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I don't know about you, but last week's Minneapolis City Council meeting was another deep sigh for me. In the microseconds between the new council's being sworn in and causing what my council member, LaTrisha Vetaw, described as the most chaotic meeting of her tenure, those of us with a different perspective on the city saw our hopes dashed that the council might demonstrate collegiality and confront real problems, like youths' connection to fentanyl, youth violence and youth depression.
As a teacher at Minneapolis South High School, in the center of the triangle that links the Third Precinct, George Floyd Square and the epicenter of the 2020 burning of Lake Street, I see the effects of our collective dysfunction on the faces of children every day. When one adds the influx of Central American refugees into the mix, it becomes, as a colleague noted, a "tinder box" for problems.
I can tell you of a young man showing up at South only to deal fentanyl out of the bathroom. I can tell you stories of a gang hit only narrowly thwarted in the lunchroom. I can explain how teachers' cars are stolen right from the lot and no one does anything. I can share about a student who said she "didn't feel safe anywhere" or how another stated, "it feels like the world just wants us to be quiet."
In a word, I can express to you how kids are hurting. Deeply, profoundly hurting. You won't find this on a data sheet or a police report and it's not something our community can just dump at the feet of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
There are some in our community who would rather cry about issues on the other side of the globe than roll up their sleeves to care for those right in our backyard. Why? Well, from my perspective, it's because it's easier.
It's easy to hold a news conference and complain, and it gets you like-minded donor money from across the country, too. Win-win for those who only care about power. By contrast, it's difficult to look children in the eyes as they tell you about their homelessness, or how their parents just overdosed, or while you help them search the city for a free coat. It's difficult to sit down with parents and try to help them realize that some of their actions are harming their children, or work with community members to make sure that programming can continue in a city that is quickly coming to financial ruin.
There is a word that has become taboo in our culture and I'm going to make it "en vogue" again. That word is accountability. First we are accountable for our own actions, and second we are accountable to the children we raise.
Why are we, as a community, allowing leaders to rise who would decry the "harm" to children across the world, but not decry the harm in their own community? Not one member of the progressive front of the City Council seems to care about what happens at MPS unless it involves an endorsement from my union. I've never heard one complain about children having to navigate dangerous streets as they go to the light rail to get home. I've never heard one hold a news conference about how we need to protect children from the dangers of the most dangerous drug in our shared history. I've never seen or heard any of them on the grounds of my school.
Why?
Perhaps it's because migrant children don't endorse candidates, and teenagers in crisis can't make a donation. And neither group can vote.
We are only as well as our most vulnerable. Our city is sick. There is no clearer evidence than the children who struggle to make it every day in a world where those in power choose to ignore them.
One day, the check comes due. Perhaps it is today.
Becka Thompson is the Second District commissioner on the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and a teacher.
