Just thinking again how Democrats asked people to accept short-term suffering in order to give space to prevent long-term, worse suffering and then said, "Thanks for suffering in the short-term. You'll get to suffer long-term too so that our Thanksgiving plans don't get disrupted."

It is absolutely WILD to have people call me a moderate because I'm explaining a collective action problem on the left. I'm not some fucking moderate asking people to come to the center. I am a leftist asking other leftists to get serious about wielding power.

Jacob Frey is the worst of all possible outcomes. Progressive electeds and orgs could have thrown their weight behind a more viable candidate. But they didn’t. Here’s a quick and dirty explainer about how we ended up with Jacob when most people can’t stand him.

I am still so mad about this that I broke out the colored pencils, so I could do a little RCV explainer. Something is seriously wrong with me that this is what I am doing with my Saturday night, but here goes (a thread):

We wouldn’t need center left orgs if we had progressive electeds and orgs that took seriously the shape of our electorate, how RCV actually works, & were serious about beating Jacob. Either they don’t understand how the shape of our electorate plays out in RCV or they don’t care about beating him.

The truly maddening thing is that, unlike when I was a young man in science and the materials and engineering just weren’t there yet, the future is *right there.* The problem is *solved*. What’s holding us back is not just greed, but this bizarre nostalgia, an obsession with petro- masculinity.

did u know that CD5 DFL chair, Scott Graham, was not only Perall Warren’s campaign manager, he *also* chaired the shit show that was ward 5 DFL convention. Scott Graham was also one of the main challengers to the Mpls DFL convention, led the platform to kick DSA out of the DFL & stalked Sam Doten.

My RCV take: It’s not preventing Minneapolis progressives from achieving desired city-wide results. It is actually showing that progressives are close even when not winning. And it’s affirming something about the electorate that we don’t understand, can’t accept, or don’t know what to do about.

Also: this data is about women mayors, mostly, but men mayors of color also faced steeper climbs and larger barriers. Donors are less likely to find for all the reasons you say, and race and gender magnify the problem: mayorsinnovation.org/under-pressu...

People are out here blaming RCV for Jacob's win. And I cannot stress this enough: RCV had literally nothing to do with it. Everything about this outcome was entirely predictable. Jacob had huge structural advantages: compliant local media, off-cycle election, PAC $, patronage networks.

The annoying thing is, this isn't even a counterfactual! RCV allows them to make this choice! They are voting that they do not have a preference between Fateh and Frey and people are pretending that if there weren't two questions before that, they would magically feel differently!

This is the fantasy that binary would create a winning coalition that doesn’t exist. It will persist as long as RCV doesn’t elect a mayor (even though it did with the most liberal mayor we’ve had in 2013). People will imagine an alternate timeline which can never be disproved.

This is just bad journalism/data visualization from Sahan Journal. Fundamentally misunderstands and misrepresents the election. And on top of that, feeds a narrative that Jacob is far more popular than he is.

Here's another bit of conventional wisdom Zohran completely blew away: His speech was at well above a 10th-grade level. It was complex, erudite, punctuated by deep and fluent references. You don't have to condescend to voters with baby talk! Part of re-establishing norms is speaking like an adult.

This is just not correct. RCV doesn’t split the vote. That is quite literally the point. One of the main advantages of RCV (or, single transferable vote) is that it doesn’t create spoilers like SMDP. The problems are again like 2021 structural and strategic, not due to the method of voting.

Just when I think I cannot love this guy more, he’s out here farming and finding peace in connecting with the earth. Isaiah Stewart for life!

I have read water & energy footprint analyses about paper or plastic or reusable cotton bags. The takeaway in all of them is that none are clearly better. However, eating meat (especially beef) & driving to the grocery store are several orders of magnitude more important & harmful

Paper or plastic? Trees or petroleum. Doesn't matter if there is meat in your bag. @waiterich.bsky.social (Your own reusable bags are better.)

I will say it until I’m out of breath but if you’re critical of colleges offering “fake” degree programs with absolutely no intellectual rigor, start with the undergrad business degree or I’m not taking you seriously. 100% fake curriculum of airport Leadership slop.

JB on Isaiah Stewart:” It's his heart. It's his courage. It's his determination. It's his grit. It's his love of the Detroit Pistons, the city of Detroit," Bickerstaff said. "He plays for them, he plays for his teammates and he was undeniable tonight."

St. Paul folks: Do you know of any fancier restaurants in St. Paul that have vegan options? I'm really struggling to find any restaurants that are appropriately nice for a special occasion and have a single vegan option. Please help!

steve minn has said that he voted for donald trump three times, and his company lupe developmment gave safer hennepin $25k for them to send mailers calling for republicans to vote for jacob frey the media not writing about the conservative DFL / republican alliance this year is a failure!

This Jacob Hill quote gives away the Frey team‘s true mission: to control the Minneapolis politics from the outside. Their motivation is not the betterment of Minneapolis citizens. Their profit-driven cause is about the full metro area economy - to help both Republicans and Democrats get rich.

Election 2025: Sample Ballot/Index of Posts naomikritzer.com/2025/10/31/e...

How do the resources devoted to domestic violence investigations compare to the resources devoted to clearing encampments and destroying neighbors' most valuable and meaningful possessions? Just wondering.

I'm grateful to have the support of neighbors in every part of this city, people who are ready for leadership that reflects our shared values. I hope you'll rank me first for Mayor of Minneapolis on November 4 because we deserve better.

Good grief. Instead of using taxpayer money to make sure people have food to eat, we're using it to make sure they don't, and then arrest and jail them for trying, too. Spend 10x as much to get a 10x worse result.

Furthermore public transit teaches you how to live with temporary minor annoyances and cars teach you that you're god's most special baby and your moment-to-moment comfort is the only important thing in the world

I'm reminded of an APSA TLC Conference in which political science professors tied themselves in knots trying to figure out how they could teach about race, gender, etc. without violating right-wing DEI bans. Appeasing the fascists, rather than fighting back, is what got us here.

Under Trump, the draconian future of homelessness policy is coming into focus: mass internment. Utah is building a 16-acre site to detain up to 1,300 homeless people inside locked "accountability centers." This is profoundly alarming. Vital reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social and Jason DeParle:

LOL #NotAllMinnesotans

I will never understand why Minnesotans are like this. Personally, I prefer people who have lived in multiple states and countries, who have navigated different cultures, encountered different types of people, and evolved as people as they learn from those experiences.

JB: "These are identity wins for us. We didn’t play perfect but I thought we out-hustled them, out-gritted them in both games."

JB: "To beat a good team on their floor, in a game with the style we want to play ... to get this win was great for us."

Also I need everyone to read this by @dansinker.com. I rarely cry about anything. I'm sitting here in tears a few minutes before I have to leave for my dance gig tonight. Chicagoans are fighting for each other, all. Hard. Whatever happens, we're not going quietly. dansinker.com/posts/2025-1...

I just sat in a meeting in which the person in charge of adjudicating academic dishonesty cases at my university told a room full of faculty that they visited a class and taught students how to use ChatGPT better, so that hallucinated citations wouldn't give their plagiarism away on assignments.

Great thread from Angela Denker illustrating the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of Strib CEO Steve Grove. Explains paper’s continued degradation into mush.

I am so ready for the Pistons' season to begin tonight! Watching this video on loop to get myself all psyched up.

In Minneapolis, a network of big $ political committees—All of Mpls, We Love Mpls, and Thrive Mpls—share donors, staff, and messaging. In July, We Love Mpls was cited by the Campaign Finance Board (CFB) for violating disclosure rules. Here's why all of them could be in violation of MN laws. 👇

I started my job as a professor in 2013. It was already pretty obvious to me that we would experience fascist consolidation in the US pretty shortly. I started assigning From Dictatorship to Democracy every time I taught my social movements class. Partly to plant seeds.

We’re building a Hennepin Co. where harm is met with repair, not retribution. Follow us to learn how communities can respond to harm in ways that actually make us safer. Let’s transform justice — together. Learn more and support our vision at transformativejusticealliance.org

I was recently in a faculty meeting in which a colleague said “why shouldn’t we teach students to use Chat GPT to generate ideas for them?” I could not stop myself from saying “because it is quite literally our jobs to teach them how to come up with ideas themselves.” Yikes and a half.

We’re building a more effective response to harm in Hennepin County. One that helps harmed parties heal, helps responsible parties reject the use of violence, and creates the conditions for lasting safety in our communities. Learn more at transformativejusticealliance.org

This isn't a new insight, but: the people who are always ready to put a Black teenager on trial as an adult sure do like extending the "youth will be youth" excuse in other contexts— not just to college students like Kavanaugh, but to, e.g., 35-year-olds on a Young Republicans group chat.

Today is the 59th anniversary of the creation if the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Founded by Huey P Newton (RIP) and Bobby Seale, the Black Panther was actually a symbol from the 761st Tank battalion and the Bloody Lowndes Democratic formation. Bobby Seale turns 88 one week from today

One fun thing about being a political scientist during fascist consolidation is wondering basically every day "Is this the day I lose my job for teaching empirical research about racial discrimination in the United States? FUN TIMES

The Transformative Justice Alliance is building survivor-centered systems of justice grounded in healing, accountability, and transformation in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Learn more at transformativejusticealliance.org

I just checked and this is real. It's on Border Patrol's official Instagram (I don't see it on Facebook) and is being celebrated by Nazis on Twitter, as you can see in the screenshot. The clip is just 13 seconds long too, so it's a very intentional thing. We've got a Nazi government.

These young Republicans are being sacrificed by older, more entrenched Republicans not because they disagree, but because it’s strategic. They can point to this largely symbolic ouster as evidence that their party “isn’t racist” while the Republican Party is quite literally doing fascism.