I was thrilled to see the news that Robin Wonsley Worlobah announced her candidacy for Minneapolis City Council for 2021.
I met Robin in 2016 during the campaign fighting for a $15 minimum wage in Minneapolis. She was leading a large political meeting, energizing a room of diverse working class people to put pressure on our elected officials. Immediately I experienced Robin’s powerful speaking style and clear, fearless, political voice.
Since then, I have always known Robin to be a community leader with a great ability to help her neighbors understand and influence local politics. Robin has experience where we need it, in people’s movements: the fight for $15 in Minneapolis, defending workers’ rights with Education Minnesota, and Black Lives Matter. Robin knows that social movements are the engines of change, and she will bring those movements into City Hall to fight alongside her.
These are just a few policy changes Robin will fight for:
• Implement rent control.
• Keep public housing public, oppose all privatization efforts within MPHA, and massively expand public housing.
• Support the movement to reallocate MPD resources and instead fully fund a public safety system with a diversified crisis response team, an expansive mental health program, and preventative and diversionary programs.
• Full community control of all public safety agencies.
• Tax wealthy corporations to massively expand public transit, making it fully electric and free.
• Work towards a publicly owned energy utility, and a municipal bank.
• Tax the richest individuals and corporations to fund the social safety net.
Her full platform is available at robinformpls.org. You have to read it to appreciate the breadth and depth of the vision of the campaign.
Her program is far beyond anything I have ever seen from a City Council candidate in Minneapolis in my 30 years of following city politics. Despite what we’ve been told, changes like these are winnable if people’s movements have fighters like Robin in City Hall.
I am grateful for Cam Gordon’s work over these past 16 years. He’s been a great progressive at City Hall. I personally could only back someone other than Cam if they were truly exceptional and if their program showed a profound difference from politics as usual downtown. This is a historic moment in Minneapolis that calls for new leadership.
Robin Wonsley Worlobah is a Black socialist with deep ties to community and labor organizing in the Twin Cities—exactly the candidate this moment needs.
I encourage all my neighbors to look at robinformpls.com to learn more about her and support Robin for Minneapolis.
—Joe Hesla
