When I was 11 years old, a teacher from another classroom decided that the whole school needed to have assigned seats in the lunchroom. We weren’t asked about it, we weren’t consulted, we weren’t told why, were simply assigned seats at someone else’s whim. As luck would have it, we had just been learning about the U.S. Constitution and the right to freedom of assembly in social studies. Outraged by the blatant trampling of our rights and liberties by an unjust and undemocratic authority, and burning with the righteous desire to sit next to my friends at lunch, I organized a petition and a walk-out. I couldn’t believe it when dozens of my classmates follow suit. After a cruel loss of recess privileges and further organized protest, the administration relented. We won the right to sit where we pleased. 6th Graders of the World Unite!
It may sound small, writing about my first collective organizing victoy well over twenty years later. But for me, it was the point of no return. Once I knew what it felt like to change the world in a way that directly affected me and the people I cared about, once I knew that it was possible, there was no going back.
It’s easy to think of history as something that happens to us. I think of history as what happens when ordinary people come together and decide to take ordinary action in an extraordinary moment.
Defeating the Voter Restriction Amendment – at the same moment that Minnesota as a state rejected putting hate and homophobia into our constitution – affirms all that is best in ourselves and in our vision of a peoples’ state. We now know that when we come together through a vehicle for committed and disciplined action, we can beat back the forces of exclusion and coroprate power. We know that when we say “democracy”, we’re talking about concrete values that run through our hearts and our lives.
Now is the time to dream big, to ask for big things. We can decide that for us, there is no going back.
Through the campaign to Defeat Voter Restriction, we’ve formed a new kind of power and connection to one another as a movement. Together, we can define a progressive agenda for Minnesota – beginning with fair taxation for our state, fair employment that ends our worst-in-the-nation racial jobs gap, and healthcare for all. We can build the kind of long-term community and political infrastructure to make that agenda real.
We can no longer afford to imagine our issues as separate or isolated. We come from different histories and experiences, but we are interconnected. Our issues are interconnected fronts in the same fight for justice, and for a world that we can leave to our children and children’s children.
I am so grateful for having been a part of this fight with all of you. I will carry this past year with me for the rest of my life, and as I continue to fight for a peoples’ Minnesota where all of us can thrive. Let these victories change you. Let them sink in and wreak havoc with your ambition and imagination. Dream big. Ask for big things. Let us support and hold one another in becoming the people and movement we want to be. On November 30th, TakeAction will honor Our Vote Our Future and Minnesotans United for All Families at our annual awards and celebration dinner. I can’t wait to see you all there.
Liz Loeb
Liz Loeb is TakeAction Minnesota’s Democracy Campaign Manager and led our work to defeat the Voter Restriction Amendment.
