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It wasn’t a huge shock to racial justice organizers in Minneapolis when the votes were counted. During the city’s elections on Nov. 2, 56% of voters voted down “Question 2,” a ballot initiative offering the opportunity to replace the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) with a new, community-oriented public safety model.
“I was sad and disappointed in many ways,” Kandace Montgomery, co-director of Black Visions Collective, a Minneapolis-based community organization, tells TIME. “I think what we did was nothing to sneeze at—turning out over 60,00 people to vote on transformation like this—but it was a hard fight.”
The work of community organizers is never done. So, undeterred, they are now looking forward to their next steps in addressing public safety issues across the city and calling for reforms in and around the MPD.
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“We need to sit with people and talk to them about what a real vision for safety in Minneapolis could be,” Montgomery says. “We need to ensure that the incoming council and our mayor are being held accountable to the promises they made during the campaign trail.”
The Minneapolis mayoral race was a tight one, with incumbent Jacob Frey winning re-election on a ranked-choice ballot with 56% of the vote. During his victory speech, Frey called for unity in the work towards police reform. He has previously worked with community groups to implement violence interruption initiatives across the city.
“All of the work around safety and accountability is complex. None of it you can fix with a hashtag or a slogan or a simplistic answer,” Frey, who opposed Question 2, said. “I’m hopeful that we will be able to dig in… in a united fashion.”
Though much community-led work was already being done to reshape policing, the work and activism Frey referenced was kicked into a new gear nearly 17 months ago when George Floyd was killed at the hands of a then-MPD officer, Derek Chauvin, during a May 2020 arrest. A movement to reform…
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Source : time
