Dedication
"If your plan is for one year, plant rice.
If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
If your plan is for one hundred years, educate the youth"
- Guan Zi
Ten years ago I ran for this very office. We were the ONLY campaign in the state of Minnesota to have police reform or tuition free universities on our ballot. Today more and more people are killed by police, and student loan debt has increased by astronomical levels.
Six years ago, Philando Castille was killed by police less than a football field from my front door. Violence produced by those meant to provide peace was right outside our home, and it changed our community forever.
Four years after that, George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis, sparking the costliest period of social unrest in American history. The school I work at was burned to the ground. Once again the terrible effects of police violence has come to the front door. Our school was homeless until late last year, a school with no school.
I have been teaching social studies for several years now. A nearly all of my career has been in alternative and urban settings. In 2020 the Covid pandemic began and turned all of our world's upside down. I went from being an underpaid, overworked teacher, to an underpaid, incredibly overworked teacher. Overnight we were forced to become teachers, networkers, digital designers, and computer moderators. All of us had to learn how to adapt to a completely new economy. The world is still catching up, and the problems we already faced have been greatly exacerbated.
Now here we are in 2022 still facing the same pandemic. Schools and hospitals that were already struggling with damaged and broken systems are now pushed passed the brink.
At any given day 20% of staff and students are out sick. We are facing Teacher shortages and substitute teachers are not available. Some schools are grouping online students into auditoriums. Teachers unions are voting to go on strike. How bad do things have to get before our party and government adequately address them?
Parents, governments, the medical community, and schools can't agree on a course of action because the wrong things have been politicized and all of us are caught in the middle. Especially our children. We must do better for our children, but in order to do better, we have to be better.
That is why I am running, for a more proactive party and a more inclusive, responsive government. I am running for our future, because only together can we be the change we need for the future.
