At TakeAction Minnesota we believe in safety and justice for all. We believe in a future where every person is free to live lives that are joyful, stable, creative, and fulfilling. No matter the color of our skin, we all deserve to live in communities where we feel safe and our lives are valued.
Right now, the Minneapolis City Council is in the process of passing a 2021 budget. In the first annual city budget since the murder of George Floyd by ex-MPD officers, this should be the moment the City comes together to pass a budget that supports safety and justice for all. This should be the time we acknowledge harm and inaction from the past and present and chart a new path forward with our collective resources.
Without question, we deserve a much bolder vision than is being presented by local elected officials in Minneapolis this year. The cost and harm of MDP’s failures is incomprehensible. They are historic failures, not personal to any one Mayor or police chief. More than 40 organizations, including TakeAction Minnesota support the 2021 People’s Budget, a practical, life-affirming budget for a healthy city where everyone can thrive, not just survive. A better future is possible.
While we continue to organize and elect leaders who will fund our lives, the choice in front of us is clear.
The Minneapolis City Council’s Safety for All budget is a step forward
On December 9th, the Minneapolis City Council will vote on a final budget for 2021. Minneapolis City Councilors Phillipe Cunningham, Steve Fletcher, and Lisa Bender put forward a Safety for All budget that moves the city forward by investing in mental health crisis response teams, investing in violence prevention, moving nonemergency reporting out of MPD. These are basic, non-controversial reforms that can have a long-term positive impact for the City and are broadly supported by the public. In other words: this is the bare minimum, but a meaningful path to build on and reflects the direction cities across the country are taking including Austin, Chicago, and New York City.
The Safety for All proposal keeps 2021 recruitment classes (which the Mayor wants), does not include layoffs, and is paid for by capping overtime pay and reducing workload on police. It’s meaningful but not radical, a proposal that should have unanimous support by the City Council.
Whether crime goes up or down, MPD always demands more
The other choice on the table from Mayor Frey would add millions of more dollars to MPD’s budget. The additional funding does not include a plan or strategy for making the city safer. It does not hold MPD accountable for how it will spend $179 million in 2021, and it does not address racism that’s at the heart of our policing system. It is clear from public hearings that our current system is not working to keep people safe. MPD is fully funded. Whether crime goes up or down, MPD always demands more funding, spreading fear until the budget process is done.
This comes at the cost of investing in strategies that actually keep us safe and cared for. Thriving communities aren’t the ones with the most police. They are the ones with community trust, opportunities, and resources for everyone to thrive (again, see the People’s Budget and what we could be investing in instead of bloated police budgets every year). Minneapolis deserves a better path forward which the City Council’s plan moves us toward.
MPD will never be satisfied with its budget. We can keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars on strategies that aren’t working to keep people safe and subsequent lawsuits incurred by MPD or we can create a better path forward. We applaud the Minneapolis City Councilors trying to get us off the merry-go-round despite Mayor Frey’s comments that paint a commonsense, non-controversial budget as something different than it is.
We urge the Minneapolis City Council to vote YES on the Safety for All budget.
As we look ahead to 2021, a year Minneapolis voters will decide who leads our city, we hope there will be a more thoughtful discussion about who benefits from the decisions and priorities of our local government. This year has closed with stifled political leadership on police accountability, a fading public memory about the harm MPD has inflicted on Black, brown, Indigenous, and immigrant communities, and lack of meaningful discourse about community safety, especially as it relates to the pandemic and fact that our federal government abandoned its people by providing almost no financial assistance during this crisis. We can and must do better.
We urge the Minneapolis City Council to vote unanimously for the Safety for All budget.