What is a democracy?

Well, I would say “democracy” should refer to a political system that relies upon the consent of the governed.

But, I also think it’s important for democracies to be liberal. Not necessarily in the sense of being politically left of center, but in the sense of liberty. The philosopher Charles W. Mills said liberalism is characterized by “individualism, equal rights and moral egalitarianism.”

So, the government should do what the people want, but not if it violates someone’s rights.

Essential to democracy is the free and fair administration of elections. Sham referendums on joining Russia were held recently in several regions of eastern Ukraine. According to German public media, get-out-the-vote campaigners were accompanied by armed military personnel and, in some areas, ballots were filled out in public. Such a practice is entirely contrary to democratic values because it is coercive and violates voters’ privacy.

There’s a world of difference between this instance of Russian contempt for democracy and the aftermath of the 2020 election in the U.S. Yet, this contempt does have its American parallels: Despite overwhelming evidence, some people continue to believe the election was bogus.

One of them wants to help run Minnesota’s elections.

Among other things, the Minnesota Secretary of State oversees statewide elections and runs the statewide voter registration system.

The Republican nominee for the position, Kim Crockett, has called the 2020 election “the big rig.” She also said a potential change to federal voting law was “our 9/11.” Last September, she said she’s “always loved the American Revolution, and now we get to live through the second one.”

To put it mildly, the prospect of someone who ignores basic facts and talks of “revolution” being in charge of some of our election infrastructure is concerning.

Crockett also seems to have particular animus for certain groups of voters. In 2019, she was put on leave from her job at a conservative think tank after she said of Somali immigrants, “These aren’t people coming from Norway, let’s put it that way. These people are very visible.” She later apologized for her comments.

In 2020, Crockett said, “The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that indeed you can help an unlimited number of people vote if they are disabled or can’t read or speak English, which raises the question, should they be voting?”

These quotes put into sharp focus the relationship between our current battles over election results and the historical realities of American democracy. It’s both the case that we face new threats, and that our current system has flaws.

Chou Moua works with the Hmong Outreach Network and has experience interpreting for Hmong voters who have limited English skills.

“Just because you don’t speak a certain language, doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to the same human rights,” he said.

Moua highlighted that many people in the Hmong community helped the U.S. during the so-called “Secret War.” From 1964 to 1973, alongside the war in neighboring Vietnam, the U.S. bombed Laos in an attempt to cut off communist supply lines, and supported the Lao Royal Army against the communist Pathet Lao. During that war, tens of thousands of Hmong people died. Laos, the homeland of many Hmong, would become, “on a per-person basis, the most bombed nation in history.”

“One of the people that we’ve helped vote was one of the first nurses under the Lao Royal Army, who first served with the CIA. She’s in her 90s,” Moua said. This person, along with many other Hmong people, served with the “Secret Army,” which was funded by the CIA.

“She was a veteran even before she came to the United States,” Moua said. “We have folks who were very pivotal in building the America that we know now. And for them, they may be frail in a nursing home, dealing with unaddressed PTSD, not knowing, maybe speaking six languages, and English just happens to not be one of them.”

He continued, “But it doesn’t mean that they’re unintelligent. It doesn’t mean that they’re any less worthy of voting.”

Moua said that, for some of the people his organization has helped, voting can be an important sign of belonging. “We do have uncles and aunties crying once they get their [“I voted”] sticker, because they know that a little red tag means that they are no longer orphans of any country. They belong to this country.”

In American history, voting has often been restricted from disfavored groups. At the beginning of our country’s history, those who did not own property were not allowed to vote. Black men briefly gained voting rights during Reconstruction before they were taken away by Jim Crow. White women couldn’t vote in every state until 1920. Black people wouldn’t truly get the right to vote until the 1960s.

So, if a liberal democracy is a country in which the people tell the government what to do, and no one’s rights are denied to them, then the history of liberal democracy in America is pretty short.

The right to vote came under attack before 2020. Michael Minta, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, said the Supreme Court case Shelby v. Holder in 2012 weakened Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal think tank, the court struck down the formula that had been used to determine which states needed additional federal clearance before they could change their voting laws. After the ruling, states like Texas, Mississippi and Alabama moved to implement voter ID laws.

“Studies have shown that it could actually affect minority voters and also elderly voters,” Minta said about voter ID. According to NPR, older voters can sometimes have trouble getting the right ID. The Brennan Center, in a different article, points to evidence that voter ID laws disproportionately impact people of color.

And, while it’s been much rarer than restricting who can vote, there have occasionally been contested elections before 2020.

The election of 1876 featured a disputed outcome and violent suppression of Black voters. “If you had a fair election in the south, a peaceful election, there’s no question that the Republican Hayes would have won a totally legitimate and indisputable victory,” historian Eric Foner said.

Three states had disputed returns, with both Democrats and Republicans claiming to have won them. Congress created a commission to decide the outcome. They handed the presidency to Hayes, who later worked to end Reconstruction.

In the unlikely event that election deniers succeed in overturning an election result, it wouldn’t be the first time a democratic election in the U.S. was overturned, although it would be the first time this happened above the local level. In 1898, a group of white supremacists overthrew the city government of Wilmington, North Carolina. A white mob burned down the offices of a Black newspaper. Black residents fled to the edges of town.

The right to vote is an indispensable — and fragile — component of our democracy. It’s vital to both defend the liberal democracy we have, while also being aware of how it could be improved.

A poll from KSTP in early September found that Crockett was pretty much tied with Steve Simon, her Democratic opponent. However, a more recent poll found that Simon was ahead by eight percentage points.

We can’t let someone who believes a free and fair election was “rigged,” and questions whether people who don’t speak English should vote, become secretary of state. Please vote for Steve Simon this November.

Editor’s Note: Sean Ericson was formerly employed by AmeriCorps and worked at Pillsbury United Communities (PUC) under Ethan Neal’s supervision as part of his AmeriCorps service.

How has our country’s social safety net changed since 1993?

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I would’ve told you that, while it may have increased since then, “welfare reform” decimated benefit programs in the 1990s.

But, a recent report from the New York Times and Child Trends called my assumptions into question. As the Times put it, the reality is, starting in the 1990s, the safety net “at once became more stringent and more generous.” Pre-existing programs, especially those that helped families where the parents didn’t have jobs, were cut. But also during this period, other programs expanded, especially ones targeted at families with working parents.

The report found from 1993 to 2019, child poverty fell by 59%. In 1993, about 28% of kids lived in poverty. In 2019, that number was 11%.

This was driven by a combination of different things.

“We found two main reasons for this decline,” Renee Ryberg, a sociologist and demographer who was one of the lead authors of the report, said. “One is a healthy economy, and, complementary to that, there’s also tremendous growth in the social safety net and its role in protecting kids from poverty.”

For instance, unemployment was much lower in 2019 than 1993. More single mothers were in the labor force, and some state minimum wages were higher.

While these economic factors, as well as demographic changes, were vital to explaining the decline, safety net programs also played an important role. According to the study, safety net programs, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Social Security and food stamps (SNAP), played a much bigger role in alleviating child poverty in 2019 than in 1993.

This decline has been consistent across different places and groups.

“We found that the decline in child poverty was remarkably consistent,” Ryberg said. “There was a decline in child poverty in all 50 states and D.C. There were similar rates of declines in child poverty across almost all subgroups of children.”

However, their methodology is not perfect. Due to the limitations of the data set, some of the outcomes may be inaccurate. The impact of some programs is overestimated, while others are underestimated.

“It is standard practice, and it’s the best we have,” Ryberg said. “There’s definitely room for improvement in these simulations. They’re incredibly complicated. And I think that’s definitely an area for future research.”

Another caveat to the report is that, while child poverty has declined consistently in different groups, that doesn’t mean that inequalities between groups have gone away.

“In 1993, Black and Hispanic kids, and kids in single-parent families, were about three times as likely to live in poverty as their peers,” Ryberg said. “And this was still the case in 2019.”

This study shows that the EITC can be a very helpful program. But, one-fifth of the people who are eligible for this tax credit don’t claim it and are not accounted for in Child Trends’ simulation. And, even if they know about the program and apply, it can be burdensome, from complex forms to in-person appointments that don’t take people’s work schedules into account.

Once people are approved for the EITC, they might have to deal with even more paperwork. EITC recipients are about as likely to be audited by the IRS as the top 1% of taxpayers.

As the report shows, the EITC can be a powerful tool for fighting child poverty. But I think it could be even more powerful if we made it easier to access.

Conservative commentator Oren Cass has hailed this report as evidence that the imposition of work requirements on welfare programs was effective. Ryberg said the EITC can “pull…people into the workforce,” because “the more income you earn up to a certain threshold, the more you get in the tax credit.”

Ryberg said the role of work is one of the most important things scholars are debating. However, she and her colleagues “did not set out to answer this question of work versus the safety net.” Others have done the research, though, and there isn’t one clear answer.

One issue facing recipients of safety net programs is the so-called benefit cliff. A benefit cliff is when people receive more income through working, but then that makes them ineligible for the benefits they had been receiving.

Ethan Neal is the director of food systems at Pillsbury United Communities. He talked about his past experience trying to help adults with special needs get employment.

“Even if we wanted them to get full time work, and they could work full time, it would then throw them off Medicaid, it would then throw them out of low-income housing,” Neal said of some of his clients.

Some, he said, “were being forced into living in poverty to be able to accept the benefits that came with that.”

It’s not just in his previous work, either.

“I continue to see that with folks we work with in the food shelves,” he said, adding that about 60% of PUC’s food shelf clients have children.

The problem with benefit cliffs also ties back into the question of administrative burden. According to the National Coalition of State Legislatures, one reason for sudden benefit cutoffs is that recipients don’t understand the rules, or the rules aren’t transparent.

Neal also said safety net programs make his job easier. “Every dollar that we invest in SNAP and WIC is a better dollar spent than in a food shelf.”

However, some of PUC’s clients don’t qualify for these programs because of their immigration status. Neal said PUC works with organizations like the Volunteer Lawyers Network to try to help undocumented people obtain documentation. On the other hand, many PUC clients need help with refugee resettlement.

Ryberg said one of the changes that happened from 1993 to 2019 was the introduction of immigrant exclusion criteria to some safety net programs, criteria which aren’t always taken into account by simulations like Child Trends’. She also said, according to their findings, kids in immigrant families were 1.7 times as likely to live in poverty as kids in non-immigrant families.

Neal said a majority of people who come through the food shelf are already employed. It’s not just about whether people have jobs, he said, but the quality of those jobs.

“What is the employment that the folks in our neighborhood are able to get?” he asked.

“While there is reason to pause and celebrate this historic decline in child poverty, the work’s not over,” Ryberg said. “Millions of kids still live in poverty.”

But, the research has made clear what works to reduce child poverty, she said.

“First, we need to ensure that work is a viable option for families to support themselves. And we can do that through higher minimum wages that pay the bills, affordable, accessible childcare, so people can work and universal paid family and medical leave,” Ryberg said. “And then, when work is not a viable option, in terms of economic downturns, we also need to make sure we have an equitable social safety net so that all children have something to fall back on in times of need.”

A lot of this stuff can sound wonky, or make your eyes glaze over.

But, I want to come back to why this is important. The child poverty rate isn’t just a number on a spreadsheet. Fluctuations in that number make the difference between whether real, human children go to bed hungry or have a healthy dinner. It’s the difference between sleeping in a warm room or on the snowy street. It is life and death.

Editor’s Note: In 2019, Ericson worked as an intern for the Borgen Project, an organization that advocates to increase the U.S. foreign aid budget.

In 1977, the residents of Kinney, Minnesota, faced a big problem. The small town’s water system was old and mineral deposits were building up in the pipes.

Unable to acquire funding to fix the problem, the Iron Range town decided to declare independence. In their declaration, the town’s leaders wrote, “It is much easier to get assistance as a foreign country.” The publicity stunt worked: they got the money to fix their water system.

I commend the residents of Kinney for their ingenuity, and I am glad they got their water system fixed. The perception that the U.S. spends lavishly on other countries is a persistent one. According to opinion polling, people typically think we spend about 25% of the federal budget on foreign aid. But, in reality, it’s less than 1%.

I think we should increase this number. We already donate more than other countries in absolute terms, but we’re also the richest country in the world. We donate about 0.2% of our gross national product each year. The average for all rich countries is 0.3%, but several nations give more than 0.7%.

I don’t believe the United States is a below-average nation, and I don’t think our foreign aid budget should be below average either.

Some proponents of foreign aid are quick to point out that it doesn’t just benefit other countries. According to the Brookings Institution, foreign aid helps American national security and our economy. According to Oxfam, aid “benefits America’s interests.” And, as I wrote in this form letter to the Star Tribune on behalf of the Borgen Project, aid means “investing in future American trade partners and allies.”

But, I don’t think American interests are the primary reason we should be sending more aid to other countries. There are a lot of people suffering in the world, and the U.S. government has a lot of money. The primary benefit of foreign aid, in my opinion, is alleviating this suffering.

However, if we’re going to engage in a global project to reduce poverty, we need to make sure the things we do actually work.

I talked to Paul Glewwe, an applied economist at the University of Minnesota. He also sent me a copy of one of the more than 8,000 lectures he’s given on foreign aid. Glewwe told me research has generally found that foreign aid doesn’t increase economic growth for the receiving country unless the country already has good economic policies, though others contest these findings.

However, researchers have also found that some aid — like graduation programs — really can improve people’s lives.

Jason Kerwin is also an applied economist at the University. His research focuses on poverty and social problems in poor countries. Kerwin said the current research indicates that the most effective programs for reducing poverty are called “graduation” programs. These programs, he said, combine cash grants with various interventions designed to lift people out of poverty. Kerwin gave the examples of training on how to take care of livestock or access to credit. He said these combination programs are more effective than just cash in part because they give people access to things they might not be able to get in the regular market.

Economists are now shifting focus toward understanding the efficacy of different types of aid. The main question, Kerwin said, has become less about whether aid in general is effective and more about what type of aid is most effective.

“I think that this question of whether aid is effective is the wrong question,” he said. “It’s kind of like asking if … domestic spending is effective.”

There are so many different things the money could be spent on that it’s often more useful to look at the micro level, at whether individual programs work.

“Now, the more recent research is, you know, where’s the money really going to?” Glewwe said. “And which things work?”

Both economists told me, despite some reservations, they both agree we should increase our aid budget.

“I think we should if we use it for humanitarian purposes,” said Glewwe. “Things that work.”

“We should greatly increase our foreign aid budget. I think that is, like, absolutely morally correct,” Kerwin said. “In many cases, everybody could benefit from being a bit more thoughtful about exactly where the money is going and how helpful it is.”

The United States is the richest country in the world. We could be doing so much more to improve the lives of people around the world. I think we should.

Over the past couple of years, a new term has come into vogue: “climate anxiety.” Many media outlets have covered a rising phenomenon of mental distress caused by climate change.

It’s not like this is surprising. As the authors of one study put it, “climate anxiety is rational.” Faced with terrifying impacts like hurricanes, wildfires and droughts, it’s understandable that people are worried.

But if you’re reading this, odds are, you’re a student, staff member or other community member here at the University of Minnesota. And while our community is very diverse, most of the people reading this column are likely to be Minnesota residents who already have or are pursuing a college degree. Education is often associated with higher incomes. Both of these factors – geographic location and social status – are likely to blunt our exposure to the worst impacts of our coming climate catastrophe.

Our northern friends at University of Minnesota-Duluth live in what has been hailed by some as “climate-proof Duluth.” And in 2018, the authors of the Fourth National Climate Assessment wrote that Minneapolis and Minnesota “will be among the few places where the value of warmer winters outweighs the cost of hotter summers.”

According to Jessica Hellmann, director of the University’s Institute on the Environment, it’s not just a matter of which areas are going to be hit the hardest, but which governments have the capacity to respond.

“It’s not just that they will feel the effects of climate change,” Hellmann said about the countries most vulnerable to climate change. “They have [a] differential ability to deal with the effects of climate change.”

One such country is Bangladesh. Hellmann helped create the Global Adaptation Index, which classifies Bangladesh as having high vulnerability and low readiness. As Saleemul Huq, a Bangladeshi climate expert, wrote in March, Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries “have been seeing and feeling enhanced climatic impacts from floods, cyclones and droughts for the past decade or more.”

Huq also pointed out the inspiring Bangladeshi efforts to protect Bangladeshi communities. For instance, scientists have created new breeds of rice with higher salt tolerance, and the country has developed some of the best cyclone safety programs in the world. But impoverished nations like Bangladesh start out with fewer resources to combat climate threats.

While we aren’t at as high of a risk as Bangladesh, and we have far more resources, we still face challenges in Minnesota. Droughts and changes in weather could affect farmers, Hellmann said. And flooding is a risk, including in urban areas.

But these impacts are unequally distributed. Take heat, for example.

“We need to worry about extreme heat,” Hellmann said. “Especially in the urban center, which again, affects lower income people.” She also said flooding is an example of a climate harm that disproportionately affects those with fewer resources.

To recap: if you’re reading this, odds are you are highly educated and living in the United States, specifically Minnesota. This means that you’re at lower risk from climate change thanks to social status and geography.

I think that, as human beings, we should be concerned about climate change. But I worry that excessive focus on our own future, and the future of our families and communities, might lead to a narrowing of the boundaries of our ethical concern. I think the climate crisis calls for us to instead expand those boundaries.

Take migration, for instance. As people around the world are faced with increasingly inhospitable conditions, they may choose to move elsewhere, including to the U.S. And Minnesota has both a history and present of being a migration destination.

Jack DeWaard is a sociologist at the University who studies human migration. He has also collaborated with Hellmann. Despite many people’s hopes and fears about climate-induced migration, he said most people dealing with climate catastrophe will stay close to home.

In general, most people don’t migrate, DeWaard said. And those who do don’t usually go very far. “Most migration that happens, and this includes climate migration as well, tends to be internally within countries,” he said.

But what about people moving from more vulnerable areas within the U.S. to Minnesota?

“Sometimes there’s a lot of folks up in Duluth worrying about climate migrants coming to Duluth,” DeWaard said. But “the projections show that people generally go shorter distances.” For instance, displaced Floridians may move to Georgia or Alabama.

But what if we do get some climate refugees?

“I do worry about the reception piece,” DeWaard said. “What I think the historical record shows is that newcomers, particularly newcomers that … have a different skin tone, have a different language, a different religion, a different sexuality, then local residents are not welcoming.”

However, I don’t think this needs to be the case. DeWaard cited the example of Mongla, a city in Bangladesh that he said has tried to connect climate migrants with job opportunities, healthcare and education. I think if we can follow Mongla’s example, and remember the positive aspects of our state’s history, then we can be welcoming to whatever newcomers the climate sends our way.

When it comes to climate anxiety, Hellmann said the two best antidotes are getting involved and spending time with other people who care. “Both of these help combat a feeling of helplessness,” she said.

It’s important that we practice empathy, not just anxiety. Climate change will affect all of us, but some of us more than others.

One person, one vote.

That’s the foundation of our democracy. Right?

But that’s not how it works in the U.S. Senate. In what some might call, “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” the 29 million people who live in Texas have the same number of votes as the 600,000 people who live in Vermont.

Since the beginning, the idea that the interests of small states need special protection has been at the heart of the Senate. For the Constitutional Convention, future president James Madison wrote the “Virginia Plan,” named after his home state.

This plan would have created two houses of Congress, and in both of them, voting power would be based on state population. However, this drew criticism from smaller states like New Jersey and Connecticut, and eventually the two-body congressional system we know today was adopted.

But I’m not sure that overweighting the voting power of small states is worth keeping the Senate around. While I am a defender of federalism, I don’t think federalism needs to mean that some people’s votes count more than others. Federalism will still be protected by the substantial autonomy that state governments have — we don’t need to make the national government less democratic as well.

Certainly, eliminating the Senate could run the risk that big states like California and Texas would dominate smaller states like Wyoming and Vermont. But the idea that California and Texas would stop squabbling with each other long enough to mount a takeover seems unlikely.

Even if we assume that small and big states represent consistent blocs, the problems with the Senate outweigh the potential benefit. In theory, overweighting smaller states protects the rights of minorities in an otherwise majoritarian system.

But what about other minorities? The average state is somewhat whiter than the country as a whole. This means that in a system that gives equal representation to each state, not each person, voters of color are going to be underrepresented.

Another minority that might benefit from the Senate is people who live in rural areas. And while smaller states do tend to be more rural than bigger ones, there are still plenty of rural people in big states. So while the Senate overall favors rural areas, many rural Americans are underrepresented. For instance, 570,000 people live in Wyoming. But, 1.8 million people live in rural areas in California.

In addition to underrepresenting voters of color, the Senate also underrepresents Democrats. As our two major parties have polarized between urban and rural voters, so has the Senate. It has now become possible for one party to control a majority of the Senate with a minority of the votes. Indeed, Republicans have done this. I will admit that minority rule stings more when your favored party is the one being denied its majority.

This isn’t just true in America, either. A 2011 study by political scientist Adrian Vatter found that two-chambered legislatures are less likely to pass laws expanding the welfare state or government intervention.

But Democrats are not the only ones who can be stymied by the Senate. Just as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have become the bane of Biden’s agenda, just three dissident Senators managed to sink the Obamacare repeal in 2017.

As the writer Ezra Klein once put it, democracy is a “feedback loop.” Voters choose a candidate or faction, and then they enact their policies, and voters can then decide whether the impact was positive or negative and vote once again.

I think that when the majority of voters select a party to govern, they should be able to enact their agenda – within constitutional limits. If Republicans win a majority of the votes, they should be able to pass their policies. Same with Democrats. At present, the Senate presents an obstacle to this.

I believe states should have significant autonomy to enact their own laws and systems as their residents wish. But I don’t believe it’s worth it to overweight the voters of small states if it leads to underweighting other minorities.

The abolition of slavery. Women’s right to vote. Desegregation of schools. The Civil and Voting Rights acts. Same-sex marriage.

All of these victories for progress have one thing in common: they involve the imposition of federal power over the states.

Indeed, the old neo-Confederate line on the Civil War is that it was about “states’ rights.” But I think it’s worthwhile to consider a classic reply to that.

A state’s right to what?

Conservatives and racists are not the only ones in America who can make use of our federal system.

In fact, I believe that liberals may have to use state and local government to accomplish their goals in the near future. Democrats will likely lose control of at least one house of Congress in November, and the nation’s highest court has a solidly conservative majority.

Andrew Karch is a political science professor at the University of Minnesota who studies federalism in public policy. He said it’s true there are “general tendencies” in which liberals tend to favor federal power (and local power in large, blue cities) more than conservatives. However, those principles “can sort of be downplayed if it’s in the pursuit of certain goals that these parties also find really important,” Karch said.

In other words, the stereotype about federal Democrats and state-based Republicans isn’t always true.

After the recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson overturning Roe v. Wade, liberals need to make sure we can protect abortion rights in states where we have control. This will become especially relevant if a federal abortion ban ever gains traction.

Climate change is a global crisis. But that doesn’t mean individual states can’t take action. Examples of this include California’s recent move to restrict its state pension funds’ ability to invest in oil, and a bill introduced in New York that would impose a fee on some fossil fuel companies to help pay for climate mitigation projects.

States could also impose a carbon tax. This would run the risk of industry fleeing to neighboring states, but it could also reduce a state’s share of carbon emissions.

There’s also the question of local government. At the federal level, Democrats are usually the ones favoring centralized government. However, this trend is sometimes reversed at the state and local levels.

This, Karch said, is because of how Americans are clustered ideologically. When there are liberal cities within a more conservative state, then liberals are likely to want to decentralize power to the city level, he said, citing the work of Yale law professor Heather Gerken.

On the other hand, “many state governments are increasingly adopting preemptive laws,” which prevent cities from passing certain policies. Karch gave the example of laws which prevent cities from raising their minimum wage — laws that exist in many states.

Raising the minimum wage should be a progressive priority. A 2019 review of international evidence on the minimum wage found that raising it has a minimal effect on employment and a significant effect on raising workers’ incomes.

Plus, studies have associated minimum wage increases with other benefits as well. These include decreased rates of smoking, child neglect, teen alcohol use, teen pregnancy and low birth weight among babies.

So liberal federalism isn’t just about states vs. the federal government – it’s also about expanding upon the power of local municipalities to set their own policies.

I’m not arguing for unconditional decentralization. Like I said at the beginning, many of this country’s greatest victories for liberty and justice have been the result of the imposition of federal power over states and localities.

But, I do believe that federalism can, at times, be useful for progressives. And I also believe that the coming period — one of gridlock and conservative control at the federal level — will be one in which federalism is particularly useful.

On June 24, the pro-life movement secured a long-awaited triumph: The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center opened the door for far more restrictive abortion laws than had previously been permitted by the courts.

This is the culmination of a long battle. Opponents of abortion have spent decades building a social movement and engaging in legal strategizing. The pro-life movement’s most radical elements have even resorted to arson, murder and fetus theft.

Supporters of reproductive freedom will likely have to work for a long time to reverse this rollback in human rights.

However, we do have a couple of advantages over the pro-life movement of the early 1970s. First of all, Americans’ views on abortion are more partisan than they were back then. Second of all, the Democratic party holds a great deal of political power and can use it to protect the right to choose. This will be the key going forward. Overturning Roe took decades — but what can pro-choice leaders do right now?

The purpose of this op-ed is not to re-hash whether the Court’s decision was correct or incorrect. Many others have analyzed and critiqued the decision’s legal rationale, as well as its implications for health and for gender equality. Here, I’m preaching to the choir: what can be done right now by pro-choice leaders to alleviate the effects of this decision?

A clear — and overdue — move would be to regulate crisis pregnancy centers. Organizations like First Care in Prospect Park or Abria on campus offer to help people with an unplanned pregnancy.

However, the goal of these groups is not to inform people of all their options — it’s to dissuade them from getting an abortion. A 2018 article in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics described these centers as “Legal but Unethical.”

This is because they are not licensed like real healthcare facilities are. “Although crisis pregnancy centers enjoy First Amendment rights protections,” the doctors who wrote the article explained, “their propagation of misinformation should be regarded as an ethical violation that undermines women’s health.”

The article also outlines how many of these centers have been found to propagate misleading information, like falsely suggesting a link between abortion and later mental health problems. A recent NBC News investigation of these centers in Texas backs this up. NBC also found that these centers falsely implied that abortion could cause cancer or infertility. Nationwide, there are about three times as many of these centers as there are abortion clinics.

I’m not an expert on First Amendment law, but it seems reasonable that the government could prevent the spread of medical misinformation from groups that present themselves as health facilities.

Recently, two abortion doctors argued in the LA Times that crisis pregnancy centers should be regulated under consumer protection laws. Laws have been proposed in several states that, if passed, would crack down on these fake healthcare facilities. These include Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York (where the measure has been signed into law by the governor). There’s also a federal bill called the Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act.

There are many other things pro-choice leaders can do besides just regulating so-called crisis pregnancy centers. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said he thinks it’s illegal for states to ban an FDA-approved abortion pill if they disagree about its safety or effectiveness. While this effort may run into the FDA’s own policies, it’d be worthwhile for the Biden administration to see if those policies can be changed.

It’s also disappointing that the administration has dismissed the idea of opening abortion clinics on federal or tribal lands. While this idea could run into issues with legality and indigenous sovereignty, in this time of crisis, it’s important to explore this idea further to see if it can be done while respecting the law and the rights of indigenous people.

Given that some opponents of abortion rights are planning to prosecute people who cross state lines to seek abortion care, it’s imperative that blue-state and federal leaders do everything they can to protect those people’s rights. For instance, Gov. Tim Walz has ordered that Minnesota law enforcement not help other states prosecute people who come here to get a legal abortion.

Americans’ hard-won reproductive freedom is in crisis. We need to be building a long-term movement and plan to get the right to abortion back — but we also need to do what we can right now.

I agree with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia.

In October 2018, Saudi expat and Washington Post opinion columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered by Saudi agents, according to a U.N. investigation.

Later that month, MBS called Jared Kushner, the then-U.S. president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, to voice his confusion, according to the Wall Street Journal. According to this report, the crown prince was shocked at the international outrage that this act of murder provoked. Kushner is now a business partner of an investment fund led by MBS.

I sympathize with him. After all, Khashoggi was just one man. And airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen have killed nearly 9,000 civilians. I think it’s reasonable for MBS to wonder why one death got so much more attention than thousands.

According to a recent analysis by the Washington Post and scholars from Columbia Law School, a majority of the airstrike-capable squadrons in the coalition featured planes “developed and sold by American companies.” And according to human rights groups, the Saudi-led coalition has carried out more than 300 airstrikes that appear to have violated international law. In fact, in 2015 and 2016, some State Department officials privately fretted that the U.S. could be liable under international law if it went ahead with an arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

Yemen is home to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the World Food Programme. Twenty million Yemenis suffer from hunger and malnutrition – two-thirds of all people in the country. For children, Yemen is “a living hell,” according to UNICEF.

The Saudi government is not much kinder within their borders. According to Freedom House, an organization mostly funded by the U.S. government, Saudi Arabia is an “absolute monarchy,” which “restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties.” Women and religious minorities suffer discrimination, surveillance is “extensive,” dissent is criminalized and there are no elections.

In March, Raif Badawi was released from Saudi prison. He was first detained in 2012. In addition to jail time, he received 50 lashes per week for 20 weeks. His crime? Writing blog posts advocating for secularism. Officially, he was charged with “insulting Islam.” This is ironic, given that the Saudi government also represses Shia Muslims.

It’s true that President Joe Biden’s administration has taken some steps to reduce American complicity in Saudi brutality. In particular, they’ve banned “offensive support” for the war effort in Yemen. But defensive weapons, including air-to-air missiles, can still be sold. And many coalition squadrons have maintenance contracts with the U.S. military and American companies.

“The Biden administration came into office in 2021 breathing fire about Saudi
Arabia,” said Ron Krebs, a University of Minnesota political scientist who studies international conflict and security. But increases in the price of oil are now hammering Biden politically and Americans at the gas pump. Only “a couple of countries,” Krebs said, including the Saudis, have “excess oil production capacity to produce more in order to make up for Russian oil that’s been taken off the market.” Indeed, during Biden’s planned visit to Saudi Arabia next month, increasing oil production will likely be on the table.

Oil isn’t the only reason the U.S. has allied itself with the House of Saud. Scott Laderman, a historian at the University of Minnesota-Duluth who studies culture and U.S. foreign relations, pointed out that both governments “share a common enemy in Iran.” In fact, the Saudi war in Yemen is being fought against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who are themselves no strangers to war crimes.

The Iranian government is indeed brutal. But I don’t think the Saudis would suddenly stop opposing Iran if the U.S. stopped arms sales and other support. The two nations have been feuding for decades. The idea that the Saudis would simply give up without American fighter planes just doesn’t hold water.

Of course, while Saudi Arabia is our most valuable customer, we aren’t the only weapons store in town. China is seeking to expand their influence and “they have no interest in how [their allies] are organized domestically,” Krebs said. In fact Chinese leaders are “most interested in … making a world that is safe for autocracy,” he said.

So it’s certainly possible that if the U.S. cut off MBS, China’s President Xi Jinping would welcome the crown prince with open arms. And if that happens, it’s likely that the House of Saud would have even more leeway to oppress and murder.

But do we really need to sell fighter planes to a mass murderer simply because he might be even worse if he was buying from Chinese companies instead? Imagine if Biden suggested the U.S. should start selling arms to Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to make sure he was nicer to the people of Ukraine.

And on the subject of oil: a temporary reprieve for Americans at the gas pump is not worth the lives of Yemeni children.

In the Declaration of Independence, it says that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed, and everyone is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How many bloggers must be flogged, how many columnists dismembered, how many children starved, before America’s leaders start acting like these words mean something?

The amount you pay for rent determines a number of things: whether you have a roof over your head, how much money you have left over at the end of the month, the list goes on.

But what does the price of rent mean for your values?

It turns out, in addition to being vital in itself, housing affordability has wide-ranging implications for many of the most important issues we face as a community and as a country. As Jerusalem Demsas wrote last month in the Atlantic, laws on important issues like abortion and LGBT rights often vary from state to state. As Demsas pointed out, wealthy blue states like California, New York and Connecticut cannot claim to live up to their inclusive values if housing prices make them inaccessible to lower-income people.

While Minnesota is not as wealthy as those states, nor as blue, we face similar challenges. Minnesota is bluer than all of our neighboring states, having voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1976.

In addition to presidential election results, this means if Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion is expected to remain legal here even as it’s banned elsewhere. The president and CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States told the Associated Press last month that they’ve been “fortifying” their operation to cope with increased demand from out-of-state patients. That same president, Sarah Stoesz, also said that “an abortion ban is not an abortion ban for all people … [i]t is only an abortion ban for those who lack the means to travel to a state where abortion is safe and accessible.”

In other words, Minnesota’s abortion laws matter not just for Minnesotans, but also for those from more restrictionist states. And if those people want to live in a state that respects their reproductive rights, they will be faced with major barriers when it comes to housing.

Abortion isn’t the only reason more people will be migrating to Minnesota in the coming years. I talked to Evan Roberts, a sociology and population studies professor here at the University of Minnesota who studies housing regulations. Roberts is also affiliated with the activist group Neighbors for More Neighbors. He told me that the Twin Cities will likely experience both “direct” and “indirect” climate migration. While some people will be explicitly thinking about climate and decide that the “long-term prognosis of living in somewhere like Phoenix or Las Vegas” doesn’t look good, others, he said, will simply be tired of increasing temperatures and decide “they want to live in a cooler place.”

The 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment offered a similar prediction for the Midwest as a whole. While climate change will harm this region in many ways, such as deaths and reduced crop yields from extreme heat, it could draw people from other places. In this assessment, the authors wrote that Minneapolis and Minnesota “will be among the few places where the value of warmer winters outweighs the cost of hotter summers.” The assessment also said that limited evidence suggests that the current trend of more people leaving the Midwest than moving here could reverse, in part because of climate.

Roberts also told me that the Twin Cities already has a “fairly hot” housing market. Various support systems, such as expanded unemployment insurance, helped alleviate the economic hardship brought on by the pandemic. But that money has to go somewhere, and many people have spent it on housing. Plus, remote work means some are relocating to different homes. All of this adds up to higher housing prices, Roberts said.

And while everyone is impacted by these high prices, the most impacted are the lowest-income households. One in four people in Minnesota are burdened by housing costs, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. “Cost-burdened,” in this context, means they spend at least 30% of their income on housing. Other forms of inequality, such as systemic racism, make this deprivation even worse. That MDH report also outlines how federal laws, lending practices and zoning have made housing even less accessible for Black people.

There has been progress in some of these areas. In December 2018, Minneapolis became the first major city in America to end single-family zoning citywide. Single-family zoning (SFZ) laws ban the construction of apartment buildings; this is common throughout the country. SFZ has a long history of racism, and it still perpetuates de facto segregation today. In addition, it drives up prices. I’m glad that Minneapolis has done away with these harmful laws, but it is not the only city in the Metro. While some positive steps are being taken, both St. Paul and many suburbs still exclude denser housing from particular areas.

Roberts said that while eliminating SFZ has reduced rents in Minneapolis, more needs to be done. In particular, he said, it needs to become “more feasible to do four- and six-unit development.” With Neighbors for More Neighbors, Roberts was involved in the campaign to abolish SFZ in Minneapolis.

We could also provide more housing vouchers to help people afford rent. And expanding tenant protections, such as a right to counsel, would help people stay in their homes. However, some policies, like rent control, might not work. A working paper published by the San Francisco Fed in March found that while rent control improves stability for existing low-income residents, it makes it harder for new low-income residents to move in.

No matter what we do, we must approach it with the knowledge that housing policy matters for much more than just your monthly rent.

INTRO MUSIC

SEAN ERICSON: Hi, everyone. My name is Sean Ericson and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast by the Minnesota Daily. Together, we’ll be exploring the University of Minnesota’s students and communities with each episode.

In this episode, we’ll be discussing Interstate 94, specifically connections from downtown Minneapolis to downtown Saint Paul. We’ll learn about the history of its construction, and how it and other highways harmed BIPOC communities. We’ll also discuss proposals for how to improve this transportation system and repair these historical harms.

When this section of I-94 was first built, it intersected multiple neighborhoods, most famously the predominantly Black Rondo neighborhood of Saint Paul. According to the Minnesota Department of Transportation website, also known as MNDOT, this construction “destroyed homes and disconnected neighborhoods.” According to the MNDOT website, this led to a long-term pattern of distrust towards the Minnesota Highway Department in the affected communities. This department would become MNDOT in 1976. According to the Minnesota Historical Society, 600 families lost their homes in Rondo alone.

According to researchers from the A Public History of 35W project, in total, highway construction displaced 24,000 people from their homes in Minneapolis and 6,000 people in Saint Paul. MNDOT apologized for these harms in 2015. In 2016, MNDOT started the Rethinking I-94 project to solicit feedback from the community and develop a plan on what to do with this corridor of I-94.

Louis Moore was born in the early 1950s, where he lived in Rondo for about 12 years. He then moved to South Minneapolis before he was a teen. In Moore’s early teens, construction of 35W first began.

LOUIS MOORE: So once you started hearing the noise over there, like I said, it was like half a block a block at the most away from the actual construction area. You start wandering over there, and you see them moving houses, tearing down houses, chopping down trees, tearing up the street, just complete destruction of the whole area. Now you know, like I said I was 12, 13, 14, something like that.

ERICSON: Moore still lives in South Minneapolis. And more than half a century later, the highway’s noise and construction still negatively affects his home life.

MOORE: I can still hear it. And I’m seven blocks from it. They put up the sound barriers, which obviously made a big difference. But, you know, late at night, we got these dudes out there and motorcycles and I think they race at like two or three o’clock in the morning. You can hear that sucker all the way over here.

ERICSON: This neighborhood destruction was not unique to I-94 and 35W. According to an article in the “Iowa Law Review” by Deborah Archer, a professor at New York University School of Law and president of the American Civil Liberties Union, highway planners at both the federal and state levels target Black communities.

A similar pattern occurs in Rondo, near St. Paul. The pattern that happened in Rondo, of destroyed homes and businesses, was present “[i]n states around the country,” Professor Archer wrote.

According to Evan Roberts, professor of sociology and population studies at the University of Minnesota, there were other options to build the highway that would not have cut through the Rondo neighborhood.

EVAN ROBERTS: There was an alternative route which was proposed. Sort of, use, acquiring land from the railroads in sort of the trench sort of north, about a mile or two. It varies because it’s sort of following a natural – natural gully with the stream.

ERICSON: Dr. Ernest Lloyd is the community and research advisor for the Public History of 35W project. Lloyd used to work for MNDOT. The Public History of 35W is a research project hosted at the Hennepin History Museum that aims to document the history and effects concerning the construction of highway 35W.

For the project, Lloyd interviewed community elders and reviewed a wide variety of historical data. He says that the construction of I-35W through South Minneapolis disrupted a racially integrated community which previously supported a thriving Black middle class.

ERNEST LLOYD: Not only was there a thriving African American community, It was a middle class African American community and a thriving business district there. It was a good place to live, a good place to raise a family. It was a good place to, they felt safe in that community.

ERICSON: According to Lloyd, many African-American families living in South Minneapolis neighborhoods, like Cedar-Riverside and Hiawatha, had come to the Twin Cities from the South in order to escape Jim Crow during the early to mid 1900s.

LLOYD: An elder told me it was a promised land, if you will. Coming from a place they came from, the other part of the country, mainly the southern part of the country at that time. And the racism and oppression and all forms of degradation, lynching, what have you like that.

ERICSON: According to interviews of locals conducted by Lloyd, the construction of 35W had a dramatic effect on what had previously been a somewhat integrated community, increasing racial segregation. Archer also wrote that when an interstate was built in Syracuse, New York,  displaced Black residents mainly moved to other areas of the city while white residents mostly went to the suburbs.

Anthony Scott is a long-time Twin Cities resident, having lived in the area for seventy years. He has co-authored multiple books about the African-American community in Minnesota, including “The Scott Collection” and “Minnesota’s Black Community in the 21st Century.” When asked if highway construction increased segregation, he said yes.

ANTHONY SCOTT: I think it did because you’re displaced from areas you could afford, you’re displaced from areas where you are around people, there was schools in those areas. And so all of the communities were taken and you had to disperse. You weren’t welcome to go to the far suburbs.

ERICSON: Overall, Scott said, highways have reinforced segregation.

SCOTT: Highways have really reinforced these kinds of barriers and enforces and continues a segregated mentality. And I, I just don’t know that, how that’s going to be something real difficult. But it has been for this country to really come to grips with.

ERICSON: Highways became dividing lines between racially segregated communities in other places, too. According to Archer’s research, even in places where highway construction didn’t destroy homes, highways became a “racial barrier” segregating communities from one another.

Professor Greg Donofrio, of the U’s School of Architecture, worked with Lloyd on the Public History of 35W project. He described community elders’ memories of how the construction of 35W increased segregation.

GREG DONOFRIO: One of the older gentlemen told a story, and this just sticks with me so much, I can’t get it out of my head. He said, “Yeah, I had a lot of white friends and we played together, you know, until they moved to the suburbs.” That’s the kind of geographic movement of particularly white families moving to the suburbs, moves that were in many ways enabled by construction of the interstate highway system. 

ERICSON: Highways were crucial to this process of suburbanization. This is because they reduced the amount of time people needed to drive into the city, making it easier to work in the city and live in the suburbs.

DONOFRIO: Developers saw the potential to build homes that now with the new freeway, would only be maybe 10 minutes from downtown, whereas before the freeway, they were 20 or 25 minutes from downtown on surface roads.

ERICSON: According to Donofrio, banks and realtors deliberately excluded Black people from the suburbs using a variety of racist tactics. 

DONOFRIO: You know there were several different mechanisms that this took place, from banks that wouldn’t offer loans to prospective Black home builders or homebuyers wanting to buy homes in the suburbs or build homes in the suburbs, to realtors who wouldn’t show Black families homes in the suburbs.

ERICSON: According to Lloyd and Donofrio, in total, 24,000 people were displaced from their homes in Minneapolis, and 6,000 were displaced in Saint Paul. Scott says that highway construction and the displacement that followed was yet another part of a rising climate of racism and tension in the 1960s, from the assassinations of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and JFK to the brutality unleashed on civil rights protestors. Scott recalls the day when news broke that King was assassinated.

SCOTT: We’d watch TV and we’d see the things going on in Birmingham with putting dogs on people and putting hoses, and we’d see these things. And it’s like all this stuff was just, it’s just quite a quite a memory when you put all these things on top of it. It’s like Black people were an afterthought. We can put freeways through your area.

ERICSON: In 2015, MNDOT initiated the Rethinking I-94 project, a long-term project that involves apologizing to the communities harmed by I-94’s construction and soliciting community input on the future of the corridor. Sheila Kauppi is the Deputy District Engineer for the Metro district at MNDOT and corridor director for the Rethinking I-94 project.

SHEILA KAUPPI: Rethinking I-94 started with a healing ceremony in the Rondo community in 2015, where MNDOT apologized, along with many others from the city and the county, for past practices.

ERICSON: Kauppi said MNDOT did not solicit very much community input when I-94 was first constructed.

KAUPPI: We apologized for the process and such of not, not fully including all voices in the decision making, and recognizing that we all could do better.

ERICSON: Donofrio also said that the lack of public input was a big issue.

DONOFRIO: There was one public meeting held prior to the construction of 35W and one public meeting held prior to the construction of Interstate 94.

ERICSON: And according to Donofrio, MNDOT did not advertise these meetings very well to the communities that were bound to be affected.

DONOFRIO: What Dr. Lloyd and I found is that the notices for these meetings were buried in the backs of the newspapers. Literally between classified advertisements for trailer homes and other things for sale.

ERICSON: According to Moore, these community meetings also happened in his South Minneapolis neighborhood, Regina. The meetings did little to support the local community beyond stating that 35W would soon be built near his childhood home.

MOORE: They just came in and informed everybody that they were going to what they were going to do, but they never asked anybody’s opinion. They never asked anybody ideas, or how they would be affected. They just said, we’re gonna do ABC, blah, blah, blah. And you know, you really had no say in what was gonna happen.

ERICSON: Kauppi said that this time, MNDOT is placing a big emphasis on soliciting community involvement in the planning process.

KAUPPI: We are still in the process of gathering ideas, right? And making sure that the ideas that we’re gathering include those that may not traditionally be part of the overall transportation process and feedback, and making sure that we’re listening to those folks as well.

ERICSON: One proposal for how to rethink the highway system has been put forward by the group ReConnect Rondo. ReConnect Rondo has proposed that a land bridge be built over I-94 in the Rondo neighborhood. This is also called putting a cap on the highway.

This proposal would allow for the preservation of the highway while also increasing the availability of housing, businesses and other amenities in the area. This bridge would be the center of what ReConnect Rondo calls an “African-American cultural enterprise district.”

Another proposal for how to rethink I-94 comes from Our Streets, a Twin Cities nonprofit organization that advocates for shifting our transportation system away from cars and towards other forms of transportation.

Our Streets has proposed what they call the Twin Cities Boulevard. This proposal aims to completely remove the highway between the two downtowns, and replace it with a boulevard that would accommodate cars, bikes, pedestrians and a high-speed bus line. This proposal would also reconnect the street grids severed by the initial highway construction.

Alex Burns is the transportation policy coordinator at Our Streets. Our Streets’ proposal would replace the I-94 from Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis to Marion Street in St. Paul with a variety of transportation options, as well as reconnecting the street grid.

BURNS: So all the streets that were severed, we wouldn’t need bridges that are spaced a mile apart anymore, the neighborhoods would be completely stitched back together.

ERICSON: According to Burns, the boulevard proposal would allow more than just cars and trucks, the boulevard would create improved walkways, bike lanes and have a dedicated bus lane. According to Burns, this would also encourage more construction of homes and businesses along the corridor.

Taking the ever growing and expanding highway system into account, Moore believes that the growing issue of balancing transportation and housing won’t disappear with a couple of quick fixes. Moore believes that Twin Cities’ residents will have to adapt to the highway system as it continues to modernize. 

MOORE: You have to learn to drive on it, you have to learn to be patient with it and you have to learn to understand why it’s there. And if you can get over those humps, you’ll be fine. But there’s no question that transportation is is an important issue nowadays. It’s an expensive issue. And it’s not going to go away.

ERICSON: Scott also expressed skepticism about whether the harms of the highways can effectively be dealt with. Scott said housing affordability will be a major barrier.

SCOTT: If you don’t have affordable housing, you don’t have affordable areas where people can get started.

ERICSON: Scott believes the lack of affordable housing is at least in part because of the highways.

SCOTT: I just somehow think all these things are cumulative effect, the cumulative effect of the freeways, displacement. And then without owning a home in an area, without having a property, as we know, with no equity with no, that’s really where you can gain your wealth. And that’s something that’s really been denied, I think, to a lot of people, especially Black people in the community here in the Twin Cities.

ERICSON: Burns says that the Our Streets proposal is called a “highway-to-boulevard conversion.” A 2019 paper published in the “International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health” by Regan Patterson and Robert Harley studied the replacement of a freeway with a surface boulevard in Oakland, California. The researchers found that the project reduced air pollution. However, it also increased property values, and the Black populations in the area decreased. Patterson and Harley state that the preservation of affordable housing can reduce displacement. 

Representatives from Our Streets said that they included policies in their proposal to prevent this potential displacement. José Zayas Cabán is the advocacy director at Our Streets. He explained some of the proposed anti-displacement policies.

JOSÉ ZAYAS CABÁN: It’s making sure that we have a good commercial land trust and community land trust, so that the community members themselves can have a direct say on what gets rebuilt into the boulevard, and that they themselves benefit from those development opportunities and those housing opportunities.

ERICSON: Burns explained that a community land trust and other policies would potentially support local entrepreneurs. He said that economic development, combined with these policies, would support wealth creation in the community through businesses and homeownership.

BURNS: Those businesses could be prioritized for, if, for example, like BIPOC entrepreneurs in the area that are looking to have a business opportunity. The housing above those businesses could be ensured to be both affordable, and a wealth-building opportunity so that people can actually own their homes and not, and not just rent and accumulate some wealth.

ERICSON: Lloyd said that whichever proposal ends up being implemented, people from the affected communities need to have a say.

LLOYD: You can see exactly how difficult and how all-encompassing this public engagement process is. And MNDOT know that we can’t build highways like we built them in the past. So they are encompassing all the voices. They are bringing all the voices to the table, so to speak.

ERICSON: Lloyd emphasized the human toll that the construction of these highways had, and how it echoes into the present day.

LLOYD: Every time I drive on the interstate going through inner city, especially the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, I think about, am I driving across the person’s front yard? The homeowner’s garage? The bedroom? The kitchen? The family room? But one thing that I do know: when I drive across the freeway, I am driving across the souls of Black people.

ERICSON: Listeners can learn more about the history of highway construction in the Twin Cities at humantoll35w.org, or at the Human Toll of 35W exhibit at the Hennepin History Museum. Listeners can learn more about racially motivated housing policies at mappingprejudice.umn.edu.

The Daily would like to thank all of our listeners for tuning in. We’ll see you next time. I’m Sean Ericson and this is In the Know.

ALBERTO GOMEZ: Episode 94 states that students may opt out of paying for the Universal Transit Pass. This is not true. The Universal Transit Pass’ cost would be charged automatically as a student transportation and safety fee.