Why are you running for mayor?

“We deserve a city where everyone can afford a safe and stable place to call home. We deserve community safety solutions that are grounded in our shared humanity and responsive to our diverse needs. We deserve a mayor who acts with honesty and integrity. We deserve leadership that will meet the urgency of our climate crisis. We deserve an interconnected and multigenerational city with a vibrant, worker-centered economy and thriving public schools.

“I'm running for mayor because Minneapolis is at a moral moment right now. We can either continue down this same path for another four years, or we can make a change.

“We have everything we need to solve our most pressing problems as a city – but gridlock and division are making it impossible for our city to get things done. Our current mayor has awarded jobs and contracts based on personal loyalty rather than qualifications. The antagonism between the Mayor and the City Council has created dysfunction, which negatively impacts everyone who lives here.

“Under the threat of the Trump administration, it’s more important than ever that our city government can work together. I’m running because we deserve a mayor who can build consensus and trust out of division, one who will govern with integrity. I believe in us – and I know that with the right leadership, we can build the city we deserve together.”

As mayor, how will you advocate for immigrants and communities of color?

“Our city’s immigrant neighbors and communities of color deserve a mayor who will center the needs, joys, and successes of their communities, who will invest in their homes, neighborhoods, and businesses, and who will make sure they have the safety and stability they need to thrive. Our communities deserve leadership that will show up in their neighborhoods consistently to support them, not just to curry votes.

“Our communities of color and immigrants need safe, stable, and affordable housing. They need protection from state violence from the Trump administration. They need a community safety ecosystem that is focused on responding to their needs and keeping them safe. They need principled leadership that will advocate for them across all forms of government.

“From co-chairing the Minnesota Poor People’s Campaign to working with the County to bring HIV care to Black and Brown communities, I’ve spent years building relationships with communities of color and with immigrant communities across the city. I will bring those relationships and that trust into the Mayor’s Office. This isn’t theoretical for me – I’m talking about the neighborhood that my husband and I live in and the people we call neighbors and friends. I will continue to work with the people I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with in the past 12 years, and I’ll continue to build relationships with those I haven’t worked with yet to advocate for our communities.”

Should homeless encampments be allowed to exist in Minneapolis? When should the city clear homeless encampments?

“The encampments popping up in our city are a reflection of our failure to adequately care for our neighbors. We should be working to prevent and depopulate encampments as quickly as possible by offering support and services, not with bulldozers and police.

“Mayor Frey’s go-it-alone approach has left us isolated from important partners in this work. As Mayor, I will build on the relationships I have with the County, the State, and non-profits to coordinate a humane response to this crisis. We need more shelter beds and safe and community-led alternatives to shelter. We also need to support non-profit and public developers in building significantly more deeply affordable housing. With me as Mayor, Minneapolis will be a trusted leader in coordinating and growing the supports and services our unhoused neighbors need.

“My administration will work tirelessly to do better by our unhoused neighbors and to offer better, safer options. In a city as prosperous as ours, there’s no reason why anyone’s best option should be sleeping outside. There shouldn’t be encampments in our city because our unhoused neighbors deserve better.”

Do you agree with how the city handled its presence at the federal drug investigation on Lake Street in June, and how can Minneapolis improve its response in future incidents?

“Mayor Frey handled the raid poorly. Even though he was aware of the raid before it happened, he didn’t immediately tell the City Council, leading to significant confusion. He accepted wholesale the explanation for the raid that the Trump administration offered, even as they have consistently lied and deceived to advance their campaign against immigrants. And afterward, he and his team seemed more interested in telling the city how well they handled the situation and blaming our neighbors who showed up to ask questions for causing confusion. The truth is that our mayor has lost the trust of much of our community, and that lack of trust exacerbated an already tense situation.

“Minneapolis deserves a mayor who will be transparent with us about federal activity in our city and will work together with our city council in times of crisis. We deserve a mayor who will push his administration, including the police department, to demand transparency from federal agencies and not just accept their explanations for their actions in our city. We deserve a mayor who our neighbors can trust, who will show up in a crisis to offer support and leadership. And we deserve a mayor who will recognize that accountability is a necessary part of leadership, will acknowledge what has gone wrong, and will be proactive in challenging the Trump administration’s actions.

“The people of our city have shown time and time again our capacity to care for our immigrant neighbors and our commitment to keeping them safe. Now we need leadership that reflects those values.”

Do you support the policing reforms in the recently abandoned federal consent decree against Minneapolis police? If yes, how should the city ensure these reforms are enacted?

“Our city deserves a police department that is both responsive to the diverse needs of our neighbors and is fully accountable to them. The investigations done by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights showed what our neighbors had been telling us for years: that there is a pervasive culture of bias and discrimination in our police department.

“The federal consent decree required important and necessary reforms for our police department, and it’s important that our city doesn’t put those reforms aside just because the federal government has. We should integrate any reforms in the abandoned federal consent decree into the state agreement so that our city and our police department have formal and legal accountability to enact them. The Mayor’s Office has made this process seem impossible, but legal experts and the Department of Human Rights say that it’s a straightforward process. As Mayor, I’ll get it done.”

How can the city make up for lost federal grants and revenue due to cuts from the Trump administration?

“Things are hard right now. These cuts from the Trump administration will impact our neighbors’ lives in many ways, from disaster relief to food support to healthcare. We need to address this with the urgency it requires and recognize that our most vulnerable communities stand the most to lose from these cuts.

“When I say our city has everything we need to solve our problems, I mean it. Ours is a city with an abundance of generosity, ingenuity, and care. But we need principled, collaborative leadership to bring together everything our city has to offer, especially in the face of this hostile administration.

“We need an all-hands-on-deck approach to these funding cuts. We need to deepen our relationships with the County and the State to imagine how we can come together to support our neighbors. We need to create a culture within city government that invites in and celebrates experts, leaders, and innovators to work with our communities in new ways. We need to be asking the foundations and corporations that call Minneapolis home to step up in the face of this crisis. Responding to this federal administration will take all of us, but together, we can care for our city and our neighbors.”