand Rapids resident and a longtime member of JRLC, as well as an organizer for TakeAction Minnesota, a grassroots organization working to engage communities on issues of social, economic, and racial justice.
If minimum wage had been adequately adjusted for inflation, said Blake, then it should now be $10.68 an hour. If it had been adjusted for companies’ average productivity gains, it would sit at nearly $22.00 an hour.
Contrary to the stereotypical portrait of minimum wage workers as teenagers, 77 percent of minimum wage workers are adults, Blake said.
Justice 4 All: Bridging the racial jobs gap
Did you know that in Minnesota one in five people have an arrest or conviction record that can show up on a routine criminal background check for employment? Community members with a criminal or arrest record are routinely denied employment, leading to one million people within Minnesota struggling to find work. A person’s criminal record and even a person’s arrest record will follow them throughout their lives and may negatively impact their employment opportunities. By promoting changes to employer’s use of background information, it allows for access to employment opportunities for those with criminal records.
Equal access to employment opportunities benefits neighborhoods, families, the economy, and the overall societal well-being. However, for many members of our community this access has been denied. Communities of color are facing a serious employment crisis in our state. Minnesota has the worst unemployment gap in the nation, where Blacks are three times more likely to be unemployed than Whites. A contributing factor leading to this disparity are the challenges experienced by those with a criminal record who are seeking to obtain employment. Especially when, more than 92% of employers use background checks, and as many as two thirds refuse to hire applicants with criminal or arrest records, regardless of the length of time since conviction or relevancy to the job. A criminal history serves as a bar to employment.
Uninsured Find More Success via Health Exchanges Run by States
Robyn J. Skrebes of Minneapolis said she was able to sign up for health insurance in about two hours on Monday using the Web site of the state-run insurance exchange in Minnesota, known as MNsure. Ms. Skrebes, who is 32 and uninsured, said she had selected a policy costing $179 a month, before tax credit subsidies, and also had obtained Medicaid coverage for her 2-year-old daughter, Emma.
“I am thrilled,” Ms. Skrebes said, referring to her policy. “It’s affordable, good coverage. And the Web site of the Minnesota exchange was pretty simple to use, pretty straightforward. The language was really clear.”
The experience described by Ms. Skrebes is in stark contrast to reports of widespread technical problems that have hampered enrollment in the online health insurance marketplace run by the federal government since it opened on Oct. 1. While many people have been frustrated in their efforts to obtain coverage through the federal exchange, which is used by more than 30 states, consumers have had more success signing up for health insurance through many of the state-run exchanges, federal and state officials and outside experts say…
Insurance exchange will force choices
For decades, Brad and Heidi Stokes have put health care at the center of every important life decision.
Heidi Stokes, whose lupus was diagnosed when she was a teenager, picked her early career path around jobs that offered medical benefits. Husband Brad developed a rare liver disease in the late 1980s and has since had two liver transplants. Their college-age son, Christian, was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 15 months old.
As small business owners with complex medical needs, the couple have had only one realistic option for insurance coverage: the state’s high-risk pool. But that will change Tuesday with the debut of the MNsure insurance exchange, an online marketplace that gives individuals and small businesses a range of choices while using the power of competition and federal tax breaks to hold down costs.
“The idea that we could go shopping for insurance — and select something for ourselves — is just unbelievable,” Heidi Stokes said. “For the first time, I’ve got some hope for the future.”
Minimum wage advocates gird for 2014 battle
Effort focused on pushing state Senate to go higher
Back in August, under a pavilion at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in 95-degree heat, supporters of increasing the minimum wage in Minnesota kicked off what would soon become a very public campaign.
Before then, talk of raising the state’s minimum wage of $6.15 per hour — one of the lowest rates in the nation — was mostly confined to the halls of the state Capitol, where differing House and Senate bills were considered last session but failed to yield any agreement by the time the legislative clock ran out. The House bill set an increase from $6.15 to $9.50 per hour, while the Senate offered a more modest proposal to increase the minimum wage to $7.75 per hour. Gov. Mark Dayton, alongside House Democrats and union members, thought the interim would be a good time to publicly pressure the Senate to move their way on minimum wage next session.
Affordable Care Act has unique proving ground in Minnesota
ST. PAUL, Minn. — No state is set to embrace the Affordable Care Act as thoroughly as Minnesota, the only one that will implement the “big three” components of health insurance expansion.
That means Minnesota will expand the Medicaid program, develop an online insurance marketplace and offer a basic health program.
It’s the third component that really sets the state apart. Only Minnesota has committed to offering a basic health program, a safety net for people who have too much income to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance. By enacting that third element of the act, Minnesota will take implementation of the federal health care overhaul further than any other state.
Advocates of Minnesota’s approach say moving forward on three of the health law’s biggest initiatives means far more Minnesotans will have access to affordable coverage. But it also means Minnesota will be a unique testing ground for the various moving parts of the ambitious and complex new system.
State rolls out MinnesotaCare 2.0
Significant changes were made to the state’s insurance program for the working poor during the 2013 legislative session
Jeff Nygaard has been enrolled in MinnesotaCare for nearly two decades. Last year the 59-year-old Minneapolis resident earned about $21,000 through freelance writing, part-time work at an art studio and modeling assignments. He currently pays $47 per month for his state-subsidized health-insurance coverage.
Over the years, Nygaard’s dealt with some significant health scares. A decade ago he suffered a stroke owing to a hole in the wall of his heart. That required surgery to fix the problem.
A few years later his elbow swelled painfully. He was diagnosed with cellulitis and treated with antibiotics. If untreated, the skin infection could have been fatal.
“I really would be up a creek without a paddle if I hadn’t had some kind of coverage,” Nygaard said. “If we didn’t have MinnesotaCare, I actually don’t know what I’d do.”
Rosenblum: Banning the box was a start, not the end
Turns out, Ban the Box is just the beginning.
A victor of the 2013 legislative session, the new bill requires employers to remove the question, and the check box, that asks potential employees about their criminal records. Beginning Jan. 2, 2014, employers can ask about criminal histories only after selecting applicants for interviews.
Advocates of second chances are saying, thank you, thank you. … And, now that we have your attention, here’s what we need you to do next.
“Ban the Box is a big step forward,” said Greta Bergstrom, spokeswoman for TakeAction Minnesota, a statewide people’s network working for social, racial and economic justice. “But it’s not an end unto itself.”
Advocates for poor say MNsure’s 2-tier enrollment system is unfair
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The state’s new online health insurance marketplace, MNsure, is banking on community groups and other grass-roots organizations to help people sign up for health plans.
MNsure will pay consumer assistants to help Minnesotans apply for and enroll in coverage. But MNsure has a two-tier payment system that advocates for low-income people call unfair.
MNsure is one of the new state-based marketplaces that are a cornerstone of the federal health care law. Because they are new, and tens of millions of Americans will use them to enroll in health insurance for the first time, the federal health care law requires states to help consumers understand and sign up for coverage.
MNsure will pay these consumer assistance partners $70 for each person enrolled in a commercial health plan. But for people whose income is so low that they cannot afford to pay for health insurance and must rely on Medicaid, the federally sponsored program for the poor, MNsure will pay just $25.
Minnesota’s tax plan: It’s not overreach; it’s overdue
“That is the task which we begin today: to inaugurate an age in which our will is equal to our hopes. I believe that our people are waiting, and are ready, for such an age. They are waiting for government to catch up with them.” – Gov. Wendell R. Anderson, Inaugural Address, January 6, 1971
Changing our tax code is a long-run project, and it’s controversial every step of the way. There’s a good reason for that: We negotiate and renegotiate our social contract through taxes. It’s where we sort out who pays and how much and for what. Everybody has a stake and everybody has an opinion. The tax changes coming in Minnesota’s next biennium are no exception.
Minnesota’s new health laws: We’ve got answers to your questions
It was a big session for health legislation at the Minnesota Capitol.
Lawmakers expanded the Medicaid insurance program in February and met a federal deadline in March to pass legislation for a health insurance exchange.
As the session drew to a close, legislators passed a bill that spells out rules for how the current health insurance market can continue once the exchange gets rolling. And a bill signed by Gov. Mark Dayton on Thursday outlines the future for MinnesotaCare, a state health insurance program for lower-income families.
Minnesota politics shaped by grassroots involvement
What a difference one election can make.
The list of populist achievements in this year’s legislative session is long and impressive. Marriage equality. A new health care exchange free of insurance industry conflicts of interest. “Ban the box” legislation opening up access to employment for ex-offenders and moving us one step forward to closing the racial jobs gap. There will be fairer taxation, all-day kindergarten, and a stronger MinnesotaCare.
It’s a day-and-night difference from the last Legislature, whose Republican majorities refused to raise taxes and caused a state government shutdown. They placed the anti-marriage-equality and photo ID amendments on the ballot, and used Obamacare as a political football.
On Election Day 2012, both amendments were defeated and the DFL won the triple crown of state government by taking control of the state House and Senate.
‘Ban The Box’ Bill In Minnesota Could Help Ex-Offenders Get Jobs
A few hours before the cops clapped handcuffs on him, James Cannon, a student at the University of Minnesota, was feeling better than ever about his prospects for the future: He’d just handed in his last college paper and was looking forward to a well-paying career in the medical field.
But as he celebrated at the bar that night, he had a few too many drinks and traded insults with a stranger. The words led to blows, and someone called the police, who caught Cannon holding onto the stranger by his backpack and charged him with attempted theft. For years after that, whenever Cannon applied for a job, he had to check off a box denoting his criminal record.
The once-promising young college graduate found himself working in a warehouse for about $8 an hour, picking up boxes of mashed potatoes that had fallen off a conveyer belt. “I never saw myself doing that kind of job,” he said. “But you have to be humble when you have a record.”
Profiles in Excellence: Justin Terrell rages against the machine
The system is broken and it needs to be fixed.
For Justin Terrell it is just that simple. The current way the country goes about servicing and caring for its poor is in dysfunction. In the eyes of Terrell, something has to change, and he is at the forefront of a growing movement for change. Make no mistake, Terrell is not just a voice for change, he is quickly becoming an agent for change. The 32-year-old former college football running back, is attacking poverty in the same bruising style in which he ran the ball.
“For the past 10 years I’ve done direct service work,” said Terrell, who is the program manager for TakeAction Minnesota’s Justice 4 All campaign. “After doing 10 years of really cool work I was dismayed at the way the system is set up to keep people poor.”
