What’s working in Minnesota?

Posted October 29, 2013

Consider what life is like in our neighboring states in the upper Midwest.

To the south, in Iowa, farm and rural activists are fighting off factory farms at every turn.  Farther away, Illinois is continually facing a looming financial crisis.  To the west, North Dakota continues trying to limit a woman’s freedom to choose by passing the most restrictive anti-choice laws in the country.  And to the east, Wisconsin state government resembles that of Mississippi, restricting the right to vote and sitting idle as its health care costs skyrocket.

Meanwhile, here in Minnesota the list of populist accomplishments in the last 12 months is long and impressive… being the first state to defeat both the Voter Restriction and Anti-Gay Marriage Amendments, turning around six months later to pass Marriage Equality, passing historic Ban the Box legislation, Homeowner’s Bill of Rights, The Dream Act, increased progressive revenue and closed corporate tax loopholes, and expanded and strengthened health care coverage.  The list goes on.

What’s working in Minnesota that we are breaking through the same barriers that are holding other states back?

For one thing, nothing that has happened here in Minnesota has happened overnight.  For years, organizers and activists have laid the groundwork for what just recently emerged as a grassroots movement. … Continue reading »

Sarah Greenfield, 1.3 million Minnesotans

Posted May 29, 2013

2013 was an incredible legislative session to be part of the movement for universal healthcare in Minnesota.

Many years we find ourselves on the defense, working as hard as we can just to keep the public health care programs we have, forced to choose just one priority in order to win anything, with little or no additional capacity to think about the long term and move forward. This was not that year, but it wasn’t a cake-walk either.

Real people stepped up and stepped forward into the weedy, wonky world of “health insurance exchange” policy and wrestled it into a simple, urgent message: “People At The Center.” Rather than leaving it to “the experts,” Minnesotans called, emailed, and visited legislators and the Dayton administration to make sure that Minnesota’s new exchange, now called MNsure, was built to serve the needs of people who need healthcare, not the industry that profits off selling it. This meant fighting back the top priorities of big insurance companies in order to keep people on the payroll of big insurance off of our MNsure board, and to allow MNsure to negotiate with insurers for the best plans and the best prices.

At the same time, a strong alliance of diverse organizations worked with the Dayton administration and legislature to make sure that federal health care reform would maintain and expand MinnesotaCare into a model program for states around the country.… Continue reading »